Email: [email protected]
First Year at Gordon-Conwell: 2014
Expertise: Church History, African American Christianity, History of Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, Music and Worship
Biography:
After earning her MM in Music Composition from the School of Church Music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Carolynne served as music and worship minister at churches in Laurel, MD and Cambridge, MA, where she also assisted in church planting. Her curiosity about the influence of historical memory on worship and congregational life led her to pursue a ThD at Boston University School of Theology in biblical and historical studies. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she applied herself to a rich exploration of Christian history and worship with a deep dive into evangelical history and Black Christian experience. A lifelong passion for urban ministry that began in Detroit and continued in cities like Dallas, St. Louis, Washington D.C., and Boston, led Carolynne to pursue a teaching role at Gordon-Conwell, where she felt called to support the seminary’s ongoing commitment to urban ministerial education and training.
Carolynne’s greatest joy in teaching at Gordon-Conwell has come through the abiding relationships she’s formed with the curious and called women and men of character she has had the honor to meet in her classroom.
Degrees
- ThD (Boston University)
- MM (Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary)
- BM (Southwest Baptist University)
SELECT LIST OF PUBLICATIONS AND ARTICLES
- Singing Through Struggle: Music as a Mode of Cultural Exchange in Postemancipation Border City Black Churches, University of Mississippi Press (forthcoming, April 2025).
- Essay contributions to Preaching God’s Transforming Justice, A Lectionary Commentary, Year C, Featuring 22 New Holy Days for Justice, ed. Dale P. Andrews, Ronald J. Allen, and Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm. Louisville: Westminister/John Knox Press, 2013.
- Essay contribution for Proper 6 in Preaching God’s Transforming Justice, A Lectionary Commentary, Year A, Featuring 22 New Holy Days for Justice, ed. Dale P. Andrews, Ronald J. Allen, and Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm. Louisville: Westminister/John Knox Press, 2012.
- Litany contribution to The Changing Contours of World Mission and Christianity: Papers of the 2010 Boston Conference, ed. Todd M. Johnson, Rodney L. Peterson, Gina Bellofatto, and Travis Myers. Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2012.
- Book Review, The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity, by Thabiti M. Anyabwile, Journal of Pan-African Pentecostalism, 1 (2011).
- Essay contribution for Proper 6 in Preaching God’s Transforming Justice, A Lectionary Commentary, Year B, Featuring 22 New Holy Days for Justice, ed. Dale P. Andrews, Ronald J. Allen, and Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm. Louisville: Westminister/John Knox Press, 2011.
- “African American Identity and the Sunday School at Zoar ME Church,” Annals of Eastern Pennsylvania Journal of the Historical Society and the Commission on Archives and History of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church, no. 8 (2011): 50-61.