Center for the Study of African American Preaching to open at Anderson U.

[get these nets]

AU Announces Launch of Center to Study African-American Preaching​

August 4, 2022

A new center for the Study of African-American Preaching will be launched by Anderson University’s Clamp Divinity School, according to an announcement at a national conference for African-American church leaders.


The announcement was made by Dr. Michael Duduit, Dean of the Clamp Divinity School, and Dr. Dante Wright, assistant professor of preaching and pastoral ministry and director of the new center. News of the center’s launch was presented at the E.K. Bailey Preaching Conference in Dallas, an annual event attended by more than a thousand African-American pastors and ministry leaders.


The Center for the Study of African-American Preaching will have two missions: developing significant new scholarship regarding the use of preaching in the Black church, and creating a publicly available online library of audio recordings of well-known African-American preachers.


Speaking to the gathering of church leaders, Dr. Duduit explained that “we face the possibility of losing the voices of many of the great preachers of past generations because the physical recordings of their sermons and lectures are in danger of being scattered and ultimately disintegrated as they age.” The center will gather such audio recordings and digitize them, then make them available to listeners online.

Dr. Dante Wright​

The Center for the Study of African-American Preaching is being launched in conjunction with a new PhD in Preaching degree program that will be offered by Clamp Divinity School beginning in August. Dr. Wright, who will direct the new Center, will be one of the faculty members who will be teaching in the Ph.D. program; he also serves as pastor of the Sweet Home Baptist Church in Round Rock, Texas, in addition to his work with Clamp Divinity School.


Dr. Wright shared with the pastor’s group ways that they can be involved with supporting the new center, including assisting in gathering strategic recordings to be added to the library, and providing financial support which will help offset the cost of digitizing several thousand sermon recordings and making them available to an international audience. The website for the Center can be found at www.AAPreaching.com.