Estrelda Alexander

Dr. Estrelda Alexander, a sociologist and political theologian, is founding president of the William Joseph Seymour Foundation, an organization dedicated to the training, education, and resourcing of 21-century Christian leaders. She received her B.A. in Sociology from Howard University, her M.A.in Sociology from Columbia University, where she was a Ford Foundation fellow, her Mdiv. from Wesley Theological Seminary, and her Ph.D. in Political Theology from The Catholic University of America.

In 1998, she became Associate Dean of Community Life at Wesley Theological Seminary, serving there until 2002. She then joined the theology faculty at the Regent University School of Divinity, serving from 2003 to 2013.

Dr. Alexander has published eleven books, including two groundbreaking volumes: Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism and Volume 1 of her three-volume Dictionary of Pan African Pentecostalism. Additionally, she has authored over forty essays and journal articles, served as visiting professor at several campuses, and lectured in conferences and other academic settings across the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean.

As an ordained minister in the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.), she has served as a church planter, pastor, and pastoral staff member within that denomination and other Pentecostal bodies and has preached in pulpits of a number of denominations.

Her passion for training Christian leaders matches a desire to see the faith community embrace a vision of social holiness and justice as embodied in the full participation of women and people of color within the life of the church and society.