It is often said that history's most distinguished entertainers were "born in the theater," and that world-class athletes like Mickey Mantle and Tiger Woods grew up with bat or club in hand.
For Cheryl J. Sanders, MDiv '80, ThD '85, Professor of Christian Ethics at Howard University School of Divinity and senior pastor of the Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C., her life in ministry might suggest something of a natural progression: her mother was born on the church's premises, and she herself grew up as a member of the congregation. However, the journey back to the church she ministers today took a rather circuitous path.
Instead of pursuing a career as a theologian, Sanders studied mathematics at Swarthmore College, earning her bachelor of arts degree in the subject.
"Mathematics is the language of the universe," she says today, explaining the motivation behind her undergraduate concentration. "I ended up teaching ethics, but ethics and mathematics are really not that far removed. It all has to do with logic and rules, and axioms and critical thinking, and the testing of assumptions. From a strictly linguistic perspective, you switch from one language to another, but it's the same discourse."
Sanders also notes that during her study of the African origins of mathematics, she learned that the mathematicians in ancient Egypt simultaneously acted as priests. In the ancient world, no one questioned the connection.
Minoring in black studies at Swarthmore, Sanders was compelled to investigate slave narratives. Up until her collegiate years in the 1970s, she explains, the slave histories available to researchers were told primarily from the perspectives of slaveholders.
"I was fascinated by oral histories, fascinated by people giving religious testimonies," she says, but notes that her own investigation of slaves' ethics diverged from the studies led by black theologians of the day. Her dissertation focused on slaves beliefs about slavery and religion, and how they viewed the parameters of slavery through the lens of faith.
Wanting to continue the study of theology—particularly in the context of black theology—Sanders came to Harvard Divinity School. HDS, she notes, provided the resources, high academic standards, and scholastic demands she was seeking. She went on to receive her master of divinity degree cum laude, and subsequently earned a doctorate in applied theology at HDS.
Sanders credits Preston Williams, Houghton Research Professor of Theology and Contemporary Change at HDS—her mentor and dissertation adviser, for whom she worked as a research and teaching assistant—as well as his wife, Connie, a professor at Brandeis University, with offering the "consistency and nurturing" that guided her toward her current path. Preston Williams "gave me opportunities to learn how to be a professor," she recalls. "To this day, I cherish that relationship."
The third person in her family to earn a doctorate from Harvard (an aunt and a cousin preceded her in the 1960s), Sanders is the author of five books and numerous articles. She is a member of the Church of God, Anderson, Indiana, its geographic origin distinguishing it from other denominations.
Five hundred members strong internationally and emanating from the Holiness Movement of the early nineteenth century, the Church draws from the Methodist Church and the egalitarian teachings of John Wesley.
"There are four generations of my family in this church," Sanders says of the Third Street Church of God. Her grandparents traveled to Washington, D.C., from North Carolina in the 1920s and lived in a room in the house where the original church stood. Sanders and her husband, Alan Carswell, a professor and department chair at the University of Maryland (they met during his studies at Harvard Business School), raised their children both literally and figuratively within the church's purview. Sanders's father, at the age of 86, still remains involved in its financial ministry.
The first woman pastor in the church's history, Sanders accepted an associate's post in 1995, becoming senior pastor in 1997. According to the Pentecost's Book of Acts, she explains, the very first church was a multinational, multicultural church, the ministry of reconciliation entrusted to Christians. "We ought to be in the lead morally, theologically, of all the races coming together," she affirms, anticipating the future.
Beyond the walls of her church, Sanders has witnessed the progression of Washington, D.C., itself. While a student at the prestigious Sidwell Friends School, Sanders recalls, "I got a huge education in egalitarian ethics and values"—an education which, given the tenor of the times, sometimes illustrated an uneasy dichotomy. With the district topographically divided, Sanders traveled from her home in the northeast section to the school's location in the northwest.
Riding the city bus to and from school, she saw firsthand the remnants of the burned and looted U Street corridor, site of the fractious 1968 race riots that had erupted in the nation's capital following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
By contrast, Sanders notes that when election results for Barack Obama were formally announced last November, students of every race and culture from Howard and from George Washington University, both located in the vicinity of U Street, marched together down that same corridor all the way to the White House.
"Obama has an inclusive vision, or white people wouldn't have voted for him, and that's a good vision," she says. "That vision is cast in such a way so that those of us who are Christian can find space to operate in it, but so can other people: Muslims; people who don't even practice religion."
Speaking of her own work as a theologian and Professor of Christian Ethics at Howard, Sanders says she has an obligation "to encourage people involved in cities and churches to contribute to the national conversation about reconciliation, though that conversation is going to occur with or without the church."
—Beth A. Herman