Alumni Spotlight: The Rev. Bernadette Hickman-Maynard, AB ’02, EdM ’03, MDiv ’07
Harvard Divinity School welcomed our new Associate Dean for Ministry Studies, the Rev. Teddy Hickman-Maynard, to campus for the start of the 2021 academic year. Throughout his first year at HDS, he has become a vibrant voice within the community, affectionately known as “Dean Teddy.” During an interview for a 2022 Dean’s Report story on multifaith ministry, Dean Teddy was asked about the importance of multireligious education. He fervently shared the story of an alumna near to his heart who is using her education in psychology, education, and divinity to make a difference in the world: the Rev. Bernadette Hickman-Maynard.
The Hickman-Maynards met as undergraduate students at Harvard College. They saw each other through several post-secondary degrees (two masters degrees for her, a masters and PhD for him) while also building a marriage and starting a family. (They have four children.) In addition to establishing their careers in both ministry and education, they have also become avid advocates for their community in Lynn, MA. The Rev. Bernadette Hickman-Maynard is currently the pastor of Bethel AME Church in Lynn. She is also the Deputy Director for Essex County Community Organization (ECCO) and co-chair of the Lynn Racial Justice Coalition (of which ECCO is a member).
Pastor Hickman-Maynard, now a pillar of community- and coalition-building in the Northeast, grew up on the West Coast. Born in Inglewood, CA, she was raised by a single mother who emphasized the importance of education from a young age. “She wouldn’t have used the word ‘poverty,’” Hickman-Maynard shares about her mother, “but we were low-income, and she always taught me that education was our ticket to make a better life for ourselves. So, from the very beginning, she did everything she could to make sure I had access to the best schools possible.”
Religion was also a powerful force in her upbringing. Hickman-Maynard was raised as a devout Christian in the Conservative Baptist Association of America, which she notes was “both the name and the description” of the church. With an ardent emphasis on accepting Jesus Christ as lord and savior to escape hell in the afterlife, Hickman-Maynard’s experience with this tradition involved a staunch hierarchy of power. Women were not granted any official authority within the church; they were forbidden from preaching or teaching male congregants over the age of 18. Moreover, while the congregation was primarily comprised of Black community members, leadership consisted entirely of white men.
Reflecting on her earlier experiences with religion, Hickman-Maynard notes that she identified as a secular feminist. “I believed that women could be doctors, lawyers, even president of the United States in the secular world, but not within the church,” she says. “Women and men were equal, but in the church, God called men to lead.” It wasn’t until she was introduced to an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Roxbury that Hickman-Maynard began to see more diverse representation in religious leadership.
A Pathway to Ministry Grounded in Psychology and Education
From a young age, Hickman-Maynard showed exceptional talent in science and math. She had early ambitions of becoming a doctor and, with the encouragement of her family, attended a medical magnet high school in Los Angeles. She reflects: “When I applied to colleges and got into Harvard, it was like a dream. But my mother didn’t pressure me. She let me consider UCLA or Stanford.… It was my aunt who said, ‘you’re going!’” When asked about the transition from the West Coast to Cambridge, Hickman-Maynard laughed: “I had never even visited before, but I was invited to a pre-frosh program for women in science before move-in day. I remember hailing a cab and saying, ‘I need to go to Harvard University,’ and the cabbie was like ‘okay, where?’ This was before the days of Uber, Lyft.… I didn’t even have a cell phone! But I had a paper with me that said ‘Canady Hall,’ so I got myself there, and that was the first time I stepped foot on campus.”
As a first-year student, Hickman-Maynard remembers exploring concentrations and searching for a church to call home on the East Coast. She was introduced to the Kuumba Singers on campus—an organization that explores and shares the rich musical culture of Black people through spirituals, gospel, African folk songs, and contemporary music. Joining Kuumba was particularly influential for Hickman-Maynard. “Kuumba was the first place where I experienced Black spiritual music. I knew gospel music, but we couldn't play drums in my home church; drums were of the devil. So, I really gravitated to Kuumba as a space for my faith as a Christian, but also as a Black Christian who was newly exposed to the celebration of Black spirituality.”
Kuumba is also where young Bernadette Hickman met young Teddy Maynard. Reflecting on their introduction, Hickman-Maynard shares: “I knew he was a minister, and I kept telling him to take me to church because I was looking for a local church home. He brought me to Charles Street AME Church, and there were a number of things that were surprising to me. First, there were women who were preaching and teaching, and I thought, ‘well, they don't seem to be of the devil!’ Second, I learned that God does not just care about the Bible and souls going to hell. I learned that God does not want us to live in hell on earth—that sexism matters, that racism matters, and that Jesus came to set captives free on earth. That’s where I had a shift in my faith and a shift in my understanding of my role within Christianity because I was able to see women who were indeed being used by the Spirit to preach and to teach and to lead God's people.”
The AME Church, built on a foundation of emancipation and liberation in the late 1700s, was not without its own gender politics. Jarena Lee, a renowned preacher who was a contemporary of the church’s founder, Richard Allen, was only ordained posthumously in 2016. However, seeing women in leadership roles within the church inspired an evolution of both personal faith and professional ambitions for Pastor Hickman-Maynard. “Coming to Harvard, I did feel called to be a doctor. I wanted to help people heal their bodies. As I learned more, I found myself thinking about how I could help heal people’s lives and break down those systems of oppression that hold people back and prevent them from thriving. So, that's where I started to have a shift in my faith, in my calling, and in the type of work I wanted to do. And all that happened at Harvard College.”
After her undergraduate work, Hickman-Maynard earned a masters degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, focusing on human development and risk prevention. She then decided to pursue a masters at HDS to begin formal ministry work. Advisors at HDS, notably Cheryl Giles, helped create space for exploring feminism and womanist theology, including the work of a past WSRP Research Associate, Delores Williams. When asked about the importance of studying at a multireligious divinity school, Hickman-Maynard notes: “I wanted to study alongside other women who were exploring their faith, interrogating their faith, and finding out what was liberating about their faith at the same time. So that's what appealed to me about Divinity School, that I could study with Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women—people of all traditions—to see what's possible.”
Community Organizing in Service of a Just World At Peace
After completing her studies at HDS and being ordained an Itinerant Elder in the AME church, Hickman-Maynard began her pastoral ministry and community organizing in Bridgeport, CT. She later returned to the Boston area, where she has been leading Bethel AME Church in Lynn. She has also built a network of advocates through ECCO and serves as co-chair of the Lynn Racial Justice Coalition. What Hickman-Maynard has seen up close and personal in both communities is a deep, unyielding need for community support—especially regarding racial justice and police reform.
Working to change and/or dismantle broken systems can be dispiriting, but building coalitions of community advocates, especially with interfaith organizations, is one way to sustain momentum. Working together toward concrete goals that serve as stepping stones toward progress is another. Hickman-Maynard has made it a point to bridge cultural and religious divides—working with pastors, priests, rabbis, and imams—to create movements that share common goals. She also builds connections with secular community members, policymakers, union leaders, and advocates for an array of issues, using her time, energy, and skills to facilitate productive conversations, organize action, and negotiate systemic change.
One example of this work in action is when the city of Lynn wanted to increase the police budget by $2 million in the wake of yet another wave of police brutality in 2020. The summer after Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were killed by police, the then-mayor of Lynn, Thomas McGee, denounced racism but had yet to implement reforms within the city’s own police force. Working with a number of community organizations and activists, Hickman-Maynard employed a range of organizing skills (rallies, education, policy plans) to advocate for body cams, bias trainings, and a better plan for nonviolent crisis response.
Mayor McGee worked closely with ECCO and the newly formed Lynn Racial Justice Coalition to pursue a series of reforms to address systemic racism and equitable public safety for all, including:
- Updating the Lynn Police Department's Use of Force Policy, which included the addition of body cameras
- Establishing the city's first-ever diversity, equity, and inclusion office
- Allocating $500,000 for a pilot test of an unarmed crisis response team (ALERT)
- Considering the establishment of a civilian review board for police.
This was a major win for the community. Additionally, a successful pilot program could mean reform across the state. Boston and Cambridge have already signaled they would also explore such an option, with Lynn’s test-run paving the way for expansion across Massachusetts. However, with a change in local leadership, plans have been stalled. A September 2022 interview with Mayor Jared Nicholson, focused mostly on real estate development and transportation, mentions the unarmed crisis response team at the end noting: “there is not yet a start date for the program.”
Community leaders continue to advocate for this vital program to create, as Pastor Hickman-Maynard says, “a future of public safety that keeps everybody safe.”
On Solidarity and Sustaining Progress
Coalition building has proven to be one of the most effective forms of advocacy and community support, but it is not without its trials and tribulations. One major challenge is navigating the often-complicated politics and procedures of bureaucracy (especially for people who are volunteering their time in addition to being parents, pastors, community leaders, teachers, health care providers, and laborers). Add a global pandemic to the mix and this work becomes much more difficult.
Another major challenge, especially for leaders from marginalized communities, is getting support from different people in ways that support the cause without subverting power. Hickman-Maynard says: “I consider the community to be my congregation, and my work is to help tear down systems of oppression affecting the community so that we can all be free. One thing I have learned through interfaith work is that Black people can’t do it all by ourselves. LGBTQ folks can’t do it all by themselves. Marginalized folks can't do it all by themselves. We need to get together, and we need to get together with white people, and people who have different types of privilege, to build that power and make change that benefits all of us. This is something I have really committed to figuring out: how to work with white people so they are actually coming alongside, and sometimes behind, folks of color to support the direction and agency-building of marginalized groups to fight for justice in the way that we see fit.”
In short, to work for justice, all the -isms and -phobias need to be checked in favor of support and solidarity.
—by Amie Montemurro