Teddy Hickman-Maynard, Associate Dean for Ministry Studies

“One of the things you realize when you start to do social justice work is that you don’t get anywhere alone. Without community and partnership, you can’t move the needle on any area of community empowerment, development, ant-discriminatory, or anti-oppressive work in order to make structural change that alleviates burdens on the marginalized.”

Teddy Hickman-Maynard has more than 20 years of ministry experience, serving in roles including senior pastor, youth pastor, minister to men, and minister of worship. In addition to his role at Harvard Divinity, he is associate minister at Bethel AME Church in Lynn, Massachusetts, where his spouse, the Rev. Bernadette Hickman-Maynard, is pastor.

Harvard’s Impact on My Life

I graduated in the class of 2000 from Harvard with a focus in Afro-American studies. That program poured a lot into me and helped me chart a path forward in terms of where I wanted to go with my life and my ministry. Harvard changed my life, and it has been a very important place to me. 

I went on to Boston University School of Theology for my PhD and with my training in Practical Theology, I became co-director of the Center for Practical Theology and was hired as Assistant Professor for Black Church Studies. I also became Associate Dean for students and community life. 

Ministry, Social Justice, and Community Building 

In addition to my academic life, I am an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). I’ve been working in the AME church since 2000, when I graduated from Harvard. I was first a youth pastor, then a pastoral resident, then as a pastor. 

A lot of our approach to ministry at AME is built around the centrality of social justice and living out our love for Christ by pursuing the liberation of all people. One of the things you realize when you start to do social justice work is that you don’t get anywhere alone. Without community and partnership, you can’t move the needle on any area of community empowerment, development, ant-discriminatory, or anti-oppressive work in order to make structural change that alleviates burdens on the marginalized. 

One of the things that I’ve really enjoyed throughout my ministry is being a part of interfaith organizations and partnering with other faith traditions to come together and utilize all the resources that we have to address the big problems that plague our communities, particularly in the United States. 

At each stop along the way, one of the things that’s been a primary part of my ministry is figuring out where is the local interfaith organization, how to get plugged in and immediately begin building those relationships. You really start to understand when you get your feet on the ground and start to do the work of social justice that a lot of your time is spent building relationships. We couldn’t do any of the community work we wanted to do if we didn’t build loving, trusting, caring relationships with each other. 

When you’re doing interfaith work, you can’t just say that we will only talk about those things which we agree. If we’re going to really be in community, we must be able to show up as our full selves and still be able to interact. We had to create spaces where people didn’t have to leave parts of themselves at home to be in this space. That was central to what it meant for me to be a Christian minister who understood God’s love for the world and that my calling wasn’t just to my people, but to the world. This is a part of my faith. It’s a part of how I interpret my Christianity, in the ability to build those relationships with people who are not Christians. 

Prepared for This Moment

In accepting my role as Associate Dean for Ministry Studies at HDS, I knew I wanted to focus all my attention on supporting the needs of the master of divinity degree students here at HDS, and I knew that would be a big job. I had a lot to learn quickly because we had lost a lot of intellectual, cultural, and relational capital when our Associate Dean, Dudley Rose, retired after a long tenure of 35 years of running this program, and our Assistant Dean for Ministry Studies, Emily Click, who had been with him for 15 years, retired as well. 

My background has prepared me for this moment, and I see great possibility and great beauty in the model that HDS has for theological education. The multireligious model where it’s a holistic and thorough multireligious pedagogical environment, where everyone’s dealing with everyone all the time. 

I take it as a privilege to be here. HDS is the kind of place that prepares the kind of leaders we need for this moment. I think we’re trying something that is being tried in very few other places, but I do think it’s not going to be long before a lot of divinity schools and seminaries are going to have to get their minds around multireligious theological education. We are the forerunners in that area. I think there’s an opportunity to create models that then can be tried elsewhere. 

The Future of Our Students 

Our students are excited about the future. They come here because they want to do something different with what they’ve been given. They get fired up about the new and the next, especially at a place that’s just bursting with creativity and possibility like HDS. Then they get to the end of their MDiv program, and their choices for work are still limited to the kinds of institutional spaces that they were dissatisfied with in the first place and working to change—whether that be in the religious institutional setting or in corporate America taking a job as a part of this system that you want to tear down. 

Part of what I’ve been able to articulate to our students is that it’s not an “either/or” situation, the religious leadership of the moment right now is one that has to be “both/and”—a recognition of the need to utilize, take advantage of, and sometimes lean upon the institutions that still exist. We keep saying they’re dying, and yet there they are. They still have land. They still have buildings. Some of them still have endowments. These institutions don’t serve us; they continue to marginalize and oppress. We want transformation and change, yet those are the places with the resources we need. So how are you going to be the creative leader who is able to lean on those resources and those institutions while still crafting the way forward? 

I get excited about this because this is the opportunity to become the bridge. There you are as a leader who is able to take one world and make it meaningful for this next world that’s emerging. That’s how lasting change happens. In liminal moments like this, you are going to have your prophetic, progressive edges—the people who are beating the drum for things that are totally outside of the norm and pushing the boundaries of everything. There’s room for those folks; they are the ones who make the space. They are the ones who push out the boundaries of what’s possible, expanding our sense of probable. 

These are the actions that break new ground and create new sorts of institutions that emerge from leaders who are able to catch the spirit of the new and who are able to creatively institutionalize it by using the gifts of the old thing. We need both.

Leaders of Today and Tomorrow 

As an HDS student you are the person who can catch the spirit of the prophetic wave and still have your foot into the world that is right now so that you can creatively help us to move forward to the world that will be. There is room for this kind of conversation because it is a cultural context issue; it’s not unique to any one religious tradition. 

This is a new space. It’s an epochal shift. It’s like an every 500-year kind of thing. And what the world will look like 50, 60 years from now, the leaders who are going to create that world are walking these halls right now. They’re in these classrooms right now. That wakes me up in the morning. That gets me excited to be here. 

Critical Reading 

The last class I taught was on dismantling white privilege, power, and supremacy. The one book that I see as important is, The Half Has Never Been Told, by Edward Baptist. Baptist is an economic historian who delves into the economics of the slave autocracy in the United States. 

We talk about the racial bias, racial discrimination, and racial harm, but the fundamental technology of slavery was how to maximize the commodification of oppressed bodies. That technology is still at the heart of American economy. The book argues there’s a whole piece we never fully appreciate or talk about that is hindering our ability to properly diagnose how white supremacy and particularly anti-Black racism continues to function economically. 

Another I would recommend is anything written by Saidiya Hartman. Hartman is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She takes a different look at the reality of slavery, equally firm on the idea that we haven’t contended with slavery as much as we need to. Her approach to contending with it is not social-structural but somatic. It’s aesthetic. It’s trying to wrestle with the fullness of the kind of existential harm around slavery, the true devastation and absurdity of the violence. 

I think both avenues need to be attended to at the same time. You have to have both a sophisticated social-structural analysis and recognize that white supremacy isn’t just about systems and structures, it’s also about creating a different kind of air that we’re breathing. 

You can change all the systems and structures you want, but if you have to clean the quality of the air because it’s so steeped into our sense of being. Change it with art. Change it with theology. Change it with vision and change it with stories. That’s the beauty of religious and theological education. When it’s done right, you’re prepared to do both. 

Interview conducted and edited by Denise Penizzotto; top image from Boston University and Teddy Hickman-Maynard, second image by Denise Penizzotto.