CLAUDIA MAY

Claudia May, Ph.D., is an educator, author, poet, and spiritual director. She is a specialist in African American and Caribbean literature and theater, and Reconciliation Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. For more than a decade, she has ministered to leaders of color serving on the front line of ministry. Dr. May has also partnered with congregations and denominations, examining how communities can apply biblical principles to building empowering relationships across cultures. She also leads courses and facilitates workshops on how self-care/God-care strategies can transform one’s vision for ministry. Dr. May is currently the Program Director and Professor of Reconciliation Studies, and the Executive Director of the Center for Community Engaged Learning at Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota.
 

Dr. May has taught in higher education for more than seventeen years in the US and the UK. She has lectured on sports and spirituality, African American literature and Christian expression, religious sentiments in the blues, Christian discipleship formation, creative and non-fiction writing as a gateway to Christian spiritual practices, and writing as an avenue for personal healing. She also lectures on how individuals can forge an intimate relationship with God through prayer and reflective writing. She has presented papers in UK seminaries such as the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham; St. John’s College, York; and the University of Birmingham on the intersection between popular culture and religious expression.

Reconciliation Studies
Dr. Claudia May is a sought after specialist in Reconciliation Studies and has more than two decades of experience working alongside, teaching, and learning from global practitioners of reconciliation. Through her writing and teaching, Dr. May examines how Jesus and those he encountered live out reconciliation. She pays particular attention to the agency of those dismissed as irrelevant. She probes how Jesus co-builds relationships with the disinherited while confronting injustice, challenging abusive systems, and engaging with conflicting histories, beliefs, and cultures. Dr. May’s work stresses that Jesus can present us with practical approaches to dismantling the inequities and divisions that undermine our relationship with God and others. Through her analysis of psychological studies, Dr. May also mines how the lives of Jesus and biblical characters interface with stories of trauma and our complex humanity. Since arriving at Bethel in 2015, Dr. May has created and added the following three new courses to the Reconciliation Studies degree program: “The Power of Story and Reconciliation”;“European Experiences,Whiteness and Reconciliation”; and “Hip-Hop, Spoken Word & Reconciliation.” She considers it a privilege to work alongside young adults in the ministry of reconciliation. She believes there can be no movement or fight against social justice if practitioners of reconciliation do not engage with young adults. She believes leaders who consider themselves agents of reconciliation must embrace young adults as fellow reconcilers who have much to teach us all.
 

Dr. May facilitates several conversations and forum gatherings a year under the banner of Reconciliation Studies. These allow members of the wider community, students majoring in a wide-range of disciplines, staff, and faculty to learn from the stories and practices of the marginalized among us. Recent forums include: “The Bombing of a Mosque: Islamophobia, the Power of Story, and the Love of Community”; “What’s In A Name?: Asian American Women’s Lives, Agency, Community, and Reconciliation”; “European American Experience, Whiteness, Privilege, and Reconciliation”; and “Racism, Trauma, and Reconciliation.”