Taking the Bible Seriously, Not Literally: Love Lazarus Sechrest

Our guest, Love Lazarus Sechrest, utilizes her cultural experience and her perspective as a Black woman scholar to reassess passages in the New Testament that deal with intergroup conflict, ethnoracial tension, and power dynamics between dominant and minoritized groups.

In her recent book, Race & Rhyme: Rereading the New Testament, Sechrest offers a rich bounty of new insights from Scripture--drawing out matters of justice and human dignity that spoke to early Christians and can speak still to Christians willing to listen today.

Love Lazarus Sechrest is vice president for academic affairs, dean of faculty, and associate professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. Her scholarship is centered on womanist and African American biblical interpretation and New Testament ethics; she co-chaired the Society of Biblical Literature's African American Biblical Hermeneutics Section from 2012 to 2017 and gives presentations on race, ethnicity, and Christian thought in a variety of academic, church, and business contexts. She is the author of A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race and Can "White" People Be Saved? Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission. A second-career scholar, she previously worked as a senior manager in the aerospace industry at General Electric.