Rev. Dr. Mitzi J. Smith is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at Ashland Theological Seminary in Detroit. She earned her B.A. from Columbia Union College, M.A. from The Ohio State University, M.Div. from Howard University School of Divinity, and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She blogs at Womanist Biblical Scholar Reflections and can be reached at: mitzijsmith@gmail.com.

How did you decide to become a biblical scholar? Share your autobiographical journey.

I decided to attempt to become a biblical scholar in my second year as a M.Div. student at Howard University Divinity School (HUSD). Initially, I had no idea what I would do after earning my M.Div. I was just compelled to complete my ministerial training, which I began in 1981 at Columbia Union College (CUC) where I earned a BA in Theology. When I enrolled at HUSD in 1995 I was working fulltime as a legal secretary in downtown DC. I knew then that I would likely leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA). It had never entered my mind that I could be a biblical scholar. Even though I had biblical scholars as instructors for my undergraduate in theology, the possibility was never presented to me as an option (all my professors were white males and I was the only female entering the theology program in that year). A white female had entered the program a year or so ahead of me and upon completion of her degree she was offered a secretarial position in a SDA conference office. I don’t know if she ever became a pastor (the SDA church does hire women now as pastors but still does not ordain them for pastoral ministry!). So, as a woman and particularly as a black woman, I was not supposed to be in that program at all. Black SDA churches had been even slower than their white counterparts at hiring female pastors. And most black SDAs went to Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama. More than ten years later I enrolled at HUSD where I encountered my first African American biblical scholar and where I was encouraged and mentored to become a biblical scholar by Profs Cain Hope Felder, Michael Newheart and Gene Rice and others.  More→