THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY OF DR. KATIE G. CANNON

FTE Rockefeller, Benjamin E. Mays and Black Doctoral Fellow

When Katie Cannon became a theology student in 1971 many of her acquaintances thought her reason for attending seminary was to find a husband. What she found was a voice. Cannon became a leading Christian ethicist and the first African American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Cannon studied religion and ethics at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. She describes the mood at ITC as “electric.” Almost all of the students participated in the civil rights movement, often on the front lines, and many of her male classmates had just returned from the Vietnam War. “It was a heady time,” she says. “We were on the cutting edge of something remarkable.”

At the start of her seminary journey Cannon questioned how a loving God could allow civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., to be assassinated. By the time she completed that journey Cannon was empowered to teach for transformation. “I realized that Christianity could be a liberating force. And my job, my calling, was to get the word out to people,” she said.

She continued her studies with the support of a Rockefeller Fellowship through The Fund for Theological Education (FTE), receiving an FTE Black Doctoral Fellowship in 1974, which allowed her to enroll in Union Theological Seminary in New York. “FTE was a shining star for me,” she says. “I would not have been able to do the Ph.D. without it.”

After completing a second master’s degree and a Ph.D., Cannon became an ordained Presbyterian minister and the presbytery decided to call her to the ministry of teaching, an unusual appointment for this denomination. Cannon is living up to the calling. She now serves as the Annie Scales Rogers Professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary & PSCE in Richmond, Va.

In her 30 years of transformative teaching Cannon has been wrestling with, challenging, and cheering students on. Women students, in particular, have benefited from her mentoring because, Cannon says, many of them begin graduate school not trusting themselves or their abilities. “Women of all races have been socialized to be very hard on themselves. They tend to say ‘why go through a door when I can run into this wall instead?’ She says women must learn to study and to value what they love.

Cannon works to help graduate students gain confidence, and then to translate intellectual passions into language the academy can appreciate. “You have to claim your authority,” she advises doctoral students, especially those from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds.

One of her latest projects explains the theological assumptions underlying nineteenth-century white America’s refusal to acknowledge the evils of slavery. She also works on pedagogy, or methods of teaching, and has a lot to say on the subject

Social, intellectual, spiritual, and financial support from the Fund made it possible for Cannon to become a leading ethicist of her generation. But she also awaits the next generation of scholar-teachers – the ones that are to follow. “We need to find these people,” she says. “We need to keep an eye out for the next Katie Cannons.”

She says without FTE she would not have become the mentor and teacher she is today.