- About YDS
- Admissions & Aid
- Application Instructions and Requirements
- Fall Open House for Prospective Students
- Office of Admissions
- Degree Programs and Certificates
- Non-Degree Programs
- Tuition and Financial Aid
- Visit and Connect
- Request Information
- International Applicants
- Accreditation and Educational Effectiveness
- YDS Bulletin & Policies
- Academics
- Life at YDS
- Faculty & Research
You are here
Donyelle McCray

Donyelle McCray studies homiletics and Christian spirituality, focusing on African American preaching, sermon genre, and modes of authority. In her work, the sermon occupies the shoreline between sacred and profane speech and holds emancipatory potential within Christian liturgies and beyond them. She writes about the ways African American women and lay people use the sermon to play, remember, invent, and disrupt. Her recent book, The Censored Pulpit: Julian of Norwich as Preacher, offers a homiletical reading of Julian’s life and ministry and attends to the relationship between preaching, embodiment, and authority. Her current research examines the preaching and spirituality of the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. She is also working on a documentary film as part of the Louisville Institute’s Clergy-Scholar Research team on Race, Church, and Theological Practices.