Valerie CooperVirginia Seminar Project: Segregated Sundays: Why the Most Diverse Nation on Earth Still Has the Most Racially-Segregated Worship

Valerie C. Cooper is an associate professor of black church studies at Duke Divinity School. In her research and teaching, Valerie examines issues of religion, race and society. In her research for the Virginia Seminar in Lived Theology, Valerie evaluates the successes and failures of the racial reconciliation efforts of Christian congregations and ministries from the 1990s to the present. In addition to examining why such efforts frequently fall short of their stated goals, she hopes to propose methods for achieving meaningful cross-racial relationships in America’s still very segregated churches and religious organizations.

Valerie C. Cooper is an associate professor black church studies at Duke Divinity School. She received her doctorate from Harvard University and both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Howard University. In her research and teaching, she examines issues of religion, race and society. Her book, Word, Like Fire: Stewart, the Bible, and the Rights of African Americans (University of Virginia Press, 2012), analyzes the role of biblical interpretation in the work of Maria Stewart, a pioneering nineteenth-century African American woman political speaker.

She is currently working on her next book, Segregated Sundays: Why the Most Diverse Nation on Earth Still Has the Most Racially-Segregated Worship, which evaluates the successes and failures of the racial reconciliation efforts of Christian congregations and ministries from the 1990s to the present. In addition to examining why such efforts frequently fall short of their stated goals, she also hopes to propose methods for achieving meaningful cross-racial relationships in America’s still very segregated churches and religious organizations.