Rev. Yolanda M. Norton
Director

Yolanda M. Norton is the Visiting Professor at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC and founder/executive director of the Global and Theology Experience, a new nonprofit that provides positive identity formation programming for Black girls and women.
Prior to her current positions, Norton was Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible and H. Eugene Farlough Chair of Black Church at San Francisco Theological Seminary. In addition, she served as Visiting Scholar/Professor at Moravian Theological Seminary from 2021-2023 and 2020-2021 Black Religious Scholars Group Crump
Visiting Professor of Black Theology at the Seminary of the Southwest, and adjunct faculty for institutions like Seattle Pacific School of Theology and Lexington Theological Seminary. She teaches courses on the book of Ruth, Beyoncé and the Hebrew Bible, Biblical Archaeology, and Methods of Exegesis.
Her current research interests include narrative and literary criticism, the Persian period, and she is especially committed to womanist biblical interpretation. As such, she focuses on the implications of reading the text alongside Black women, and her work continues to interrogate how various portrayals of women in the Hebrew
Bible impact the vilification and/or oppression of women of color who encounter the Bible today.
Professor Norton has published chapters in I Found God in Me: A Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics Reader, Global Perspectives in the Old Testament, and Liturgical Press’ new feminist commentary on the Psalms (Books 2-3), and has additional articles and chapters pending in a Westminster John Knox publication on God and guns and Liturgical Press’s Wisdom of Solomon commentary.
Norton is ordained clergy in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and she has deep commitments to the church, having served in various ministerial capacities in the Washington, D.C. area and Nashville, TN. She also preaches and teaches across the country in a range of diverse ecclesial contexts.
Norton has been featured in Essence, Ebony, The New York Times, and a host of other print and media platforms for her creative worship design and innovative preaching, and was named one of America’s leading progressive
religious leaders by Patheos.