Adam Bond, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Religion and African American Studies

EDUCATION

Marquette University, Ph.D. (Historical Theology)
Marquette University, M.A. (Historical Theology)
Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University, M.Div
University of Memphis, B.P.S.

Biography

Adam Bond joined the Religion Department at Baylor University in the summer of 2023. Prior to his time at Baylor, he served as the pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia. Bond is a historian of Christianity in the United States. His research and writing focus on the narratives and ideas of Black Christian leaders of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

He has published several works on faith and leadership, including I’ve Been Called: Now What?, The Imposing Preacher: Samuel DeWitt Proctor and Black Public Faith, and a co-edited volume entitled Church on Purpose: Reinventing Discipleship, Community, and Justice. He is working on a history of African American Baptists entitled Read the Text First: Black Baptist Leaders, Race Literature, and the Salvation of America.

An ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches USA (ABCUSA), Bond maintains a commitment to the local church and higher education. He sees himself as a resource person for students, congregations, and community groups.

TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS

Baptist History and Theology
American Revivalism and Evangelicalism
History of the Black Church
Religion and the Great Migration
The Social Gospel in America
African American Religious Leadership
History of African American Preaching
Religion and the Civil Rights Movement
Theology in America
Black Theology and the Black Power Movement

BOOKS

Read the Text First: Black Baptist Leaders, Race Literature, and the Salvation of America, 1930-1970 (Under contract, Mercer University Press)

Church On Purpose: Reinventing Discipleship, Community, and Justice, co-edited book with Laura M. Cheifetz (Judson Press, 2015)

The Imposing Preacher: Samuel DeWitt Proctor and Black Public Faith (Fortress Press, 2013).

I’ve Been Called: Now What? (Judson Press, 2012)

ARTICLES/BOOK CHAPTERS

“Black Baptists in North America,” in The Oxford Handbook of Baptist Studies, edited by Paul Fiddes, Elizabeth Flowers, Steve Harmon, and David Bebbington (under contract-Oxford University Press)

“Everybody is God’s Somebody: Samuel DeWitt Proctor and the Black Social Gospel,” in In the Shadow of a Prophet: The Legacy of Walter Rauschenbusch, edited by William H. Brackney and David P. Gushee (Mercer University Press, 2020)

“The Classroom and Pulpit of the Public Theologian: A Brief Survey of Black Faith Tradition(s),” in T&T Clark Companion to African American Theology, edited by Frederick Ware (T&T Clark, 2019)

“The March to Freedom,” Christian History Magazine (May 2018)

“Going to Church v. Being Church,” Vantage Magazine blog (online) (Columbia Theological Seminary, Fall 2017)

Foreword in Sermons from the Black Pulpit, 25^th Anniversary Edition, by Samuel DeWitt Proctor and William D. Watley (Judson Press, 2015)

“Recasting a Black Baptist Narrative.” American Baptist Quarterly (32, no. 2, Summer 2013), 149-170.

“United Church of Christ” in the Encyclopedia of African American Religious Culture, ABC-CLIO (September 2009), Anthony B. Pinn, editor.

“Journeys: For Adults,” Spring 2007, Judson Press (American Baptist Christian Education curriculum).

“The Right Person, Place, and Time: Samuel DeWitt Proctor on the Life and Ministry of Martin Luther King Jr.” American Baptist Quarterly 26, no. 3 (Fall 2006).