R. Drew Smith, Director
The Public Influences of African-American Churches Project
Scholar-in-Residence, The Leadership Center
R. Drew Smith is
Scholar-in-Residence at the Leadership Center at Morehouse College.
In this capacity, he has initiated and directed a number of projects
related to religion and public life, including the Public Influences
of African-American Churches Project and the Faith Communities and
Urban Families Project. These Projects have collected research data
on political involvements, community development activities, and
outreach ministries of African-American churches in numerous parts
of the United States. The Projects have also convened seminars, conferences,
and roundtables that have brought clergy, policy makers, and community
leaders together to discuss matters pertaining to the church’s
public mission and ministry. In addition to his own work on religion
and public life, Dr. Smith has served on the advisory boards of other
academic and nongovernmental organizations concerned with religion
and public life, including the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, the
Institute for Church Administration and Management, Calvin College’s
Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics, and Notre Dame
University’s Center for the Study of Latino Religion.
Dr. Smith is a
political scientist who has taught at Indiana University, Butler
University, Case Western Reserve University, and New York Theological
Seminary. Dr. Smith has been actively involved in international
community development and youth leadership development, initially as
an executive staff person at Operation Crossroads Africa during the
1980s. He has traveled widely in Africa and Latin America, with his
Africa involvements taking him to twenty African countries since the
mid-1980s. Most recently, he served in 2005 as a Fulbright Professor
at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He has also lectured
in many international venues, including Brazil, Cameroon, Ghana, South
Africa, and lectured in Israel in Spring of 2007 as part of the U.S.
State Department’s Speakers Bureau. In addition, Dr. Smith
is a Baptist clergyman, and has ministered in a number of parish, prison,
and campus ministry contexts.
Dr. Smith earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Education from
Indiana University, a Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity
School, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University.
He has published widely on religion and public life, having written
numerous articles and chapters, and edited various books including New
Day Begun: African American Churches and Civic Culture in Post-Civil
Rights America (Duke University Press, 2003); Long March Ahead:
African American Churches and Public Policy in Post-Civil Rights America (Duke
University Press, 2004); and Freedom’s Distant Shores: American
Protestants and Post-Colonial Alliances with Africa (Baylor University
Press, 2006). He is also co-editor of Black Churches and
Local Politics: Clergy Influence, Organizational Partnerships, and
Civic Empowerment (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), and is guest
editor of the March 2008 issue of Review of Faith and International
Affairs, which contains a collection of essays he assembled on “Black
Churches and U.S. Policy in the Middle East and North Africa.” He
is currently completing two edited volumes on black churches and civil
rights (beyond the southern movement), and is authoring a book on black
clergy and contemporary moral authority.
Dr. Smith has received
many honors and awards for his academic leadership, including selection
in 2002 as an Emerging Leaders Fellow by a Duke University/University
of Cape Town program on Leadership and Public Values, and selection
in 2008 for an Indiana Governor’s Black
Expo Leadership award. Dr. Smith and his wife, Angelique Walker-Smith,
have one daughter.
Contact Information:
Leadership Center at Morehouse College
830 Westview Drive, S.W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30314
404 614-8565 (ph); 404 614 8569 (fax)
Email: rsmith@morehouse.edu
Web: www.morehouse.edu/centers/leadershipcenter/pubinfl/ and
www.morehouse.edu/centers/leadershipcenter/fcuf/
