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Fondren Lectureship Lecturer

Professor of Sociology at the University of Florida

Monika Ardelt, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology, a Founding Faculty Member and Member of the Advisory Board of the University of Florida Center for Spirituality and Health, and a Member of UF Mindfulness. She is a Brookdale National Fellow, a Positive Psychology Templeton Senior Fellow, and a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. Dr. Ardelt developed the widely used Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (3D-WS; Ardelt, 2003) and is the co-editor of the book Faith and Well-Being in Late Life: Linking Theories with Evidence in an Interdisciplinary Inquiry (2009). Her research focuses on successful human development across the life course, and she has published numerous articles on the relations between wisdom, spirituality, religiosity, well-being, aging well, and dying well.

The United Methodist Studies Lecturer in Wesleyan History and Contemporary Engagement

General Secretary of the General Commission on Archives & History of the UMC

Dr. Ashley Boggan D. is the General Secretary of the General Commission on Archives and History. Boggan earned her PhD from Drew Theological School’s Graduate Division of Religion, specializing in both Methodist/Wesleyan Studies and Women’s/Gender Studies. She earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, specializing in American Religious History. She has previously worked as staff at the General Commission on Archives and History (2012-2014) and the Connectional Table of The United Methodist Church (2014-2016). She was the Director of United Methodist Studies and Assistant Professor Christian History at Hood Theological Seminary from 2017-2019 and was the Director of Women’s and Gender Studies and Assistant Professor of Religion at High Point University from 2019-2020. Boggan is a lay member of the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference and the daughter of two ordained United Methodist ministers. Boggan is on the Advisory Board for the National Museum of American Religion and is the author of Nevertheless: American Methodists and Women’s Rights (2020); Entangled: A History of American Methodism, Politics, and Sexuality (2018); Wesleyan Vile-tality: Reclaiming the Heart of Methodist Identity (2025); and added to the revised American Methodism: A Compact History (2022).

Barton Lectureship Lecturer

Scripture Press Ministries Professor of Biblical Studies & Pedagogy at Wheaton College

Dr. M. Daniel Carroll R. (Rodas) is Scripture Press Ministries Professor of Biblical Studies and Pedagogy in the Wheaton College graduate school, where he has taught Old Testament since 2016.Danny is half-Guatemalan and was raised bilingual and bicultural. He spent time there in his youth and later for many years was a professor in Guatemala City. Upon returning to the US and before coming to Wheaton, he taught at Denver Seminary for 20 years. While there he founded a Spanish language lay training program that celebrated its twentieth anniversary last spring. His areas of expertise are the Old Testament prophets and ethics, as well as matters related to Latino/a migration. His PhD in Old Testament is from the University of Sheffield in the UK. He has authored or edited 19 books, four of which are related to Latino/a migration and the Bible including The Bible and Borders: Hearing God’s Word on Immigration. His two latest publications are collaborative works:The State of Old Testament Studies: a Survey of Recent Research and Reading the Bible Latinamente: Latino/a Interpretation for the Life of the Church. He and his wife Joan have two adult sons and five grandchildren.

The Peyton lecturer in Preaching

Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Black Homiletics and Liturgics at Vanderbilt University

Lisa L. Thompson, PhD, is a thought leader with over 20 years of experience speaking, consulting, and educating across private and public organizations. She helps communities and growth-oriented individuals bring alignment between their core values and day-to-day decision-making. Dr. Thompson holds a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master of Arts in Religion from Vanderbilt University, as well as a Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary. She is the author of Preaching the Headlines and Ingenuity: Preaching as an Outsider and the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair and Associate Professor of Black Homiletics and Liturgics at Vanderbilt University. Ingenuity mines the preaching practices of black women for the sake of re-thinking theologies and methods of preaching as a whole. The book is a hallmark of the Black Womanist Homiletic that spans her work. She is an ordained Baptist minister.

Tate-Wilson Lectureship Lecturer

Associate Professor of Religious Education at Yale Divinity School

Rev. Dr. Almeda M. Wright is the tenured Associate Professor of Religious Education at Yale Divinity School. Dr. Wright’s research focuses on African American religion and education, Womanist spirituality, adolescent spiritual development, and the intersections of religion and public life. Dr. Wright recently launched Communitas, a young adult ministry innovation hub at Yale. This work centers BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of color) young adults and attempts to create working space for the creation of spiritual communities connecting young adult leaders with congregations and community partners. She is also the co-principal investigator for the Conectere Project, a partnership with Eastern Mennonite University. Dr. Wright completed her doctoral studies at Emory University. Dr. Wright also studied at Harvard University Divinity School (M.Div.). She is an ordained minister of the American Baptist Churches. Her most recent publication is Teaching to Live: Black Religion, Activist-Educators and Radical Social Change (Oxford, 2024).