Vanderbilt University Divinity School announces the 2025 Antoinette Brown Lecture
to be delivered by
NICHOLE M. FLORES, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
University of Virginia
“Labor has brough forth” (Micah 5:3): Natal Christology and the Practice of Democracy
Event Registration Link: bit.ly/vdsantoinettebrownlecture2025
Monday, April 14, 2025
Vanderbilt Divinity School
The Space
6:00 pm
Antoinette Brown Bicentennial Exhibit
April 14, 2025
Vanderbilt Divinity School, Art Room (G-06)
Preview 12:00 – 2:00 pm
Exhibit Opening and Antoinette Brown Lecture Reception
7:00 pm
Lecture Title: “Labor has brough forth” (Micah 5:3): Natal Christology and the Practice of Democracy
Description: Considering the events of Jesus’s natality—including Mary’s experiences of pregnancy and childbirth along with Jesus’s experiences of utter dependence and vulnerability as an infant—allows for the articulation of a Christian political theology that undergirds democratic practices of radical and embodied space-making for others in our society, especially the most vulnerable. Dr. Flores discusses the crisis of Black and Brown maternal-fetal mortality to illustrate the possibilities of a Christian political theology of democracy inflected by Black and Brown Mariology and natal Christology.
Bio: Nichole M. Flores is associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia where she is also the Director of the Catholic Studies Initiative and Co-Director of the Forum on Religion and Democracy. She researches the relationship between religion, aesthetics, and democracy with emphasis on the Catholic and Latine theological and ethical traditions. Dr. Flores is author of The Aesthetics of Solidarity: Our Lady of Guadalupe and American Democracy (Georgetown University Press, 2021). She has also published essays in the Journal of Religious Ethics, the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and Modern Theology among other academic journals and edited volumes. Her research on La Virgen de Guadalupe and democracy has been profiled on the popular podcasts Things Not Seen and Know Your Enemy and featured on CBS Saturday Morning. In 2015, Dr. Flores was honored with the Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award for best essay in academic theology by a junior scholar from the Catholic Theological Society of America. Dr. Flores earned an A.B. in government from Smith College, an M.Div. from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in theological ethics from Boston College. Originally from Denver, Colorado, she lives in Crozet, Virginia with her husband and two sons.
About the Antoinette Brown Lecture
The Antoinette Brown Lecture is made possible by a gift from Sylvia Sanders Kelley of Atlanta, Georgia. The lectures began in 1974 and are intended to "bring to the school distinguished women theologians to speak on concerns for women in ministry." The lectureship is named for Antoinette Brown, the first woman ordained to the Christian ministry in the United States (1853).