Harvard Divinity School summer reading list includes books on 'transgender evangelist,' reparations
One of the suggested books advocates for reparations for black Americans that are 'rooted in a hopeful future that tackles the issue of climate change head on, with distributive justice at its core.'
The list includes recommendations from a 'nonbinary' minister, who preiviously wrote that 'the marginalization of sex work and sex workers is a sickness of Patriarchy and of White Supremacy.'
On June 21, Harvard Divinity School (HDS), Harvard’s home for theological studies, released a summer reading list that recommended books ranging from a biography on a genderless, 18th century preacher, to novels exploring contemporary racism in America.
The list features a recommendation from Jude Sylvan, a 2020 HDS alumna and “nonbinary” minister at First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City, who wrote in a 2018 HDS bulletin that the “desire of the later Gospel writers to take up the pen parallels the contemporary phenomenon of fanfiction.”
Sylvan created Beloved King: A Queer Bible Musical, and has delivered sermons titled, “Joseph and the Amazing Pretty Princess Dress,” “Abortion & the Bible,” and “Memorial Day… It’s Complicated.” Sylvan has also written a piece in defense of “sex workers,” arguing that “the marginalization of sex work and sex workers is a sickness of Patriarchy and of White Supremacy.”
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In the HDS summer reading list, Sylvan recommends students read The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America by Paul B. Moyer, and Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend by Herbert A. Wisbey.
Both books center on Rhode Island Quaker Jemima Wilkinson, a “transgender evangelist” who died in 1819 and was allegedly reincarnated as a genderless messenger of God.
Terrence L. Johnson, a professor of African American Religious Studies at HDS, is another contributor to the summer reading list.
Some of the books Johnson suggests for students are The Trayvon Generation by Elizabeth Alexander, Reconsidering Reparations by Olúfhemi O. Táíwò, and Hell of a Book: A Novel by Jason Mott. These works explore topics like American racism, reparations for black people, and purported systemic problems of policing.
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The Trayvon Generation discusses America’s civil unrest in 2020 following the deaths of African Americans George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. The book is described as a “reflection on the challenges facing young Black America.”
In Reconsidering Reparations, the author advocates for a reparations plan that is “rooted in a hopeful future that tackles the issue of climate change head on, with distributive justice at its core.”
Hell of a Book is meant to inform readers about “the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news.”
The HDS reading list also includes recommendations from associate director of career service, Mary Kiesling, and HDS Student Association Social Justice Chair, Maria Duenas Lopez.
Campus Reform has contacted all relevant parties for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.
