Bishop Wright: 0:39
Hi everyone, this is Bishop Rob Wright and this is Four People. Hi everyone, this is Bishop Rob Wright and this is For People. Today we have the distinct pleasure of having the Dean of Sisters Chapel at Spelman College, the Reverend Dr Nichelle Guidry. Dr Guidry, welcome.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 0:56
Thank you so much, Bishop. I’m Dr. super excited Neichelle be here with you today.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 1:03
I am glad that you’re here, dr Guidry. Michelle is a child of Texas, san Antonio to be specific. She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University and Yale Divinity School, where she was the 2010 recipient of the Walcott Prize for Clear and Effective Public and Pulpit Speaking. She’s a graduate of Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary speaking. She’s a graduate of Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, where she completed her Doctor of Philosophy in Liturgical Studies with a concentration in homiletics. She is a mom newly a mom and a wife, and she is the creator of she Preaches, a virtual community and professional development organization that aspires to uplift African-American millennial women in ministry, theological reflection, fellowship and liturgical curation. I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for so long, so thanks for agreeing to be with us. You are back to school back to school at Spelman College right now, right? You are back to school. Back to school at Spelman College right now, right, and so you are the Dean of Sisters Chapel. Tell us a little bit about what that means.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 2:12
So the high level summary of what that means is I am the pastor to the community of Spelman College, including our students, obviously, faculty staff administration and even providing pastoral care and spiritual presence to the alumni network all over the country. In many ways, if I were to get a little bit more, I guess, detailed in what that means, I’m really I loved your language earlier of a traveling partner. I’m a conversation partner, I’m a listening ear.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 2:55
In some cases I’m auntie and big sister, that some girls never had, some students never had, and you know, it just really is a vocation of presence and showing up. Obviously, you know, as an administrator, there’s a lot of red tape and there’s a lot of bureaucracy. Every leader knows about that. But when I think about sort of the heart-centered nature of this work, I think about how deeply relational it is. There’s no currency more powerful with this generation than relationship and proximity. And so, yes, I am a spiritual presence, a spiritual guide, a leader of, a holder of spiritual space here at Spelman College.
Bishop Wright: 3:48
I love that because I would imagine you know there’s a diversity of denominations, of belief systems there. There are some people who don’t use traditional faith language but would claim something beyond the mental and the physical in terms of reality. So, as a follower of Jesus Christ yourself, you are the reverend doctor right and quite a preacher, I might add. How do you get alongside, how does your Christianity get you beside lots of other people? Because there’s a tension sometimes, at least in some people’s minds, that if I’m Christian then I’m sort of ultimately in my delivery of relationship and companionship I’m trying to guide you into. You know my system, my belief, you know sort of paradigms. So how are you alongside of other people as yourself a follower of Jesus?
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 4:48
Yeah, I love this question because, you’re right, I’m dean of chapel and holding space for more than just our Christian population. You know it’s so interesting. As you were asking the question, my mind went immediately to my own spiritual journey. You know, growing up in an ecumenical home right, my father was a lifelong Catholic.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 5:14
My mother is a lifelong missionary Baptist who was raised by a missionary Baptist pastor and so every Sunday Bishop, we were in church all day, 9 am Mass and then 10 o’clock we were in some you know CCD Catholic Christian discipleship classes. Then 11 o’clock we’re hopping over to West End Missionary Baptist Church for God knows how many hours with my mom right, and then don’t let it be a special occasion at my grandfather’s church, because then we’re getting on the road to Austin for the afternoon pastor’s anniversary or whatever service is going on at five o’clock.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 5:59
And so there was just always a lot of influence. Fast forward to college, divinity school. You know, being in a in a historically Black environment as an undergrad, I got my first sort of taste of how diverse and how expansive black religion and spirituality really are. Some of my closest friends in college were Muslims. Some of my closest friends practiced African traditional religions.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 6:36
When I was in divinity school I had the opportunity to go learn in Jerusalem, and I mean Bishop, waking up to the call to prayer every morning, coming from Al-Aqsa. You know, there was just a powerful and profound sense of how big this entity we call God really is. And as my hermeneutical lens started to become shaped and formed by all of these different relationships and encounters, it helped me to read the Gospels of Jesus through that lens of interreligiosity of, you know, expansiveness. Jesus never asked what is your religious upbringing? Before he blessed, before he performed a miracle? Jesus maybe asked you know, do you want to be well? Or you know there was never a me to this role of embodying what I see as the very expansive, non-exclusive love of Jesus Christ. In this work at Spelman College Now, I’ve often said like, when I’ve butted heads with any students or student groups. It has never been the Muslims, it has never been the atheists.
Bishop Wright: 8:10
I know where you’re going.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 8:12
It has never been the African traditional religion spiritualist, it has been conservative Christians. It has been those that have said well, shouldn’t we be given preference? You know you’re not quite Christian enough, dg. You know and I’ve just come to sort of make peace with the other piece of Jesus’s model was he wasn’t religious enough for the religious establishment of his day either.
Bishop Wright: 8:42
Precisely right.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 8:44
And so his model, his ministry, gives me permission to embody just that kind of inclusive and all inviting and welcoming love.
Bishop Wright: 8:56
You know I love that and that that that reminds me of of Howard Thurman, who says that my faith in Jesus puts me beside people, not over and against people, and I think about that an awful lot. I started off my ordained life in New York, upper West Side of New York, where there were Jews and Muslims and nuns we call it nuns people who had no sort of formal architecture for faith but nevertheless knew that there was something beyond the sunrise and the sunset. And Thurman helped me an awful lot in seeing Jesus, just as you have explained, as the fellow walking along in Galilee who got beside lots of different kinds of people. You know lots of different, different kinds of of people. You know I want to. I want to jump to.
Bishop Wright: 9:53
You know we were talking about HBCUs, historically Black Colleges and Universities, of which Spelman is is one of the leading lights in this nation and has been for a very, very long time, and you are a graduate of an HBCU. I’m a graduate of an HBCU, howard University. You just dropped off a nephew at Howard University, and so you know there is an argument out there where people wonder you know we work so hard for integration and so why do we need a Spelman? Why do we need a Howard University? I’m wondering if you encounter those arguments, I’m wondering how you think through those, particularly from your lens as pastor.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 10:36
Yeah, I mean, as we’re coming into this era of deeply politicized DEI initiatives and people are always questioning and have always, but certainly I think this is a unique period. I’ve always questioned the validity and the usefulness of Black spaces, and the usefulness of Black spaces I always think back to once again. You know how important it was for me to go to an HBCU and obviously you and I went to HBCUs before this recent uptick in the popularity of Black colleges, but that was an era for me of profound self-discovery and profound I mean.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 11:24
It was in at my HBCU that I was finally able to discern and affirm a call to ministry, and I attribute that not only to my spiritual growth at that time, but the village that surrounded me everyone from my advisors to my RAs, to my professors, and the fact that, as an HBCU student at the time, you could not graduate from my institution without at least one course in religious studies. How black is that? You know what I’m saying. You’re going to get this religious understanding.
Bishop Wright: 11:58
Right, we’re going to talk about God.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 12:01
You know what I’m saying. And the class that I took, bishop, was called the psychology of religion, and the class was all about how, from the Middle Passage to the, through various eras, through the present, black people have had to, have had to have some higher power to believe in. It has been our faith that has made our survival possible, and so that was that was I was hooked, and so fast forward to this period, bishop, of this heightened anti-Blackness, this heightened white supremacy. Let’s just call it all for what it is.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 12:41
I think it’s become even more important for all of us in our community, but certainly for these young people, to have spaces where they feel safe. You know, and we can’t always guarantee that because you know, I’m sure you remember, over the last several years, several Black colleges, including Spelman College, received all kinds of bomb threats. Yeah sure, explore Blackness, to become baptized in Blackness, without the stigma, without the sort of misappropriation of Blackness, you know, I think that that has, that’s been super important, and not just in terms of cultural cachet. But if you look at the numbers of applications coming in over the last three to five years, it continues to climb because folks just want a place to be and to be safe and to be seen, and it really is one of these things, bishop, like the young kids are using hashtag. If you know, you know right.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 13:56
If you know, you know. If you don’t, you know there’s all kinds of resources out there, but there’s something to be said for walking into your classroom, your professor looks like you. Walking into your dorm, your dorm mates look like you. There are certain conversations that you do and do not have to have in Black spaces, mistakes that you can make in Black spaces and receive grace to bounce back and recover, and so many of us have been blessed to have this experience and so, being on this end now, I feel blessed that I get to create that experience and be a part of that experience for the generation that’s to come.
Bishop Wright: 15:03
You know. There’s a couple of things that come immediately to mind. Number one is that it’s interesting that when I hear these conversations about the need for places like Spelman or Howard or Morehouse, etc. I don’t hear Yeshiva or Brigham Young being also interrogated. It seems like we’ve settled those things in our mind. We understand why our.
Bishop Wright: 15:27
Jewish brothers and sisters need a space, and we understand why perhaps our Mormon brothers and sisters need their space. And so there’s that one thing too, I think. Also, some people are concerned or quite haven’t thought through, maybe even assume that places like Spelman, morehouse, howard their list is long they wonder if they’re anti-American spaces or hypercritical spaces, and that’s not been my experience. In fact, what was illuminating for me as I went to an HBCU was to actually see how people have held their patriotism and this understanding of a more perfect union and how to continue to benefit a society that didn’t quite see them as full beneficiaries of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. And so it’s complex.
Bishop Wright: 16:22
And at the same time I think we also and I think you might agree when we are at what we call black colleges and universities. There’s radical diversity there. I mean, there were African students there, there were students from all the Caribbean nations, there there were African-Americans who were divided around geography, coasts etc. And so it ends up being like any other university, where you know kids are really thrown together to learn and at the same time you know in classroom and out of classroom, and at the same time you know in classroom and out of classroom and so you know it continues. I continue to believe that it’s a real rich and great gift to the nation to handle something as one space, to handle something as complex as race and geography. Frankly, in America, I wonder go ahead, please.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 17:23
I think it’s also important to remember why we ever needed our schools to begin with. You know we needed our schools because we were not permitted, we were not allowed admission into what we call PWIs, predominantly white institutions. This is the history, right, and it would be fantastical to think that those circumstances that precipitated our schools do not still exist. And I don’t know. Part of me also, bishop, I think this is my theory. Call me a conspiracist, but there’s such an insatiable thirst and hunger for Black culture in our culture, in our society. People love Black culture and via social media, you know we’ve allowed, we’ve invited, you know we’ve invited people into our cookouts, if you will.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 18:43
There’s a certain sense in which Black spaces, the exclusivity, creates a feeling of exclusion to people who aren’t invited. Right, and I think people want an invitation so badly that if they don’t get it, they’re willing and they want to see the destruction of the space, space. But there is an insatiable hunger for Blackness and Black hunger without as much love for Black people. And so when people this is my observation have observed how powerful Black spaces are for the cultivation of our culture that continuously feeds the American economy, the American imagination, the American arts and popular culture. I think that if people somehow don’t feel like this is for me, they don’t want the space to exist, and so I feel that that’s a part of the conversation, and we see it all the time where the misappropriation of our culture is cultivated and nurtured. I think folks want entree into those spaces.
Bishop Wright: 20:09
, I think ultimately, you know, I think deeply resonant in all of us is a deep and abiding sense of belonging. Is a deep and abiding sense of belonging? Yes, and I think we realize when we build walls, I think we realize that we’re largely imprisoned by the walls that we have made right, and you see this in so many different expressions. I wonder two things when I think about your job as spiritual advisor, auntie, I love that. Everybody needs that auntie, you know that auntie with a little sauce, a little salt in her mouth. Two things I wonder. Number one, given where we are in the world, you mentioned the volatility of politics, but also the world seems hard. Now. I have young adult children. You know, when I listen to them, life sounds harder and more confusing and more distracting than it was when I was 21. And so I’m wondering what’s the hardest part of your calling to be alongside women right now? And then I’m wondering, as we wrap up, what’s the best part, the most buoyant part of you being beside young women at this time?
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 21:23
Hmm.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 21:26
Oh, I do think that they’re. The hardest part is it’s twofold. First, it’s knowing that they are. They are growing up and they’re maturing in a world that is vastly different from the world that I grew up in. Everything from social media to employment, to just the destabilization of the economy I just think that there are.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 22:00
It’s hard for me to hold space and to just and to listen to people who don’t feel that there are very many options, and so, you know, I think obviously it gives me an opportunity to get creative and to invite them into spiritual practices and to deepening their faith.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 22:19
But there are some things that I know it’s just going to be more difficult for you and I imagine my parents felt that way about me, difficult for you, and I imagine my parents felt that way about me, and then that imagine. You know, sometimes it’s also hard because I feel like I was there. I know that anxiety, I know that that fear of life on the other side of college. I know that fear of you, know all the social dynamics in college, I know that exhaustion, and it’s hard sometimes for me to suspend my impulse to just say just keep on living, baby, because it gets better. That’s not the most pastoral thing to say to someone in pain, to someone who’s anxious about their future. But I do know from my vantage point that there is something to be said for just keep on going, trusting and believing that the steps of the righteous are indeed ordered by God and that there’s a magnanimous plan in place that is working even now. The easiest part, best part, easiest part.
Bishop Wright: 23:27
Best part, what makes you smile?
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 23:31
Oh gosh, it’s the culture here and it’s the fact that I feel like I’m able to. I serve from an intersection of love and purpose and joy. I mean, even on my bad days. I get to look forward to doing the electric slide and chapel on Sundays.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 23:49
I get to look forward Bishop to curating a month of excellent Black History Month programming through a spiritual lens. Every year I get to come to work and I get to wear my bra. I just it’s a space where I feel like I can bring my gifts, I can bring my joy, I can bring my skills and my experience and I can be myself and I love that. I get to hear often that I am a role model. I love, love, love that my experience and my embodiment represent a possibility to my girls. I think that is the best part of all.
Bishop Wright: 24:40
Yeah, you know, it’s infectious, isn’t it? When God says that I love you and I’ve made you in my image, and then we trust God and believe that and begin to radiate that. We give other people permission to trust that and radiate that, and that’s the way we change the temperature wherever we are. I’m so glad to have you. Thank you so much for this conversation, glad to have you. Thank you so much for this conversation, the Reverend Dr Nichelle R Guidry, dean of Sisters Chapel. Thank you so very much.
Dr. Neichelle Guidry: 25:14
Thank you so much, bishop Wright. I appreciate this time with you, as always.
Bishop Wright: 25:20
God bless you.
