Reverend Serene Jones

The Reverend Dr. Serene Jones is the 16th president of the historic Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. The first woman to head the 174-year-old nondenominational seminary, which is in Manhattan and neighbors with Columbia University, Jones came to Union after seventeen years at Yale University, where she was the Titus Street Professor of Theology at the Divinity School, and chair of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She was co-principal investigator on the “Women, Religion, and Globalization Grant” for the Henry T. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs at Yale. Dr. Jones is a prolific and popular scholar in the fields of theology, religion, globalization, and gender studies. Her most recent book, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, explores the devastating social and personal effects of violence on the human psyche and the role religious communities can play, both negative and positive, in healing wounds. Her book Feminist Theory and Christian Theology is a standard textbook in feminist theology. In addition to three other books, and 37 articles and book chapters since 1991, she has delivered a long list of professional papers and public lectures across the United States and around the world. She holds degrees from the University of Oklahoma, Yale Divinity School and Yale University. Jones is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ.