Jeremy L. Williams

The Rev. Jeremy L. Williams, Ph.D. is a nationally sought-out thinker, preacher, leader, and author. 

He hails from Rocket City, USA—Huntsville, Alabama. 

He is the author of Criminalization in Acts of the Apostles: Race, Rhetoric, and the Prosecution of an Early Christian Movement published by Cambridge University Press. As a scholar of religion who specializes in  New Testament and Early Christianity, Dr. Williams earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University. He is an Assistant Professor of New Testament at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. 

At Harvard, he obtained a Masters on the way to the doctorate and has taught four classes as a Teaching Fellow. Prior to attending Harvard, Dr. Williams graduated Salutatorian from Lee High School and with Highest Honors in Religious Studies and Economics from Vanderbilt University. He earned the M.Div. degree from Yale Divinity School where he was awarded the Henry Hallam Tweedy Prize, which is the highest award presented to graduates.  He has done archaeology restoration at Madgala, Israel, and he has presented work in Germany at the Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies. Dr. Williams has read Biblical Hebrew in Jerusalem, the Greek New Testament in Athens, and Classical Latin in Rome.

Dr. Williams' research involves studying biblical passages, especially in Acts, where imperial and local officials criminalize the Jesus following movement. His approach involves using Roman legal studies, critical race theory, Black studies, womanist cultural criticism, and material culture to assess how ancient texts crafted narratives to racialize, criminalize, and victimize individuals and groups of people. Conscious of the role that the Bible plays in public policy, he is invested in developing strategies for reading biblical texts in ways that expose the logics that fuel mass incarceration, over-policing, and discriminatory practices in Western judicial systems. Jeremy has a number of academic publications including,  "I am a Human: Racializing  Assemblages and Criminalized Egyptianness in Acts 21:31-39" in Bitter the Chastening Rod: Africana Biblical Interpretation after Stony the Road We Trod in the Age of #BLM, #SayHerName, and #MeToo, edited by Mitzi Smith, Angela Parker, and Ericka Dunbar Hill.

Rev. Dr. Williams received his ordinations in the North Central Alabama Region of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church as a member of Acklin CME Church in Berkley, AL. He has had the opportunity to preach, present, and teach at some of the denomination’s largest gatherings including the Connectional Youth and Young Adult Conference, the Pastors’ Conference at Phillips School of Theology, the Unity Summit, and multiple annual and district conferences. 

Jeremy is married to the former Kiara. J. Boone, and they are the tireless parents of Baby J. Their dog's name is Kali. And Jeremy works everyday is to inspire people to “dream better dreams.”