Gammon Theological Seminary
One of the thirteen United Methodist schools of theology.
Gammon is the only Historically Black Theological Institution of the United Methodist Church, and it is in the middle of an unusual transition worth understanding before anything else about it. For decades it wasn't a standalone school at all: from 1958 to 2023, Gammon was the United Methodist member of the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC), a consortium of historically Black seminaries in Atlanta, and ITC's accreditation covered Gammon's degree. When ITC declared financial exigency in 2023, Gammon left rather than go down with it, relaunched on its own in 2024, and — one month before this page was written — earned its own accreditation. It is now a genuinely independent school, still small, still building. Its own catalog states one clear United Methodist rule: 24 of the M.Div.'s 72 credit hours must come from "Religious Heritage" courses drawn from the Book of Discipline. What it doesn't yet publish is which of the nine ¶324.4 areas those 24 hours actually cover — so this page can't show you the usual nine-row table, and says so rather than guessing.
The Discipline's requirements, at this school.
¶324.4 asks for nine areas of basic graduate theological study, three semester hours each, with a minimum of six hours in United Methodist studies. Not pass/fail. ¶335.3(d) asks for them again at full connection, so they cannot be put off.
University Senate standing
Approved — a United Methodist school
One of the 13 United Methodist schools of theology, and the only Historically Black Theological Institution (HBTI) of the UMC — Gammon's own words, on its Academics page. This University Senate standing is a separate approval track from ATS accreditation (see onlineCredit note): GBHEM's own Gammon profile page, captured 2026-06-28, still describes the school in the present tense as operating "in partnership with The Interdenominational Theological Center" and lists gammon-itc.org (a domain that now redirects to thegammonseminary.org) as its website. That framing is out of date. Gammon was ITC's United Methodist member school and had its degrees accredited through ITC from 1958 until ITC declared financial exigency in April 2023; Gammon relaunched as an independent institution in 2024, and in June 2026 secured its own accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) plus Associate Membership in the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) — full ATS accreditation is still pending a 2026 self-study and peer review (thegammonseminary.org/accreditation). None of that affects the University Senate standing recorded here, which GBHEM continues to list Gammon under regardless of the ATS transition.
As of August 2026 · source ↗
Do online classes count?
Yes — a fully online M.Div. here meets the requirement
GBHEM: all thirteen United Methodist schools of theology are approved to provide a fully online M.Div. that meets UM ordination requirements. Gammon's own Admissions FAQ independently confirms its M.Div. is offered in "hybrid, online, and in-person intensive weeks" formats.
As of August 2026 · source ↗
Gammon states one clear, binding rule for United Methodist ordination candidates, in its own words: "Students intending to seek ordination in the United Methodist church must complete 24 of those 72 [M.Div.] credit hours from Religious Heritage courses offered at GTS and outlined in The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church." That is real and binding — a UMC candidate cannot graduate without it — but Gammon does not publish, on any page found for this profile, which of ¶324.4's nine areas those 24 "Religious Heritage" hours map to, or which specific courses carry which area.
This profile does not show a nine-area coverage table because there is no course-level breakdown to build one from honestly; showing a guessed table would read as more certain than the evidence supports. Gammon is one month past its own independent accreditation as of this writing, rebuilding a nine-person faculty largely hired since 2024 — a published curriculum map naming specific courses against specific requirements may simply not exist yet where an established school's does.
Ask the Registrar for the current Religious Heritage course list and how it maps to old Testament, New Testament, theology, church history, mission, evangelism, worship, preaching, and UM studies specifically, and get the answer in writing before you register — then confirm the same list with your conference's Board of Ordained Ministry.
Email the Office of the Registrar (registrar@thegammonseminary.org) and ask for the specific course list that fulfills the 24-credit-hour Religious Heritage requirement, broken out by ¶324.4 area. Gammon names the office as the point of contact for "course registration, academic records, and degree completion requirements."
Ask specifically about Dr. Mark Grafenreed's role as Coordinator of Wesleyan Studies and UMC Ministerial Formation — he is Gammon's named point person for how the Religious Heritage sequence is built, and is himself an ordained UMC elder.
Confirm the Religious Heritage course list with your conference's Board of Ordained Ministry registrar before you rely on it for your ordination file — Gammon states the requirement comes from the Book of Discipline, but your board decides what satisfies your particular file.
Confirm all of this with your conference’s Board of Ordained Ministry registrar before you enroll. They decide which courses satisfy which requirement — not the catalogue, and not us.
The faculty, by what they work on.
9 faculty, grouped by field rather than alphabetically — because the useful question is not who is here, it is who is here who works on the thing you care about.
Hebrew Bible / Old Testament
Renita J. Weems
Professor of Biblical Studies
Ph.D. in Old Testament Studies, Princeton Theological Seminary
Recent work (3)
- What Matters Most: Ten Lessons in Living Passionately from the Song of Solomon (Walk Worthy Press, 2004)
- Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (Fortress Press, 1995)
- Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women's Relationships in the Bible (LuraMedia, 1988)
Monica Isabel Rey
Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies
Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible, Boston University (2023)
Recent work (2)
- Reexamination of the Foreign Female Captive: Deuteronomy 21:10–14 as a Case of Genocidal Rape (Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, vol. 32, no. 1, 2016, pp. 37–53)
- Head Shaving as a Ritual of Enslavement in Deuteronomy 21:10–14 (Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 93, no. 4, 2025, pp. 643–658)
Stephen Ward
Lecturer in Biblical Studies and Academic Support
Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA
Womanist & feminist theology
Renita J. Weems
Professor of Biblical Studies
Ph.D. in Old Testament Studies, Princeton Theological Seminary
Recent work (3)
- What Matters Most: Ten Lessons in Living Passionately from the Song of Solomon (Walk Worthy Press, 2004)
- Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (Fortress Press, 1995)
- Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women's Relationships in the Bible (LuraMedia, 1988)
Candace M. Laughinghouse
Assistant Professor of Theology & Ethics
M.Div., Candler School of Theology, Emory University (Black Church Studies certificate)
Recent work (1)
- War and Water: An Ecowomanist Perspective on Expanding Casualties of War in Gaza (The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching, February 2025)
Sakena Young-Scaggs
Associate Professor of Contextual Theology and Director of Contextual Education
Ph.D. in Women and Gender Studies, Arizona State University (2019)
Recent work (1)
- Afrofuturism and Womanist Phenomenology as Resistance, Resilience, and Black Joy! (Review & Expositor, vol. 118, no. 3, 2021, pp. 332–342)
Wesleyan & Methodist studies
Candace M. Lewis
Professor in Wesleyan Studies
B.A., University of Florida
C. Anthony Hunt
Professor of Practice, Black Church & Wesleyan Studies
Ph.D. in Theological Studies (Philosophical Theology and Ethics), Graduate Theological Foundation, in affiliation with the University of Oxford
Recent work (5)
- Come Go with Me: Howard Thurman and a Gospel of Radical Inclusivity (Wipf & Stock, 2019)
- Blessed Are the Peacemakers: A Theological Analysis of the Thought of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr.
- And Yet the Melody Lingers: Essays, Sermons and Prayers on Religion and Race
- I've Seen the Promised Land: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 21st Century Quest for the Beloved Community
- Upon the Rock: A Model for Ministry with Black Families
Mark Grafenreed
Assistant Professor of Religious Heritage & Wesleyan/United Methodist Studies
B.A. in History, Southern Methodist University (1998)
Black church studies
C. Anthony Hunt
Professor of Practice, Black Church & Wesleyan Studies
Ph.D. in Theological Studies (Philosophical Theology and Ethics), Graduate Theological Foundation, in affiliation with the University of Oxford
Recent work (5)
- Come Go with Me: Howard Thurman and a Gospel of Radical Inclusivity (Wipf & Stock, 2019)
- Blessed Are the Peacemakers: A Theological Analysis of the Thought of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr.
- And Yet the Melody Lingers: Essays, Sermons and Prayers on Religion and Race
- I've Seen the Promised Land: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 21st Century Quest for the Beloved Community
- Upon the Rock: A Model for Ministry with Black Families
Stephen Ward
Lecturer in Biblical Studies and Academic Support
Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA
Sakena Young-Scaggs
Associate Professor of Contextual Theology and Director of Contextual Education
Ph.D. in Women and Gender Studies, Arizona State University (2019)
Recent work (1)
- Afrofuturism and Womanist Phenomenology as Resistance, Resilience, and Black Joy! (Review & Expositor, vol. 118, no. 3, 2021, pp. 332–342)
Congregational leadership
Candace M. Lewis
Professor in Wesleyan Studies
B.A., University of Florida
Pastoral care & counseling
Danielle J. Buhuro
Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology
M.Div., Chicago Theological Seminary
Recent work (2)
- Spiritual Care in an Age of #BlackLivesMatter: Examining the Spiritual and Prophetic Needs of African Americans in a Violent America (Cascade Books, 2019)
- Womanist Digital Spiritual Care: Creating Sanctuary in Virtual Pews (Fortress Press)
Chaplaincy
Danielle J. Buhuro
Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology
M.Div., Chicago Theological Seminary
Recent work (2)
- Spiritual Care in an Age of #BlackLivesMatter: Examining the Spiritual and Prophetic Needs of African Americans in a Violent America (Cascade Books, 2019)
- Womanist Digital Spiritual Care: Creating Sanctuary in Virtual Pews (Fortress Press)
Latino/Hispanic ministry
Monica Isabel Rey
Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies
Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible, Boston University (2023)
Recent work (2)
- Reexamination of the Foreign Female Captive: Deuteronomy 21:10–14 as a Case of Genocidal Rape (Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, vol. 32, no. 1, 2016, pp. 37–53)
- Head Shaving as a Ritual of Enslavement in Deuteronomy 21:10–14 (Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 93, no. 4, 2025, pp. 643–658)
Ethics & public theology
Candace M. Laughinghouse
Assistant Professor of Theology & Ethics
M.Div., Candler School of Theology, Emory University (Black Church Studies certificate)
Recent work (1)
- War and Water: An Ecowomanist Perspective on Expanding Casualties of War in Gaza (The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching, February 2025)
Church history
Mark Grafenreed
Assistant Professor of Religious Heritage & Wesleyan/United Methodist Studies
B.A. in History, Southern Methodist University (1998)
Practical theology
Sakena Young-Scaggs
Associate Professor of Contextual Theology and Director of Contextual Education
Ph.D. in Women and Gender Studies, Arizona State University (2019)
Recent work (1)
- Afrofuturism and Womanist Phenomenology as Resistance, Resilience, and Black Joy! (Review & Expositor, vol. 118, no. 3, 2021, pp. 332–342)
All nine of Gammon's current full-time faculty, from the school's own Faculty page — a small roster built up almost entirely since the 2024 relaunch (only Renita Weems' 2024 hire as Chief Academic Officer is independently dated in press coverage; the rest are undated on Gammon's site). Gammon publishes no individual per-professor bio pages; every entry above links back to the single shared faculty page — but that shared page now lists a per-person email for all nine (added sometime between the first harvest, captured 2026-06-28, and this second pass, 2026-08-07; two addresses as they literally appear look like typos of the person's own surname, recorded verbatim rather than corrected). Degrees are drawn from each person's own bio where Gammon's page states one (Weems, Ward); everywhere else, from that person's own CV, personal site, or institutional bio elsewhere, cited per-person in the harvest script's source comments — never from background knowledge. Two faculty (Danielle Buhuro, Mark Grafenreed) are currently pursuing doctorates not yet conferred; those are named in their own bios but deliberately left out of the `degrees` field here, since a Ph.D. candidacy is not a Ph.D. This second pass also revisited the same outside sources for publications rather than degrees alone, and found real, sourced work for five more people beyond Weems (Buhuro, Rey, Hunt, Laughinghouse, Young-Scaggs) — the first pass's 1/9 publications count was a case of not having looked yet, not a real ceiling. Lewis, Ward, and Grafenreed still have none found after this second look.
Titles and fields are the school’s own; the grouping is ours. Gammon Theological Seminary does not publish a separate page per professor, so there is nowhere deeper to link — the full listing is here ↗. Professors answer email from prospective students more often than you would guess. Publication lists come from the school’s own annual listing ↗, are a selection rather than a full CV, and are only shown for people currently on the directory.
The degrees.
Master of Divinity
72 hrs72 credit hours across four broad areas Gammon names on its Academics page — biblical studies and languages; philosophy, theology, ethics, and history; persons, society, and culture; and the Church and its mission — with three named specializations (Leadership & Ethics, Womanist Theological Perspective, Social Justice & Advocacy). United Methodist ordination candidates must complete 24 of the 72 credit hours in Religious Heritage courses "outlined in The Book of Discipline." Delivered hybrid and online, with an in-person MDiv Intensive each semester on Gammon's Atlanta campus.
3 years full-time at 12 credit hours per semester
Money, plainly.
Tuition
$695 per credit hour (as stated in the Admissions page's "Course Details" section) — the same page's own FAQ states $690 per credit hour two sections later
Gammon's Admissions page disagrees with itself by $5 per credit hour between its "Course Details" callout and its FAQ answer to "What are Gammon Tuition & Fees?" — both fetched from the same page on the same date. Reported as both rather than silently picking one; confirm the current rate with the Financial Aid office before budgeting. At 72 credit hours, the gap between the two figures is $360 total.
As of August 2026 · source ↗
Typical award
Gammon Presidential Excellence Award: full first-year tuition (fall, spring, and summer semesters), contingent on maintaining a 3.0 cumulative GPA through the first year
Gammon's own Office of Financial Aid page states the institution does not participate in federal financial aid programs (no FAFSA-based aid) and relies entirely on its own institutional aid, awarded through Populi.
As of August 2026 · source ↗
- Gammon Presidential Excellence Award — A full-tuition scholarship covering a new student's first year (fall, spring, and summer), contingent on maintaining a 3.0 cumulative GPA.
- Gammon Tuition Reduction Award — Directly lowers tuition cost; Gammon states eligibility and award amounts vary and directs students to the financial aid office for specifics.
- Gammon Academic Gift Award — A direct monetary gift toward tuition and fees, based on academic excellence, financial need, or specific accomplishment.
Gammon does not participate in federal financial aid — no FAFSA-based grants or loans — so every dollar of aid here is institutional, church-based, or third-party (its Financial Aid Resource Guide points students toward denominational scholarships, GBHEM support for UMC candidates specifically, and the Fund for Theological Education). The seminary also announced a $975,000 grant from GBHEM around the time of its June 2026 accreditation (SaportaReport, 2026-07-31) — a real and recent infusion, but institutional funding for the school, not a named scholarship a candidate applies for directly; ask the Financial Aid office whether or how it affects individual awards.
Place, and what else is within reach.
Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC)
Historical, not current, structure — worth naming precisely because most public descriptions of Gammon (including GBHEM's own profile page) haven't caught up. Gammon was the United Methodist member of ITC's consortium of historically Black seminaries and had its M.Div. accredited through ITC from 1958 until ITC declared financial exigency in April 2023. Gammon relaunched as an independent institution in 2024 and secured its own SACSCOC accreditation and ATS Associate Membership in June 2026. Gammon's own site makes no current claim of cross-registration, shared faculty, or shared library access with ITC post-independence; none is asserted here either, for the same reason no coverage table is shown — the evidence for the current, day-to-day relationship (if any remains) is not published.
Who this fits, and what to weigh.
- People specifically drawn to a Black-church-centered, Womanist theological formation, at a school built explicitly around that identity rather than offering it as one track among many.
- People comfortable being part of something being rebuilt — a small, growing community with a nine-person faculty, not a large established one.
- People who want their United Methodist ordination requirement named plainly, even where the school can't yet hand them a course-by-course map — Gammon states the 24-hour Religious Heritage rule directly and points you to its registrar for the rest.
- Gammon does not publish, on any page found for this profile, which specific courses inside its 24-hour Religious Heritage requirement cover which of the nine ¶324.4 areas. Get that mapping from the Registrar in writing before you build a degree plan.
- It's one month past its own SACSCOC accreditation and still an ATS Associate Member, not yet a full ATS member — ask directly how that affects transfer credit or a future doctoral application if either matters to you.
- As a newly independent, still-small school, expect less institutional infrastructure (published data, per-professor bio pages, a public ATS Standard Data Form) than an established university-embedded seminary. That's a fact about where it is in its own history, not about the quality of instruction.
- The only HBTI (Historically Black Theological Institution) among the thirteen United Methodist schools of theology — its whole academic identity is built around Black church scholarship and Womanist theology.
- Newly independent: relaunched in 2024 with about seven students after ITC's 2023 financial exigency, and reached roughly 75 expected students for Fall 2026 — a five-fold-plus jump in two years.
- A nine-person faculty built almost entirely since the relaunch, led by biblical scholar Renita Weems as Chief Academic Officer.
- Its own website disagrees with itself on the tuition rate by $5 a credit hour ($695 vs. $690) — small, but worth a call to Financial Aid before you budget.
Send one email this week.
Not an application — an email. Pick the professor above whose field is closest to what you cannot stop thinking about, and ask them what they are working on. Then ask admissions to sit in on one class. Both are free, and both tell you more than a brochure will.
Everything on this page was checked against the school’s own published material on August 7, 2026. Costs and curricula change every year — the source link beside each fact is the one that stays current.