REV. JENNIFER BAILEY is one of a growing number of millennial faith leaders at the forefront of helping strangers come together to explore their social and spiritual identities, and visible differences. Growing up in the small, mostly white town of Quincy, IL led Jen to find her sense of self in the black church, which led her to interfaith engagement and service work as a college student in Chicago and later to divinity school in Nashville.

She is the founding executive director of the Faith Matters Network, which is a collective of people of color who train, convene, and amplify voices of marginalized people of faith to chart a new moral horizon.

Named one of “15 Faith Leaders to Watch” by the Center for American Progress, Jen is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a public theologian, and an emerging national leader in the multi-faith movement for justice.

She is also an Ashoka and Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellow, and she’s currently working on her first book, tentatively titled Confessions of a #Millennial #Minister.

In this conversation, Jen shares:



* her road to service and intersectional spirituality

* why she pursued the clergy when so many millennials are leaving faith

* and what she’s learning about identity, intersectionality and healing justice as a new kind of faith leader on the front lines of multiple movements today



Check out her incredible TEDx Talk Composting Religion.

Links to all the stuff Jen & Edina talk about in this episode:



Faith Matters Network site & on Twitter

Interfaith Youth Core

Harvard Divinity School

On Being Innovation Lab – Casper ter Kuille, Angie Thurston & Rev. Sue Phillips

Black Liberation Theology founded by Dr. James Cone

Books on Womanism Jen mentions – Dolores Williams’ Sisters in the Wilderness & Jacklyn Grant White Women’s Christ, Black Women’s Jesus

* Lennon Flowers on Episode 2 of MTMpod & The Peoples Supper

Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition

* Healing Justice is how we can sustain black lives by Prentis Hemphill (HuffPost)