SENIOR PASTOR

The Reverend Doctor Brandon Thomas Crowley (pronounced kroh-lee) is an African American scholar in religion, ethics, theology, ecclesiology, and queer theory. Since 2009, he has served as the Senior Pastor of the Historic Myrtle Baptist Church in West Newton, Massachusetts, one of America's oldest Black congregations founded by freed slaves at the end of Reconstruction and one of the few open and affirming historically Black churches in North America. Presently, Reverend Crowley is a Lecturer in Ministry Studies at Harvard University’s Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Crump Visiting Professor of Theology at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas; and the American Academy of Religion’s Black Religious Scholars Group’s 2021-2022 Scholar-in-Residence.

Reverend Crowley earned a Ph.D. in Church and Society and a Master of Sacred Theology with a certificate in social justice from Boston University’s School of Theology where he was a Springboard Fellow, the Charles E. Jefferson Scholar, a William and Anna Lowstuter Scholar, and the Roswell Robinson Scholar. Additionally, Reverend Crowley earned a Master of Divinity from Harvard University’s Divinity School, where he was a presidential scholar, the J. H. Jackson National Baptist Convention Scholar, and an Edward Hopkins shareholder, an honor awarded to young scholars who demonstrate ministerial excellence and social ingenuity. Reverend Crowley also earned a Bachelor of Arts in Religion and a certificate in moral cosmopolitanism and multi-religious ethical leadership from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia where he was the top-ranking scholar in the department of religion and philosophy and the Martin Luther King Jr. International Scholar at the Morehouse College Chapel.

Reverend Crowley’s first book is tentatively titled Queering Congregations: Contextual Approaches for Dismantling Heteronormativity in Black Churches. His research has been funded by the Forum for Theological Exploration, the Lily Foundation’s Boston University Doctoral Students of Color Fellowship, and the Louisville Institute’s 2021 project grant for academic researchers. Reverend Crowley was ordained in the Progressive National Baptist Convention of America, Inc. in 2009.