A local church discovers their past is intertwined with the KKK. How did they handle it? Our guests today share with Ashley on the steps they took to confront this racist history.

GUESTS:

Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar currently serves as the Bishop of the New England Annual Conference of the UMC. He was elected to the episcopacy at the Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference in July 2004. He earned a M.Th. degree from Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, and an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. from Drew University.

Rev. Megan Stowe is the District Superintendent of the Commonwealth West district in the New England Annual Conference of the UMC which includes churches in Central and Western parts of Massachusetts. Rev. Stowe earned a Master of Divinity at Boston University School of Theology and has served as ordained clergy in the Troy, Upper New York, and New England Annual Conferences.

Rev. Pat Thompson is a semi-retired elder in the New England Annual Conference (NEAC) of The United Methodist Church, currently serving as 1/4 Coordinating Pastor (in charge of administration) and local church historian for the Wolcott United Methodist church in Wolcott,

Vermont. She is also the Historian for the NEAC and served as Editor of Historian’s Digest, the newsletter for the Historical Society of the UMC. In 2006 she received the GCAH DistinguishedService Award, in part, for her publication of Courageous Past, Bold Future:

The Journey Toward Full Clergy Rights for Women in The United Methodist Church.

Host:

Dr. Ashley Boggan Dreff, General Secretary of the General Commission on Archives and History of The United Methodist Church. Dreff earned her PhD from Drew Theological School’s Graduate Division of Religion, specializing in both Methodist/Wesleyan Studies and Women’s/Gender Studies. She earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, specializing in American Religious History. She has previously worked as staff at the General Commission on Archives and History (2012-2014) and the Connectional Table of The United Methodist Church (2014-2016). She was the Director of United Methodist Studies and Assistant Professor Christian History at Hood Theological Seminary (Salisbury, NC), an AME Zion Seminary, from 2017-2019 and was the Director of Women’s and Gender Studies and Assistant Professor of Religion at High Point University (High Point, NC) from 2019-2020. Dreff is a lay member of the Arkansas Annual Conference and the daughter of two ordained United Methodist ministers. She is the author of Nevertheless: American Methodists and Women’s Rights (2020) and Entangled: A History of American Methodism, Politics, and Sexuality (2018).