Rev. Dr. Sharon Ellis Davis will join Lexington Theological Seminary as a Visiting Professor of Pastoral Leadership and Ethics.
Dr. Ellis Davis is a pastor in the United Church of Christ (UCC). She was ordained into Christian ministry in 1988. She describes herself as a Womanist Practical Theologian and Ethicist. She is a native of Chicago, Ill. She moved to North Carolina in September 2015 with her husband, Dr. Edward Smith Davis, who is the called Conference Minister/Chief Executive for the UCC. Dr. Ellis Davis began her career with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in 1978. She served as a patrol officer, warrant officer, and a criminalist in the Department’s Crime Laboratory. After graduating from seminary, Dr. Ellis Davis was appointed by the superintendent of the CPD as the first African American police chaplain in the history of the CPD. She retired from the CPD in June 2010 after 31 and a half years of dedicated leadership and service to officers, their families, and the citizens of Chicago.
Dr. Ellis Davis has served The Peoples Church of Chicago and South Shore Community Church and is the Founding Pastor of God Can Ministries (UCC). She also served with the Pastoral Care and Counseling Center, founded in a Chicago-area shopping mall. She has served as an adjunct/affiliate professor at McCormick Theological Seminary since 1998 and as an adjunct professor for United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, mentoring students earning their Doctor of Ministry degree in the field of pastoral care.
Dr. Ellis Davis brings over 30 years of pastoral care experience in the church as well as in the academy in the fields of ministry, pastoral care, theology, and ethics. She earned her Master of Divinity Degree (Ministry) from Chicago Theological Seminary; her Doctor of Ministry degree (Pastoral Care) from McCormick Theological Seminary; and her PhD from Chicago Theological Seminary (Theology, Ethics, and the Human Science – Sociology). Dr. Ellis Davis is the author of Battered African American Women: A Study in Gender Entrapment (2014) and, in publication for 2022, Navigating My Way Through: Sexual and Domestic Violence. She is a contributing author for two books, including Do No Harm: A Pastoral Care Response to Gossip in the Church and Wounded in the Manger: Theological Essays on Church Hurt (Dr. DeWayne R. Stallworth, PhD, and Mr. Kevaughn Mattes, eds.) to be published in 2022-23. Dr. Ellis Davis is a retired certified chaplain in the Association of Professional Chaplains and a member of the American Academy of Religion. She and her husband share a blended family of six children: Ozell Hickman, Cameron Davis, Sharell Holmes Dunbar, Rev. Bianca Davis, Ashley Davis and Andrew Davis (deceased) and 15 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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Dr. Ellis Davis will begin at LTS on April 15, 2022.