Jerusha Matsen Neal

Rev. Dr. Jerusha Matsen Neal, Assistant Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School, is an ordained ABC(USA) pastor who has served as a Global Ministries mission partner in the Fiji Islands through the United Methodist Church.  Her first book, The Overshadowed Preacher: Mary, the Spirit, and the Labor of Proclamation, challenges preachers to leave behind false shadows of approval to embrace the overshadowing Spirit of God. Her most recent book, Holy Ground: Climate Change, Preaching, and the Apocalypse of Place, engages the climate crisis through the sermons of South Pacific communities displaced by rising tides.  A former actress and playwright, she has also authored a collection of dramatic monologues, Blessed: Monologues for Mary (Cascade, 2012).