Praying Grounds and Post-Liberation Sounds: UFS, The Shepherd Centre, and Community Engagement

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director

Dr. Regennia N. Williams (standing center) with church leaders who are members of the Shepherd Centre’s Certificate class. The group meets on Thursday afternoons on the Qwaqwa Campus of the University the Free State.

On Thursday, August 1, 2019–with exactly three weeks remaining on my current Fulbright Specialist Project, I had the pleasure of meeting with an incredible group of Christian ministers.  As participants in a certificate program offered by the University of the Free State’s Shepherd Centre, these men are among the more than 100 individuals who have worked with this UFS campus-community initiative since its founding in 2006 by Dr. Gerhard Botha.

Housed in the Theology Department, “Shepherd is responsible for support by the Faculty of Theology to Christian churches and religious leaders of all communities.”  Information on the Shepherd Centre’s website further suggests that its mission is:

      • To present short courses and workshops of a high standard and relevance. It ensures that the skills and competencies of spiritual leaders are sharpened continuously. It is also a requirement in respect of ministry skills.
      • To provide reactive assistance to spiritual leaders finding themselves at a crossroads in relation to their personal life and community.

After his August 1, 2019, theology class meeting, Brother Paul (left) posed for this photograph with two of our UFS colleagues, Miss Matseliso Makhubo (center), and Dr. Jared McDonald. (Photograph by Dr. Regennia N. Williams.)

Because of their ministries, professional development activities, and willingness to partner with members of the academic community, I am convinced that these church leaders will continue to make valuable contributions to the collective understanding of the evolving role of religion and spirituality in their nation’s history.

Needless to say, I am grateful for the support of this group as I continue to conduct research for RASHAD’s new South African Praying Grounds Oral History Project, which is part of my larger effort to acquire new knowledge about church history in the period leading up to liberation, the advent of democracy in South Africa, and in the years since 1994.

For more information on the Shepherd Centre, please visit  their website

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About Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director

Dr. Regennia N. Williams is the Founder and Executive Director of The RASHAD Center, Inc., a Maryland-based non-profit educational corporation. Williams holds a PhD in Social History and Policy from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. A native Clevelander and a four-time alumna of Cleveland State University, information on RASHAD's “Praying Grounds, African American Faith Communities: A Documentary and Oral History” project is now available online at www.ClevelandMemory.org/pray/, a site that is maintained by CSU's Library Special Collections, home of the Praying Grounds manuscript collections. Praying Grounds was the primary inspiration for the launching of the Initiative for the Study of Religion and Spirituality in the History of Africa and the Diaspora (RASHAD) at CSU, and links to RASHAD's scholarly journal and newsletter are also available on the Praying Grounds site. On April 28, 2020, the RASHAD Center, Inc. became a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. In 2010, Dr. Williams was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, where she taught history and directed a RASHAD-related oral history project that focused on the role of religion in recent Nigerian social history. Other research-related travels have taken her to Canada, China, France, South Africa, and Austria. In 2013, she conceived and produced “Come Sunday @ 70: The Place of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Jazz in World History and Culture, c. 1943-2013,” a project that included scholarly presentations and performing arts activities. From September 1993 until May 2015, she was a faculty member in the Department of History at Cleveland State University. She served as a Fulbright Specialist at South Africa's University of the Free State in the summer of 2019, and completed a short-term faculty residency at Howard University in the fall of 2019. She is based in Cleveland, Ohio. As a public scholar, her current research projects focus on African American history and culture, especially as it relates to music, religion, and spirituality. She is a member of the Oral History Association, the Western Reserve Historical Society, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
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