About

Jessica Janvier is a writer and academic whose focus crosses the intersections of African American religious history, church history, and theology. She obtained her PhD from Columbia International University, holds a Master of Divinity from Nyack College’s Alliance Theological Seminary, and a Master of Theology with a concentration in church history from Princeton Theological Seminary. 

Much of her work has explored early African American Christianity and nascent American evangelicalism. By exploring the interaction between the two to understand the influence of evangelicalism in the root system of the Black Church, she hopes to provide a more expansive understanding of the Black Church’s past and its current expression. More expansively, her work explores the relationship between global Christianity and the Black diaspora. 

Her publications include “Santeria as Resistance” in Majority World Theologies: Theologizing from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Ends of the Earth (2018); “The Black Church & the Missionary Dei: Christianizing Christians” in Journal of the Evangelical Missiological Society (2022); “African American Missiological Use of Hebrews: From the Antebellum Period to the Twentieth Century” in Reading Hebrews Missiologically; “Rahab in the Epistle of James: A Paradigm for a Missiological Corrective” in Reading James Missiologically (2024), and “God and the Underside: Revelation’s Missional Political Theology” in Reading Revelation Missiologically. She is coeditor of the upcoming multi-volume work for William Carey Publishing, Black Missionary Legends: 1700s to Present. She is also a regular contributor for Christianity Today.

She is an active author and educator who engages the academy and popular-level audiences dedicated to bringing attention to the vital historical intersections of faith, race, and culture.