DALE P. ANDREWS ’83

DALE P. ANDREWS, a scholar in homiletics and a teacher, minister, and social activist, died June 23, 2017. He was 55. A double major in religion and sociology, he received a master’s of divinity in 1991 from the Princeton Theological Seminary with a concentration in clinical social work. He then was a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford, where he conducted independent research in historical studies on Methodism and preaching in the early church. He earned another master’s in 1997 and a PhD in 1998 from the Vanderbilt University Graduate Department of Religion, where he was a Dorothy Danforth Compton Fellow. Enrolled in the homiletics and in the religion and personality degree program, he was awarded a dissertation fellowship from the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He taught at the Louisville seminary and at the Boston University School of Theology prior to coming to Vanderbilt University in 2010, where he was the Distinguished Professor of Homiletics, Social Justice, and Practical Theology, and the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair. For the past year he had been developing a curriculum for training activists and scholars on how to address ongoing and emerging issues related to racial justice, and he was the co-founder of a program funded by the Lilly Endowment to train coaches who help preachers improve and enrich their sermon preparation and communication skills. The author or editor of numerous books, he was also an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zionist Church. Survivors include his wife, Barbara, and two children.