Voices that Inspire

What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Jamil Drake and I'm a professor of African-American religious history. So I teach and work in that area, particularly in the 20th century, looking at African-American religion as it relates to politics. Currently working at a Yale Divinity School. Religion has just been central in my life. It's been very formative. I have to start with my mother, Regina Drake. My mother was the Sunday school teacher. My mother was the church poet. And because I was in a single parent household, I went with my mother everywhere. By the time I get to an undergraduate education at a more-house college, I knew that I was going to study religion. And I knew that I wanted to be a part of a vocation or a job where I could study religion and ask those hard questions as it related to race and politics. Ideally, the classroom should be a model for society where we work through our differences, but first we got to know where we come from. And that's why I love the classroom because we could be transparent and honest. In order to understand our society today, religion is playing an important role. Religion being used to oppress, religion being used to sort of bolster violence against others. There's also ways in which religion can strengthen American democracy and preserve the dignity, the well-being of people and create the conditions of possibility for humans and communities to flourish. Jameel Drake, Professor of African-American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. You're listening to voices that inspire.