Melva L. Sampson

Assistant Teaching Professor of Preaching and Practical Theology

Rev. Dr. Melva L. Sampson is an ordained minister, practical theologian, and digital curator whose work sits at the intersection of preaching, performance, and prophetic imagination. She is the founder of The Pink Robe Chronicles, an innovative digital hush harbor launched in 2016 that reclaims sacred space for Black women’s stories, grief, joy, and resistance. Through this groundbreaking ministry, she has cultivated an intergenerational community of thousands who gather weekly in digital and embodied spaces to engage liturgy, ritual, and sacred memory outside the confines of traditional church walls.

As Assistant Teaching Professor of Preaching and Practical Theology at Wake Forest University School of Divinity, Dr. Sampson teaches and mentors the next generation of faith leaders, emphasizing contextual preaching, insurgent proclamation, and Africentered womanist perspectives. Her intellectual interests include Digital Black Religion, insurgent homiletics, Black radical imagination, sacred memory, and Afrofuturist theologies of liberation. Her forthcoming memoir-theology hybrid The Pink Robe Chronicles: Womanist Wisdom for Healing, Liberation and Love will be published in 2026 by Broadview Press and she is currently developing Digital Insurgent Homiletics and Unchained Tongues, works that explore the role of digital spaces and insurgent voices in transforming proclamation.

Dr. Sampson is also co-founder of the 1Love Festival in Winston-Salem, NC, a community-rooted celebration of art, innovation, and collective flourishing that uplifts Black creative entrepreneurship and economic empowerment. Across her work, she weaves together scholarship, ministry, digital storytelling, and community organizing to create spaces where the Spirit meets the streets, and where ancestral intelligence and abundant imagination are nurtured for a fractured world.

In October 2022, The Smithsonian National Museum for African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) acquired and accessioned artifacts from Pink Robe Chronicles into the museum collection. The digital files consist of four Pink Robe Chronicles sermons – Go Back and Get It; Fight the Power; Press, Prune and Praise; and Wrestling with God. This collection is included in the museum’s archives which host more than 50k artifacts and will be used in its research and exhibitions. Her commentary is also featured in the museum’s first full length documentary gOD-Talk released in October 2023. The film explores the lies of seven Black millennials (Atheist, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Spiritualist, and African Traditional Religion) and their challenges and discoveries with faith in the 21^st century

Dr. Melva is the WomanPreach 2025 recipient of the Ella Pearson Mitchell Pioneer in Ministry Award. This award honors a person, organization, or group whose work is recognized as pioneering a legacy of justice, access, empowerment, and wholeness for women in preaching or women in non-profit organizations. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Political Science from Virginia Union University; a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from Howard University; a Master of Divinity from Candler School of Theology, Emory University; and a Doctor of Philosophy in Religion with a concentration in Homiletics from the Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University.

Education

BA, Virginia Union University; MDiv, Emory University; MA, Howard University; PhD, Emory University

Religious Affiliation

Baptist – Progressive National Baptist

Presbyterian Church (USA), Ruling Elder

Courses Taught

• Introduction to Homiletics and Worship
• Womanist Proclamation
• Spiritual Formation and Digital Proclamation
• African American Preaching Tradition
• Preaching from the Margins
• Introduction to African Heritage Religions
• Art of Ministry

Select Journal Articles, Book Chapters, Book Reviews

• “No Redemptive Quality: Black Women’s Bodies, Black Church and the Business of Shame,”  www.thefeministwire.com. February 14, 2017.
• “Hell No!” Those Preaching Women: A Multicultural Collection, eds., Ella Pearson Mitchell and Valerie Bridgeman Davis (Valley Forge: Judson, 2008) 27-31.
• “After Katrina and Rita: What Must I do to be Saved?” The Sky is Crying: Race, Class and Natural Disaster,ed. Cheryl Kirk-Duggan (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006). 188-196.

Select Academic Lectures

• Reclaiming Sacred Memory as Rituals and Liturgies for Healing,  Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Richmond, VA, 2017.
• Holla if Ya Hear Me!: Hip Hop and Religion IV, Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, GA, 2014.
• African Roots: Christianity and the Black Church in North America, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 2013.
• Dream a Bigger Dream: A Legacy of Women in Transformational Ministry, Sisters Chapel WISDOM Center Conference on Vocation and Discernment, Spelman College, Atlanta, GA, 2013.
• Sankofan Preaching: Looking Back, Speaking Forward, Copher Lecture (Respondent) Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, GA, 2012.
• Raising Womanish Girls!: The Implications of Womanist Posturing and the Performance of Mothering, American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, CA, 2012.

Select Sermons, Educational Series, and Church Presentations

• “Assume the Position,” Midway Missionary Baptist Church, June 2017.
• “Giving Up, Holding On: Lenten Season Meditation,” www.facebook/pinkrobechronicles.com, February – April, 2017.
• “No Justice, No Peace,” Wake Forest University School of Divinity Community Worship, September 2016.

Professional Affiliations

• American Academy of Religion