By Marla F. Frederick

It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this weekend symposium on Black Religion and Mental Health. Thank you for joining us, both in person and those of you who are online. Before we begin the formal program, I’d like to acknowledge the professors, Ahmad Greene-Hayes and George Aumoithe, who proposed this interdisciplinary symposium integrating mind brain and behavior insights into the exploration of Black religious practices and their impact on mental health.

As you will see over the next two days, Ahmad and George have brought together a stunning array of experts across many fields, including African-American studies, civics, history, psychiatry, public health, and religious studies with a focus on understanding the neurobiological and psycho-behavioral dynamics contributing to mental health stigmatization within Black communities.

Some may wonder what religion has to do with neurobiology and the need for mental health support. To that, I say: you are absolutely in the right place at the right time. Throughout the symposium, the following question will be explored, how can Black religious spaces enhance mental health outcomes considering the dual role of these spaces as both sanctuaries and potential impediments to open discourse?

In my own research with religion and inequality, a topic that I spent more than a year exploring as president of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in 2021, the many multifaceted intersections of religion with our lives came into clearer focus. As we wrestled with the intersections of race and class and religion, it was clear that religion often plays a significant role in people’s lives, from our most private moments to the grandest of public scales.

To reiterate a point that I made with AAR, religion can aid and abet just as it disrupts and averts. It can act as both a wound and a salve, a virus, if you will, and a vaccine. And no less so when we think about the intersections between religion and mental health, and we as scholars and supporters of scholarly work are called upon to make sense of it all to help disaggregate the parts into a meaningful and coherent whole.

To foster excellence in the academic study of religion and enhance the public understanding of religion and its many intersections with our daily life is a lofty charge, indeed, but ever more needed in these particular times. As higher education faces division and conflict and public scrutiny, I want to the deep importance of the work that we do here at Harvard Divinity School.

We are a community that stands on three pillars—academics, ministry, and religion and public Life. And while we study intently the nature of religious conflict, whether it is the scriptural texts and interpretations that give rise to it, or the historical nature of it, we also hold in tension the reality that religion has been and can be a powerful force for good in the world.

I truly thank each of you, faculty, staff, alumni, students, and friends for your commitment to the teaching and learning that happens here at Harvard Divinity School and around the globe with the vital connections you all make near and far. One last note of appreciation before we welcome Dr. Judith Weisenfeld, a good friend and an extraordinary scholar, to the stage for her keynote address.

This symposium came to fruition, in large part, thanks to our organizers, Ahmad Greene-Hayes and George Aumoithe, who exemplify what it means to amplify teaching and learning through connections that defy academic and geographic boundaries.

Thank you both for creating a forum for colleagues from across Harvard and across the United States to delve into critical discussions about Black religion and mental health.