Rev. Joi Orr, Ph.D.
Christian Scholar
Rev. Joi Orr, Ph.D., serves as the Christian Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (ICJS) in Baltimore. She is an educator, faith leader, and scholar whose work explores Christian ethics, environmental justice, food systems, and the role of faith communities in building more just and resilient communities.
Joi’s scholarship focuses on the ethical dimensions of American food systems, land justice for African Americans, environmental justice, and the theological and moral questions raised by climate change. Her teaching and public scholarship invite religious communities to consider how faith can inform responses to ecological crisis, food sovereignty, land stewardship, and sustainability.
Before joining ICJS, Joi served as Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at the Interdenominational Theological Center, where she directed the ITC Food and Land Institute, a hub for spiritual formation, ecological justice, and community transformation. Through public theology, community gatherings, and capacity-building initiatives, the Institute equipped churches to engage in food sovereignty, land stewardship, and sustainable energy work.
Joi has also taught at Princeton Theological Seminary’s Farminary and Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. Her courses have explored climate grief and ecological collapse, the prophetic imagination, moral leadership, and the theological possibilities for communities confronting overconsumption and environmental exploitation. Her teaching has drawn on sources ranging from Christian theology to Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.
As a Scholar in Residence with Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, Joi designed and facilitated “Wisdom for the Storms Ahead,” a grant-funded series helping faith communities prepare for climate-related disasters and build resilience. The program brought together research, spiritual reflection, and practical skill-building while engaging varied theological perspectives and differences within religious communities.
Joi holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Emory University and a Master of Divinity from Howard University School of Divinity. She is ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
EXPERTISE
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS
- Christian ethics
- Environmental justice and climate resilience
- Food sovereignty and food systems
- Land justice and African American land history
- Faith communities and ecological stewardship
- Religion and climate change
- Public theology
- Moral leadership in times of ecological and social crisis
“Reclaiming the Radical Imagination: Food Sovereignty and Land Security for Black Liberation,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 43, no. 2 (2023): 289-307.
“Food Sovereignty,” Political Theology, Online Symposium: Critical Theory for Political Theology: Keywords, 2022.
“The Black Church and the Habitus of Resistance: An Ethnographic Study of Religious Practice and Social Change,” The Other Journal 25, no. 5.
“On the Revolutionary Hope of Alice Thurman,” The Christian Recorder, 2018.
“Care as Theory and Method in the Study of Religion.” Panelist, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, forthcoming, 2025.
“By Any Greens Necessary: Food Sovereignty, Christian Ethics and the Radical Imagination.” Paper presented at the Society of Christian Ethics Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, 2023.
“On Environmental Justice, Black Religious Thought, and Social Movements.” Invited keynote lecture at Fellowship for Protestant Ethics Annual Symposium, University of Virginia, 2023.
“The Figure of the Enemy in Political Theology,” Presider, Political Theology Unit, American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, TX, 2023.
“Symposium on Pedagogy,” Panelist, American Academy of Religion—Southeast Regional Meeting, Atlanta, 2023.
“Race, Racism, and Qualitative Methods in Christian Ethics.” Roundtable at the Society of Christian Ethics Annual Meeting, Virtual, 2022.
“Imagining Projects for Teaching the Black Woman’s Experience,” Participant in Roundtable, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, Indianapolis, IN, 2022.
“100 Seconds to Midnight: Imagining Ecowomanist Utopias at the End of the World.” Paper presented at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Virtual, 2021.
“By Any Greens Necessary: Food Sovereignty and the Black Struggle for Justice.” Black Cultures and the Study of Religion Unit, American Academy of Religion—Southeast Regional Meeting, Athens, GA, 2020.
“The Peculiarity of Black Sovereign Citizens: Martyrs, Saints, and the Brazenly Criminal.” Paper presented at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, 2019.
“A Requiem for Modernity: Transcending Anti-Blackness and Eschatological Hope,” Black Cultures and the Study of Religion Unit, American Academy of Religion—Southeast Regional Meeting, Greenville, NC, 2019.