Presenter

The Rev. Dr.Jerry Michael Grimes II

The Reverend Dr. Jerry Michael Grimes II graduated from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology in 2005 and was in the last class taught by the Reverend Dr. Miles Jerome Jones. A native of Goldsboro, North Carolina, Dr. Grimes is a fourth-generation pastor who is entering his 17th year of pastoral leadership at Peter’s Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in the Iron Mine community of Wallace, North Carolina. Between the 10th and 12th years of his pastorate in North Carolina, Dr. Grimes served as senior pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church of Glenwood in the Chicago Southland. A former advisee of the Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon and Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, Dr. Grimes is a lifelong learner. He began his career as a filmmaker and comic book artist, earning the first-ever bachelor’s degree in film production from Saint Augustine’s College in Raleigh, North Carolina. Dr. Grimes holds triple master’s degrees and double doctorates. Dr. Grimes holds a Master of Divinity from the School of Theology at Virginia Union University, a Master of Arts in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, a Master of Theology with a concentration in Theology and Ethics from Union Presbyterian Seminary, and a Doctor of Ministry from the Rawlings School of Divinity at Liberty University. Most recently, he became one of only two African Americans to earn a Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where the Rev. Dr. James Henry Harris served on his committee. His dissertation, entitled A Collision of Remnants: Sarah Baker Leonard Tupper and the Quest to Build a Post-Enslavement America, explores the earliest decades of Shaw University and its previously unknown cofounder, Sarah Baker Leonard Tupper, and her orchestration of the work of Henry L. Morehouse and John D. Rockefeller in establishing Shaw University. This work also traces the earliest days of the Baptist General Convention of Virginia and its longstanding fellowship with the General Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, beginning in 1899, which eventually saw Dr. John Malcus Ellison and Dr. E.D. McCreary become extensively involved in sustaining the growth of Shaw Divinity School throughout the 1950s. Earlier this year, Dr. Grimes presented a paper tracing the origins of the African Hebrew Israelite Nation’s expatriation to Jerusalem from Chicago during the Chicago Freedom Movement at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Western Region at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A frequent guest on KDKA, CBS News Radio, and ABC News Radio, Dr. Grimes has also served in the North Carolina Public School System and on the faculty of Shaw University, North Carolina Wesleyan University, and most recently, as a Teaching Fellow in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Grimes has one motto in life: On the third day, He got up!