Our Story
To be a justice scholar is to hold a double consciousness, as W. E. B. Du Bois taught us: to live between the academy and the altar, between the world as it is and the world as it must become. It is to read scripture, culture, and suffering as texts layered with meaning—a semiotic landscape of signs and symbols that point toward redemption.
We write not for applause but for awakening. We teach not to impress but to ignite. Our vocation is prophetic inquiry: we decode systems, dismantle idols, and unveil truth in language that sings, convicts, and heals. Our sources are as diverse as our struggle—the speeches of King and Malcolm, the theology of Cone and Thurman, the poetry of Lorde and Giovanni, the witness of Ferguson and Minneapolis. Each moment of resistance becomes both archive and altar, demanding a hermeneutic that honors pain while envisioning possibility.
We are rooted in the African American prophetic tradition, yet our reach extends globally and inclusively. Our intellectual inheritance carries the wisdom of the Black Church, the resilience of the freedom movement, and the restless creativity of a people who refused to let despair have the final word. In our scholarship, the sacred meets the social, the academic meets the anointed, and theory bends its knee to truth.
To be a justice scholar is to stand at the intersection of faith and freedom, word and world, analysis and anointing. We do not simply interpret history—we interrupt it. We do not merely critique systems—we call them to repentance. And in that calling, we remember that justice is not an idea; it is a divine rhythm, a moral gravity pulling the world back toward love.
Our work is worship.
Our research is resistance.
Our preaching is prophecy.
Meet the Founder/CEO
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Meet the Founder/CEO *
Meet Our Founder
Rev. Dr. Paris Lee Smith, Sr.
Public Theologian | Scholar-Practitioner | Founder, Justice Scholars Society | Leadership Strategist | Author | Educator
Rev. Dr. Paris Lee Smith, Sr. is a public theologian, scholar-practitioner, pastor, educator, and founder of Justice Scholars Society (JSS), an interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to advancing scholarship, leadership development, public conscience formation, democratic renewal, and community transformation.
For more than four decades, Dr. Smith has served at the intersection of faith, leadership, education, organizational development, and public engagement. His work explores how individuals, institutions, and communities cultivate responsibility, strengthen democratic life, develop transformative leadership, and pursue the common good.
As founder of Justice Scholars Society, Dr. Smith leads research, writing, teaching, and public engagement efforts focused on public theology, leadership formation, institutional accountability, Black intellectual traditions, democratic renewal, and community transformation. His scholarship is particularly concerned with the relationship between faith, public conscience, leadership, and social responsibility in an increasingly fragmented and complex world.
Dr. Smith is the creator of the Douglassian Methodology of Prophetic Agitation (DMoPA), an interdisciplinary methodological architecture designed to cultivate public conscience, strengthen democratic participation, promote institutional accountability, develop transformative leadership, and advance community transformation through the enduring democratic witness of Frederick Douglass.
Education and Scholarship
Dr. Smith holds:
Bachelor of Theology, Tennessee School of Religion
Master of Divinity, Interdenominational Theological Center / Morehouse School of Religion
Doctor of Ministry (Curtis-Stewart Fellow), United Theological Seminary
He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Theology and Community Engagement at Hampton University School of Religion, where his research focuses on public theology, leadership, democracy, community engagement, institutional transformation, and the development of the Douglassian Methodology of Prophetic Agitation.
His academic interests include:
Public Theology
Black Church Studies
Democratic Renewal
Leadership Development
Practical Theology
Institutional Accountability
Community Transformation
African American Intellectual History
Teaching and Leadership
Dr. Smith has taught and mentored students in both academic and ministerial settings. He has served as an adjunct faculty member at Simmons College of Kentucky and as a visiting adjunct faculty member at Memphis Theological Seminary, where he has taught courses in preaching, Black theology, leadership, church history, and doctoral ministry formation.
His leadership experience extends beyond ministry into organizational leadership, community development, workforce development, and institutional transformation. Drawing upon decades of experience in leadership and systems thinking, he regularly engages organizations, congregations, nonprofits, and community leaders seeking to strengthen leadership effectiveness and organizational impact.
Pastoral Ministry and Community Impact
Dr. Smith has faithfully served congregations across multiple contexts, including Kentucky, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and beyond. His pastoral leadership has been marked by a commitment to spiritual formation, leadership development, community engagement, and institutional renewal.
His work has included significant involvement in affordable housing initiatives, community partnerships, leadership development efforts, and public witness grounded in the historic Black Church tradition.
Throughout his ministry, he has remained committed to the liberating vision of the Gospel expressed in Luke 4:18, understanding freedom to encompass the spiritual, intellectual, social, communal, and institutional dimensions of human flourishing.
Writing and Public Engagement
Dr. Smith writes extensively on:
Public Conscience
Democratic Renewal
Leadership Formation
Institutional Crisis
Black Prophetic Traditions
Public Theology
Community Transformation
His work appears through the Justice Scholars Society, public theology platforms, leadership publications, and scholarly presentations. He is committed to producing scholarship that bridges the gap between academic inquiry and practical engagement.
Through writing, teaching, speaking, and research, he seeks to contribute to the cultivation of thoughtful leaders, accountable institutions, engaged citizens, and flourishing communities.
Vision
Dr. Smith's long-term vision is to develop an enduring intellectual and leadership tradition that equips future generations to think critically, lead responsibly, strengthen institutions, cultivate public conscience, and contribute to democratic renewal.
Through Justice Scholars Society, the Douglassian Methodology of Prophetic Agitation, research initiatives, leadership development programs, publications, and public engagement, he seeks to leave a legacy that extends beyond individual achievement and contributes to the ongoing work of justice, leadership, democratic participation, and human flourishing.
Paris Lee Smith, Sr. is a public theologian, scholar-practitioner, and Founder of Justice Scholars Society, where he writes on democracy, public conscience, leadership, institutional crisis, and Black prophetic traditions.
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Our ethos is born of struggle, sanctified by survival, and sustained by Spirit. We are scholars of the sacred and the street — interpreters of signs and sufferers, truth-tellers in the face of empire, and stewards of memory in a culture that forgets too easily.
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Our ethos begins with love — not sentimental affection, but what bell hooks called “love as the practice of freedom.” Love is our first hermeneutic, our lens for reading humanity. It is the driving force that compels us to see the image of God in every face, especially in those whom society has rendered invisible.
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Our ethos is grounded in truth-telling — that moral courage to name what is broken without losing sight of what can be healed. We do not hide behind neutrality. As Dr. Cornel West reminds us, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Our scholarship is not detached observation but engaged revelation.
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Our ethos is sustained by hope, but not the naive optimism of comfort. Our hope is forged in the fires of protest, in the prayers of grandmothers, in the songs sung between cotton rows and jail cells. It is the hope that refuses to die, because it has seen resurrection before.
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Our ethos is shaped by memory — the sacred task of remembering the forgotten. We recall the cries of the enslaved, the courage of the marchers, the brilliance of the thinkers who carved light out of darkness. We are not new; we are continuation. We walk in the lineage of Harriet, Sojourner, Douglass, Fannie Lou, Martin, Malcolm, Ella, and Audre.
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Our ethos is enacted through liberative imagination — the belief that another world is not only possible but already gestating in the holy unrest of the present. We read the signs of the times not as despairing symbols of decay but as invitations to divine creativity.
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Our ethos is animated by Spirit — that power which resists domestication. The Spirit blows through our scholarship as it once moved over chaos in Genesis, birthing new orders of meaning. We are Spirit-led intellectuals, Spirit-empowered organizers, Spirit-breathed interpreters of word and world.
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Our ethos is fundamentally prophetic. The prophetic does not predict; it pronounces. It calls the world to account and calls the people to rise. To be prophetic is to inhabit the dangerous space between lament and liberation, where words become fire and silence becomes complicit.
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Finally, our ethos is communal. We do not think in isolation; we think together. Our classrooms are circles, our pulpits are platforms for the people, our scholarship is a dialogue across generations. We believe that wisdom grows in community, that theology without the people is empty rhetoric, and that every voice — from the academy to the alley — carries a fragment of divine truth.