Injustice of the Unhoused
Activist in Profile: Rev. Dr. Claude Forehand II
By Timothy S. Moore
Regularly, as part of JustAct, we present an activist in profile, highlighting a local, regional, or national leader inspiring the church, their communities, and others in innovative and challenging ways. In this issue, we focus our attention on the work of Rev. Dr. Claude Ellis Forehand II, the interim director of the Reimaging America Project, a new initiative of the Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation at Union Presbyterian Seminary.
A former marine, Claude Forehand graduated from Johnson C. Smith University with a bachelor of science in business administration after his military service. He later shifted his vocational focus and enrolled in Hood Theological Seminary, where he earned both master of divinity and doctor of ministry degrees. An ordained clergy member of the Missionary Baptist denomination tradition, Rev. Forehand has 17 years of pastoral experience, having served three separate Baptist congregations in North Carolina: Mayfield Memorial Baptist Church in Charlotte, Buncombe Baptist Church inLexington, and First Baptist Church in Kannapolis. Beyond the local church, he continues to provide ministry consulting services for churches and Baptist associations throughout the state of North Carolina. He is a former 3rd Vice Moderator of the United Missionary Baptist Association and served as the chair for the Association’s Ordination Council in addition to designing the ordination curriculum.
The creation of curriculum is central to the ministry to which God has called him. He owns and operates an LLC called The Preaching Institute and teaches a 15-week homiletics course and provides evidence-based consultation on 20 key indicators of proper sermon delivery. He also writes Sunday school lessons for R.H. Boyd Publishing and is a regular instructor for the National Baptist Church’s Baptist Training Union and Sunday School Convention. Rev. Forehand is committed to the conviction that every person of faith who attempts to practice their faith should be educated in their faith regardless of what that faith entails. This conviction is why he considers himself a lifelong learner and says that his personal faith is always evolving.
While Rev. Forehand considers himself a Christian, he aspires to live into a very different brand of the religion—one that more accurately speaks to his identity, his reality, his spiritualty, and the complexity that comes with each while living under an oppressive system based on race. “It is not that I am against Christianity,” he says. “Rather, I no longer accept the standardized interpretation of Christianity’s traditions—traditions that have come from white male scholarship—as applicable.” Forehand’s need for new traditions and a new theology is what brought him to RAP, the Reimagining America Project. RAP is an organization fueled by the passions of like-minded volunteers who are committed to equity and justice.
During an intense hiking expedition with Rodney Sadler, Union Presbyterian Seminary professor and director of the Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation, Sadler invited Forehand to serve as Interim Executive Director of RAP. “Being a fellow Baptist preacher and scholar, Rodney was able to explain the concept of RAP as being an organization that can serve to create space for the development of a new, more equitable theology,” Forehand explains. This new space and its corresponding mission appealed to him.
RAP’s mission is to call to account—through testimony, witnessing, and atonement—the history of racialized oppression in the U.S. and to enact systemic changes to end racism permanently. This call to enacted change is what excites Rev. Forehand about the organization. “Just as I consider myself to be a prophet and witness to truth and to use that truth to speak to power, such is the nature of RAP,” he says. “My active involvement only reinforces the call I have to this kind of work.”
Forehand believes that with the grace of God’s help, in the next few years, RAP will become a major voice for racial equity in the city of Charlotte and become known for exposing systemic oppression in ways that, in turn, will promote liberation, reconciliation, and atonement among people of all races, ethnicities, creeds, sexual orientations, and religions.
In addition to pastoring congregations, writing, teaching, and directing RAP, Forehand is co-founder, along with Chuck Collier, of Racial Equity Cabarrus (REC). REC is a nonprofit organization committed to addressing racial inequity at the systemic level by creating, cultivating, and developing partnerships with other like-minded organizations throughout Cabarrus County, North Carolina.
Forehand is married to Rolanda Forehand and is a proud member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
A child of southern Appalachia, Timothy S. Moore is an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church and a member of the Western North Carolina Conference. He has served as a minister to local congregations, held deanships at two colleges, worked at the denominational level for the UMC, and is currently the director of development and coordinator of United Methodist Studies at Union Presbyterian Seminary. He and his wife, Rev. Amy Spivey, live in Hickory, where Amy serves as the senior pastor of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church. They are the proud parents of a teenage daughter.
