Meet Rev. Dr. Catherine E. Williams

Catherine E. Williams was born in Trinidad & Tobago to Montserratian parents, raised with the kind of warm, unhurried hospitality that comes naturally to Caribbean people and the kind of love for music that would go on to define her life's work. She is proud of her spicy Caribbean roots.

That upbringing shaped everything: how she enters a classroom, how she leads a worship service, how she greets a stranger. It taught her to be at ease with difference — in culture, in faith expression, in background — and to genuinely believe that every person in the room brings something worth honoring.

Today, Catherine is one of the most respected voices in the academic disciplines of homiletics (the study of preaching) and worship. She is, to her knowledge, one of a handful of women of Caribbean origin currently teaching preaching in the United States — a distinction she holds with both humility and deep commitment.

Her research has always been drawn to the margins: communities whose preaching and worship practices are understudied, underrepresented in the literature, and undervalued in the classroom. Her current focus is the Afro-Caribbean Christian community — English-speaking Caribbean believers both in the islands and across the diaspora — whose deeply rooted ways of encountering God deserve scholarly attention, celebration, and a name.

She calls it Preaching with Spice.