Amy Hayes of Atlanta has been named Baptist New Global’s third Clemons Fellow, continuing the launch of a graduate-level fellowship begun in June.
Hayes is a master of divinity student at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, where she also was named a Glen R. Stassen Scholar. She will work with BNG throughout the fall semester.
Her appointment follows the successful launch of the Clemons Fellows program this summer, with Laura Ellis and Rick Pidcock as the first fellows.
The Clemons Fellowship is named for Ardelle and Hardy Clemons, who were influential leaders within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Associated Baptist Press, precursor to BNG. Ardelle Clemons was a founding board member for ABP. Together, they created the Clemons Endowment that now makes possible this fellowship.
Amy Hayes
The fellowship also is supported financially by an endowment that honors Gene Puckett, longtime editor of the North Carolina Biblical Recorder and also a founding board member of ABP.
Hayes brings a diverse background to her work as a writer. Raised within the Pentecostal church, she later found her way to other expressions of evangelical Christianity and then to Baptist life and more progressive Christianity. She worked previously as writer for In Touch Ministries in Atlanta and as a copywriter for Bethel Church in Redding, Calif. She also has served as a pastoral intern at First Baptist Church of Roswell, Ga., and on staff at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church in Marietta. She also served as a ministry intern at the Wesley Foundation in Athens, Ga., at the University of Georgia.
A native of Marietta, she earned an undergraduate degree in Spanish from the University of Georgia. She has been a speaker for Q Christian Fellowship and is active as an ally of the LGBTQ Christian community, as well as on immigration issues.
“Amy brings to this fellowship a passion for social justice and Christian ethics, combined with a gift for communication,” said BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield. “BNG believes it is important that we continue to elevate younger voices, diverse voices and particularly women’s voices both with pulpit and pen. The written word on platforms like BNG reaches tens of thousands of people in a single stroke. Because this is such a powerful tool, it is imperative that we continue to cultivate a new generation of well-educated, thoughtful, articulate writer-theologians as well as pastor-theologians.”