J.J. Warren, BA MDiv

The Reverend J.J. Warren (he/him) is a public theologian, speaker, advocate, and the author of Reclaiming Church: A Call to Action for Religious Rejects (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2020). After making an impassioned plea for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons at The United Methodist Church’s (UMC) top law-making assembly in 2019, J.J.’s speech went viral, and his advocacy has been covered by HuffPost, NBC, Brut Media, and WXXI Radio. J.J. has earned a Master’s of Divinity (M.Div.) from Boston University School of Theology (’22), which is known as “the school of the prophets,” and a Bachelor’s of Arts from New York’s Sarah Lawrence College (’19) where he studied religion and creative writing. In October, 2022, J.J. began a Ph.D. in Advanced Theological Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria, where he works as a doctoral researcher at the intersection of Paul Tillich’s theology, queer theology, and ecclesiology (the study of the church). In June, 2023, J.J. was Commissioned as a Provisional Member (clergy) in the New England Conference of The UMC, and he currently serves as the Executive Director and Pastor of Young Prophets Collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that seeks to “equip and empower a global community of young LGBTQIA+ religious leaders and allies who use their voices for liberation.”

During his undergraduate studies, J.J. spent a year at Oxford University, England, where he studied Biblical Hebrew, Early Church history, and gender studies of late antiquity. He began a progressive Christian community on his undergraduate campus, and now J.J. travels the world preaching a message of LGBTQ+ affirmation and intersectional liberation.