Rev. Dr. Cody Sanders

Cody J. Sanders is a queer Baptist minister and pastoral theologian whose scholarship addresses LGBTQIA+ ministry, pastoral care, and counseling. As of 2024, he is Associate Professor of Congregational & Community Care Leadership at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. From 2015 until 2023, he was pastor to Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the most historic LGBTQ-affirming churches in the American Baptist tradition. While in Cambridge he also served as American Baptist Chaplain to Harvard University and as the first-ever Advisor for LGBTQ+ Affairs in the Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At both Harvard and MIT, he worked to bridge campus religious and spiritual life with the work of LGBTQIA+ inclusivity, justice, and belonging. 

He began his teaching career at Andover Newton Theological School and continued as an affiliated faculty member at Chicago Theological Seminary before moving into a full-time teaching post at Luther Seminary in the Fall of 2024. His first book was titled Queer Lessons for Churches on the Straight and Narrow: What All Christians Can Learn from LGBTQ Lives (2013), which received the National Bronze Medal for Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans Non-Fiction in the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Awards, and has been translated into Swahili and Japanese. His other books addressing LGBTQIA+ concerns include the first book in the theological literature addressing the intersection of religious/spiritual narratives and LGBTQ suicide, titled Christianity, LGBTQ Suicide, and the Souls of Queer Folk (2021), and a practical text for clergy and laity, titled, A Brief Guide to Ministry with LGBTQIA Youth (2017). He continues to publish and speak on matters of LGBTQIA+ spiritual care. 

Sanders started his journey into ministry at the age of five, asking his father and grandfather to build a church for him in their backyard in Duncan, South Carolina. At age six, the chapel was built, complete with a stained glass window and steeple. His other grandfather and neighbor children "played church" in the backyard chapel where Cody would lead services in a small robe and stole sewed for him by his grandmother. After this early "training," he went on to more formal religious and theological education at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia, and Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, earning degrees in religious studies and psychology, pastoral care, community counseling, and the Ph.D. in pastoral theology and pastoral counseling.

(This biographical statement was written by Cody J. Sanders and edited by Nicole Collins.)

Biography Date: August 2024

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