Elle Dowd (she/they) is a bi-furious recent graduate of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, a current PhD student at the Chicago Theological Seminary, the campus pastor of South Loop Campus Ministry and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Elle has pieces of their heart in Sierra Leone, where their two children were born, and in St. Louis where they learned from the radical, queer, Black leadership during the Ferguson Uprising.
She was formerly a co-conspirator with the movement to #decolonizeLutheranism and currently serves as a board member of the Euro-Descent Lutheran Association for Racial Justice, does community organizing in her city as a board member of SOUL, serves on the Clergy Advocacy Board for Planned Parenthood, writes regularly as part of the vision team for the Disrupt Worship Project, and facilitates workshops in both secular conferences and Christian spaces.
In 2021 they published a book with Broadleaf, Baptized in Teargas, about their conversion from a white moderate to an abolitionist is available now in print, e-book, or audiobook.
elledowd.com 