Ruby Sales

The guest speaker for the Diocese of California 172nd Convention is civil rights icon Ruby Sales. She will be preaching the sermon at our diocesan Convention on Saturday, October 23. Ruby will also be offering three interactive pre-Convention workshops via Zoom.

About Ruby Nell Sales

Public Theologian, Historian, Activist, Social Critic, and Educator

Ruby Nell Sales looks at her work as a calling rather than a career. She answered the call to social justice as a teenager at Tuskegee Institute where she joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and worked on voter registration in Lowndes County, Alabama.

Sales received a B.A. degree from Manhattanville College and attended graduate school at Princeton University. Sales received a Masters of Divinity degree from the Episcopal Divinity School where she was an Absalom Jones Scholar. While there, she developed a reputation as a preacher and has preached at churches and cathedrals around the nation. After divinity school, she founded and still directs a national nonprofit organization, the SpiritHouse Project.

As a social justice activist, Sales’ work is cited in several books, journal articles and films such as Taylor Branch’s At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68; Broken Ground: A Film on Race Relations in the South; Dan Rather's American Dream Segment; and Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights by Rich and Sandra Neil Wallace. Sales was one of the founders of SAGE Magazine: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women. As a social critic, Sales has published works in several journals, newspapers and magazines and is a frequent guest on Sirius XM Radio Inside the Issues with Dr. Wilmer Leon. Sales was keynote speaker at a gathering of nationally renown theologians to discuss “Public Theology Reimagined” hosted by and later broadcast on the NPR program, On Being with Krista Tippett.

Join Ruby at one of her

Pre-Convention Workshops

Learn more about the workshops and register today.

Wednesday, October 13th at 5:00 p.m. PST
Thursday, October 14th at 5:00 p.m. PST
Saturday, October 16th at 9:00 a.m. PST

Get to know Ruby

Ruby Sales: “Where Does it Hurt?” On Being with Krista Tippett (September 2016).
Going Where it Hurts with Ruby Sales The Way of Love with Bishop Michael Curry (July 2020).
Click here to watch the TED talk video and access the transcript, which is available in 11 languages (including Spanish).