Elle Dowd: Baptized in Tear Gas

While living in St Louis, Missouri, Elle Dowd’s heart was transformed. Michael Brown, a black man, had been gunned down by a white police officer and Elle found herself at the front lines of protests. In the weeks and months following Brown’s death, Elle experience just a fraction of the broken system she was speaking out against - from rubber bullets to tear gas. In the midst of it all, God softened her heart and fueled her fire. In the wake of the uprising, Elle committed herself fully and completely to the work of anti-racism and abolition.

Elle is here today on the podcast to talk to us about her work, including her new book, Baptized in Tear Gas: from White Moderate to Abolitionist.

Buckle up. This one will change you.

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Elle Dowd (she/her/hers) is an author, activist, and bi-furious recent graduate of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and a candidate for ordained ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Elle has pieces of her heart in Sierra Leone, where her two children were born, and in St. Louis where she 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, writes regularly as part of the vision team for the Disrupt Worship Project, and facilitates workshops on gender and sexuality and the Church in both secular conferences and Christian spaces. She is publishing a book with Broadleaf, Baptized in Teargas, about her conversion from a white moderate to an abolitionist available for pre-order now. 

Elle loves spending time with the people she loves and on weekends when there isn’t a global pandemic, she tours the city of Chicago in search of the best Bloody Mary.

To get in touch with Elle and to keep up with updates,  you can visit her website www.elledowd.com and subscribe to her newsletter.

You can also see her online ministry via Facebook.com/elledowdministry
or follow her on Twitter/SnapChat/Insta @hownowbrowndowd 
or on TikTok @elledowdministry

Pre-order her book Baptized in Teargas: From White Moderate to Abolitionist