Rev. Ramone Raschad Billingsley, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, is a Canadian-trained biblical scholar, a Baptist minister, a lecturer, a writer, a doctoral student, and a classically-trained organist. Rev. Ramone was called to preach in the eighth grade. However, he did not publicly acknowledge his call until his early adult years. In February 2000, he preached his first sermon at Ark Family Ministries (a split from Second Baptist Church in Lorain, Ohio) and was licensed as a Baptist preacher. In November 2000, he was ordained. Shortly after preaching his first sermon, he began his journey into the world of theological education.

 

Ramone began his undergraduate education at Oberlin Conservatory of Music (Oberlin, Ohio) in the Bachelor of Music program in Organ Performance & Literature. Sensing a call to preach, he transferred to Temple Bible College & Seminary at the end of his third year.  Ramone holds a Bachelor’s and Master of Divinity degree from Temple Bible College & Seminary (Cleveland, Ohio - no longer extant). Also, he holds a Master of Arts degree in Hebrew Bible with extensive coursework in Northwest Semitic Languages. While a student at Ashland, he received the prestigious Departmental award for Biblical studies  in 2007 and was also inducted into the Eta Beta Rho chapter of the National Hebrew Honor Society. 

 

In 2013, he received a doctoral entrance scholarship where he began studying for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Hebrew Bible & Semitic Languages at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto under his doctoral advisor Prof. J. Glen Taylor. Ramone completed all coursework, and his comprehensive exams were in the following areas: Northwest Semitic Philology, the Book of the Twelve Prophets, the Deuteronomistic History, and Postcolonial, Diaspora and Transnational studies. His semitic language training includes the following: Classical Hebrew, Epigraphic Hebrew, Hebrew of the Qumran Scrolls, Canaanite Dialects, Ugaritic, Phoenician-Punic, Imperial Aramaic (including biblical texts and Egyptian Aramaic), and comparative semitics, which he actively uses.  Although he finished comps, he was unable to complete the degree because of funding issues. Currently, he is pursuing a Doctor of Ministry Degree in Black Preaching & Social Consciousness, at Virginia Union University Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology (Richmond, Virginia).

 

Rev. Ramone has served as an associate minister as well as executive minister in several congregations both in Ohio and Alabama). He has a lot of experience in congregational care, church administration, preaching, and church-community involvement. An emphasis on the black church, black theology, black liberation theology, and social justice is at the heart of Rev. Ramone's preaching and church ministry ethos. For him, there is no bifurcation between faith and social justice issues. 

 

Preaching and teaching is Rev. Ramone's passion. He employs contemporary interpretive approaches to biblical texts such as postcolonial, womanist, feminist, African American, queer theory, and other non-traditional reading strategies to uncover more exciting, challenging, and liberating possibilities within biblical texts. Rev. Ramone delivers sermons that are encouraging, liberating, prophetic (dealing with today's injustices). As a preacher-scholar, he always translates his preaching texts, not only from the Hebrew and Greek scriptures, but also from other manuscript traditions such as Qumran texts, Samaritan Pentateuch, Aramaic Targumim, and the Septuagint, to name only a few.