In May 2015, five years into her doctoral program, Felicia George got a surprise knock on her door from an unwelcome guest.
It was a very rare form of Dysautonomia that took four and half years of her researching to be diagnosed. Along with other debilitating symptoms, encephalopathy returned after almost 30 years, determined to turn her life into a tour of suffering, seemingly designed to make her quit.
Encephalopathy is a cognitive dysfunction that basically causes part of its victim’s brain to move more slowly. And while George, 45 at the time, did (and does) suffer multiple symptoms from the diagnosis, the former Public Defender-turned Assistant Attorney General-turned judge knew that persevering through her Ph.D. in religious studies was something she simply needed to do.
Support from the Women of Color Scholars program through coursework was a tremendous gift to the beginning of her doctoral journey.
The Angella P. Current-Felder Women of Color (WOC) Scholars program is administered by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM), and is designed to provide financial, intellectual and personal support to United Methodist women of color pursuing doctorates in religious studies at seminaries and universities across the U.S.
Your support of the World Service Fund apportionment supports program-related general agencies, which are especially important to the common vision, mission, and ministry of The United Methodist Church.
“I was very blessed to have been awarded a Women of Color Scholars fellowship,” George said. “Right toward the end of my coursework, I abruptly became very ill. The fact that I graduated is a miracle.”
George didn’t initially aspire to a theological education. In fact, when she was just 8 years old, she sensed a call to become a lawyer that would not leave her. So, when she graduated from Creighton Law School and began practicing law, no one was surprised. The woman who was a child athlete and who began running marathons in college simply knew what she wanted and did what was needed to accomplish it.
Fresh out of law school, she became a public defender in Denver. Finally answering a call to preach the gospel in October 1999 led her to pursue a Master of Divinity degree while practicing law full-time. At the age of thirty-seven, she became one of the youngest judicial officers in Denver District Court where she served as a magistrate. Shortly thereafter, she was appointed a judge in the City of Aurora. She eventually left the bench, where she lost her voice, ability to advocate and to engage in social justice activism. That’s when she answered another call and applied to Ph.D. programs. When she started her doctoral journey at the University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology, she focused on social ethics and the disproportionate incarceration of people of color. In fact, she completed a dissertation proposal on this issue, which was ready to be defended once she completed her comprehensive exams.
But as she was preparing for her first comprehensive exam, Autoimmune Autonomic Ganglionopathy abruptly onset and forced George to take two years of medical leave—often a death sentence for Ph.D aspirations. However, with a lot of patience, help from a few friends, and allies at Iliff, she stayed the course.
Through it all, George has harbored a deep gratitude to God, her friends in the academy who helped her down the winding road to her doctorate, and to GBHEM for getting her started on that road.
General Board of Global Ministries website
The World Service Fund provides basic financial support to program-related general agencies, which are especially important to the common vision, mission, and ministry of The United Methodist Church. Through World Service funding, agencies support annual conferences and local congregations in living out God’s mission for the worldwide Church. General agencies also provide essential services and ministries beyond the scope of individual local congregations and annual conferences through services and ministries that are highly focused, flexible, and capable of rapid response.
