Anthony G. Reddie
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462005
- eISBN:
- 9781626745094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462005.003.0015
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter locates this larger book project within the broader framework of Contextual Theology. It outlines the basic features and methodological points of departure in contextual theology, ...
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This chapter locates this larger book project within the broader framework of Contextual Theology. It outlines the basic features and methodological points of departure in contextual theology, analyzing the seminal work of the Euro-American, Catholic theologian Stephen Bevans. It critiques Bevans’ typology driven, systematic approach to Contextual Theology, arguing that this method fails to appreciate the highly contested and politicized nature of the subject. The chapter concludes by highlighting the socio-political intent of black churches and Christianity across the world, demonstrating how this text seeks to problematize and articulate the dialectical nature of this growing phenomenon.Less
This chapter locates this larger book project within the broader framework of Contextual Theology. It outlines the basic features and methodological points of departure in contextual theology, analyzing the seminal work of the Euro-American, Catholic theologian Stephen Bevans. It critiques Bevans’ typology driven, systematic approach to Contextual Theology, arguing that this method fails to appreciate the highly contested and politicized nature of the subject. The chapter concludes by highlighting the socio-political intent of black churches and Christianity across the world, demonstrating how this text seeks to problematize and articulate the dialectical nature of this growing phenomenon.
Will “Esuyemi” Coleman
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195167979
- eISBN:
- 9780199784981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019516797X.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
This chapter discusses the text, Tribal Talk. Topics covered include Black theology, the use of broken English in the narrative, hermeneutics, African-derived religions in the Americas, and ...
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This chapter discusses the text, Tribal Talk. Topics covered include Black theology, the use of broken English in the narrative, hermeneutics, African-derived religions in the Americas, and African-American religious history.Less
This chapter discusses the text, Tribal Talk. Topics covered include Black theology, the use of broken English in the narrative, hermeneutics, African-derived religions in the Americas, and African-American religious history.
Nico Koopman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462005
- eISBN:
- 9781626745094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462005.003.0013
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter challenges Public Theology to draw on the emphasis within Black Theology on the involvement of God in the affairs of this world, and specifically the notion that God reveals Godself as ...
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This chapter challenges Public Theology to draw on the emphasis within Black Theology on the involvement of God in the affairs of this world, and specifically the notion that God reveals Godself as the God who is identifying primarily, though not exclusively, with the poor and the wronged. The second crucial emphasis of Black Theology is the confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ over all dimensions and sectors of life - from the most intimate and personal to the most public, global and cosmic. To be a transforming and liberating Public Theology the vision, aim and methodology need to be informed by central convictions about God’s bias in favor of the wronged and against oppression, and about the Lordship of Jesus Christ within a world pervaded by a spirit and structures of empire.Less
This chapter challenges Public Theology to draw on the emphasis within Black Theology on the involvement of God in the affairs of this world, and specifically the notion that God reveals Godself as the God who is identifying primarily, though not exclusively, with the poor and the wronged. The second crucial emphasis of Black Theology is the confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ over all dimensions and sectors of life - from the most intimate and personal to the most public, global and cosmic. To be a transforming and liberating Public Theology the vision, aim and methodology need to be informed by central convictions about God’s bias in favor of the wronged and against oppression, and about the Lordship of Jesus Christ within a world pervaded by a spirit and structures of empire.
Walter Earl Fluker
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462005
- eISBN:
- 9781626745094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462005.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter proposes a reconfigured Black Theology based on the contemporary context of the Black Church in the US in a contested post-racial, post-American world. In that context, Black churches ...
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This chapter proposes a reconfigured Black Theology based on the contemporary context of the Black Church in the US in a contested post-racial, post-American world. In that context, Black churches are besieged by the “cultural hauntings” of race, in all of its shifting shapes and reinventions. This reference to shape-shifting is a form of critical signification on Black Church traditions. Historically, the Black Church has taken its metaphors, its parody and transformation of Western stories and ideas too literally and has mistaken these rhetorical devices for preordained things, essences. Shape-shifting is a form of postmodern self-reflexive critique of all signs which claim to be Absolute, including race, blackness, and theological metaphors. The chapter recommends, therefore, that the Black Church remain open to revisability of language and remember its own tradition of shape-shifting, signifying, reinterpreting in preaching, liturgy, and playing on words.Less
This chapter proposes a reconfigured Black Theology based on the contemporary context of the Black Church in the US in a contested post-racial, post-American world. In that context, Black churches are besieged by the “cultural hauntings” of race, in all of its shifting shapes and reinventions. This reference to shape-shifting is a form of critical signification on Black Church traditions. Historically, the Black Church has taken its metaphors, its parody and transformation of Western stories and ideas too literally and has mistaken these rhetorical devices for preordained things, essences. Shape-shifting is a form of postmodern self-reflexive critique of all signs which claim to be Absolute, including race, blackness, and theological metaphors. The chapter recommends, therefore, that the Black Church remain open to revisability of language and remember its own tradition of shape-shifting, signifying, reinterpreting in preaching, liturgy, and playing on words.
Rothney S. Tshaka
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462005
- eISBN:
- 9781626745094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462005.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter argues that the apologetics of black theology of liberation, evidenced by its wrestling with method, produced an obsession. This obsession resulted in the alienation of this alternative ...
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This chapter argues that the apologetics of black theology of liberation, evidenced by its wrestling with method, produced an obsession. This obsession resulted in the alienation of this alternative hermeneutics in black communities and created a rift between itself and its interlocutors. Preoccupation with method hampered black theology of liberation from dealing with burning issues. Since black theology of liberation in some instances failed to critically engage Western hegemonies and power, it was incapable of dealing with issues that could have rolled back the flight from the black self. The willingness by the oppressed to participate in their own oppression remains a painful pathology related to scandalous social ills such as Afrophobia. Violence against the black other is ill-informed and should rather be directed at the hegemonic powers of capitalism and neoliberalism. We need a theology that is willing to listen earnestly to its interlocutors.Less
This chapter argues that the apologetics of black theology of liberation, evidenced by its wrestling with method, produced an obsession. This obsession resulted in the alienation of this alternative hermeneutics in black communities and created a rift between itself and its interlocutors. Preoccupation with method hampered black theology of liberation from dealing with burning issues. Since black theology of liberation in some instances failed to critically engage Western hegemonies and power, it was incapable of dealing with issues that could have rolled back the flight from the black self. The willingness by the oppressed to participate in their own oppression remains a painful pathology related to scandalous social ills such as Afrophobia. Violence against the black other is ill-informed and should rather be directed at the hegemonic powers of capitalism and neoliberalism. We need a theology that is willing to listen earnestly to its interlocutors.
Cobus van Wyngaard
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462005
- eISBN:
- 9781626745094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462005.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This essay explores contemporary South African white (and especially Afrikaner) rhetoric on violent crime as an expression of what can be described as a quasi-soteriology of the laager. It presents ...
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This essay explores contemporary South African white (and especially Afrikaner) rhetoric on violent crime as an expression of what can be described as a quasi-soteriology of the laager. It presents this rhetoric on violent crime as a continuation of white rhetoric on the Day of the Vow and the Anglo-Boer War, which describes Afrikaners as being under threat and salvation being found by withdrawal into a segregated existence. The presentation of white Afrikaners as being specifically targeted by violent crime is presented as a deliberate rhetorical option which should be read within this soteriological logic. In response to this soteriological problem the challenge of a soteriology which finds salvation in the wholeness of the entirety of society and the end of racist structures is presented as a challenge to the White Church.Less
This essay explores contemporary South African white (and especially Afrikaner) rhetoric on violent crime as an expression of what can be described as a quasi-soteriology of the laager. It presents this rhetoric on violent crime as a continuation of white rhetoric on the Day of the Vow and the Anglo-Boer War, which describes Afrikaners as being under threat and salvation being found by withdrawal into a segregated existence. The presentation of white Afrikaners as being specifically targeted by violent crime is presented as a deliberate rhetorical option which should be read within this soteriological logic. In response to this soteriological problem the challenge of a soteriology which finds salvation in the wholeness of the entirety of society and the end of racist structures is presented as a challenge to the White Church.
Andre E. Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781496830708
- eISBN:
- 9781496830678
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496830708.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter offers a brief sketch of the theological thought, or more specifically, the God-Talk language of Turner. The chapter then offers a rhetorical analysis of the text and argues that Turner ...
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This chapter offers a brief sketch of the theological thought, or more specifically, the God-Talk language of Turner. The chapter then offers a rhetorical analysis of the text and argues that Turner engages in what some scholars call rhetorical theology. By maintaining that all theology is at its core a form of argument, rhetorical theology places emphasis on how a speaker or writer situates language in order to persuade its hearers to a certain position. In other words, when Turner spoke and wrote “God is a Negro,” he was not doing systematic theology; he was engaged in a public theology, which is a rhetorical enterprise that had as its aim a persuasive function within a specific context.Less
This chapter offers a brief sketch of the theological thought, or more specifically, the God-Talk language of Turner. The chapter then offers a rhetorical analysis of the text and argues that Turner engages in what some scholars call rhetorical theology. By maintaining that all theology is at its core a form of argument, rhetorical theology places emphasis on how a speaker or writer situates language in order to persuade its hearers to a certain position. In other words, when Turner spoke and wrote “God is a Negro,” he was not doing systematic theology; he was engaged in a public theology, which is a rhetorical enterprise that had as its aim a persuasive function within a specific context.
Kymberly N. Pinder
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039928
- eISBN:
- 9780252098086
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039928.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
Innovative and lavishly illustrated, this book offers an indispensable contribution to conversations about black art, theology, politics, and identity in Chicago. It escorts readers on an eye-opening ...
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Innovative and lavishly illustrated, this book offers an indispensable contribution to conversations about black art, theology, politics, and identity in Chicago. It escorts readers on an eye-opening odyssey to the murals, stained glass, and sculptures dotting the city's black churches and neighborhoods. Moving from Chicago's oldest black Christ figure to contemporary religious street art, the book explores ideas like blackness in public, art for black communities, and the relationship of Afrocentric art to Black Liberation Theology. It also focuses attention on art excluded from scholarship due to racial or religious particularity. Throughout, the book reflects on the myriad ways private black identities assert public and political goals through imagery. The book includes maps and tour itineraries that allow readers to make conceptual, historical, and geographical connections among the works.Less
Innovative and lavishly illustrated, this book offers an indispensable contribution to conversations about black art, theology, politics, and identity in Chicago. It escorts readers on an eye-opening odyssey to the murals, stained glass, and sculptures dotting the city's black churches and neighborhoods. Moving from Chicago's oldest black Christ figure to contemporary religious street art, the book explores ideas like blackness in public, art for black communities, and the relationship of Afrocentric art to Black Liberation Theology. It also focuses attention on art excluded from scholarship due to racial or religious particularity. Throughout, the book reflects on the myriad ways private black identities assert public and political goals through imagery. The book includes maps and tour itineraries that allow readers to make conceptual, historical, and geographical connections among the works.
Kymberly N. Pinder
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039928
- eISBN:
- 9780252098086
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039928.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity ...
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This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian” with a painting of a Jesus with dark brown skin and tightly curled black hair, his arms outstretched around a smiling African American family. This image of a black Christ was Evans's vision of being black and Christian. In the 1970s Evans joined TUCC, where the pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., promoted Black Liberation Theology and recommended specific texts and sermons for the artist to study that transformed his conception of Christ. This chapter first considers black theology and pan-Africanism at TUCC before discussing the influence of the Black Arts Movement and the muralist William Walker on Chicago. It also assesses the impact, in terms of style and content, of the murals on Chicago's South Side on Evans's work and concludes with an overview of TUCC's stained glass program.Less
This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian” with a painting of a Jesus with dark brown skin and tightly curled black hair, his arms outstretched around a smiling African American family. This image of a black Christ was Evans's vision of being black and Christian. In the 1970s Evans joined TUCC, where the pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., promoted Black Liberation Theology and recommended specific texts and sermons for the artist to study that transformed his conception of Christ. This chapter first considers black theology and pan-Africanism at TUCC before discussing the influence of the Black Arts Movement and the muralist William Walker on Chicago. It also assesses the impact, in terms of style and content, of the murals on Chicago's South Side on Evans's work and concludes with an overview of TUCC's stained glass program.
Kerry Pimblott
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780813168821
- eISBN:
- 9780813169019
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813168821.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Using the borderland community of Cairo, Illinois as a case study, this book chronicles the Black church’s overlooked contributions to the Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. ...
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Using the borderland community of Cairo, Illinois as a case study, this book chronicles the Black church’s overlooked contributions to the Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. While Black Power’s reverberations in the church – from radicalized clergy to new institutions and theologies – have received due attention, their impact on grassroots struggles has not. Shifting focus from the seminary to the streets, this project traces the dynamic interaction between the Black church and Black Power at a critical flashpoint. Identified by contemporaries as the site of the country’s longest protracted struggle for racial justice, Cairo captured national attention and became a potent symbol of Black working-class insurgency and a beacon of radical Black Christianity. In a period plagued by sectarianism, the Cairo United Front assembled a surprisingly broad-based coalition under the banner of a new spiritual philosophy and a set of shared cultural practices rooted in the Black church. However, in an era of conservative ascendancy Black Power’s reliance upon such funds proved to be a double-edged sword. By the mid-1970s, white denominational organizations retreated under mounting opposition from state agencies and their own congregants. This project situates grassroots activists, rather than trained religious theorists, as key agents in the production, consumption, and transmission of Black Theology.Less
Using the borderland community of Cairo, Illinois as a case study, this book chronicles the Black church’s overlooked contributions to the Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. While Black Power’s reverberations in the church – from radicalized clergy to new institutions and theologies – have received due attention, their impact on grassroots struggles has not. Shifting focus from the seminary to the streets, this project traces the dynamic interaction between the Black church and Black Power at a critical flashpoint. Identified by contemporaries as the site of the country’s longest protracted struggle for racial justice, Cairo captured national attention and became a potent symbol of Black working-class insurgency and a beacon of radical Black Christianity. In a period plagued by sectarianism, the Cairo United Front assembled a surprisingly broad-based coalition under the banner of a new spiritual philosophy and a set of shared cultural practices rooted in the Black church. However, in an era of conservative ascendancy Black Power’s reliance upon such funds proved to be a double-edged sword. By the mid-1970s, white denominational organizations retreated under mounting opposition from state agencies and their own congregants. This project situates grassroots activists, rather than trained religious theorists, as key agents in the production, consumption, and transmission of Black Theology.
Kymberly N. Pinder
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039928
- eISBN:
- 9780252098086
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039928.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
This book explores the visualization of religious imagery in public art for African Americans in Chicago between 1904 and the present. It examines a number of case studies of black churches whose ...
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This book explores the visualization of religious imagery in public art for African Americans in Chicago between 1904 and the present. It examines a number of case studies of black churches whose pastors have consciously nurtured a strong visual culture within their congregation. It features examples of religious art associated with some of Chicago's most historically significant black churches and art in their neighborhoods. It considers how the arts interact with each other in the performance of black belief, explains how empathetic realism structures these interactions for a variety of publics, and situates public art within a larger history of mural histories. It also highlights the centrality of the visual in the formation of Black Liberation Theology and its role alongside gospel music and broadcasted sermons in the black public sphere. Finally, the book discusses various representations of black Christ and other black biblical figures, often imaged alongside black historical figures or portraits of everyday black people from the community.Less
This book explores the visualization of religious imagery in public art for African Americans in Chicago between 1904 and the present. It examines a number of case studies of black churches whose pastors have consciously nurtured a strong visual culture within their congregation. It features examples of religious art associated with some of Chicago's most historically significant black churches and art in their neighborhoods. It considers how the arts interact with each other in the performance of black belief, explains how empathetic realism structures these interactions for a variety of publics, and situates public art within a larger history of mural histories. It also highlights the centrality of the visual in the formation of Black Liberation Theology and its role alongside gospel music and broadcasted sermons in the black public sphere. Finally, the book discusses various representations of black Christ and other black biblical figures, often imaged alongside black historical figures or portraits of everyday black people from the community.
Ansley L. Quiros
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646763
- eISBN:
- 9781469646787
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646763.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter analyses the theological tenets present in the historical black church tradition undergirding freedom movements. It discusses the role of the church, black religious intellectuals of the ...
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This chapter analyses the theological tenets present in the historical black church tradition undergirding freedom movements. It discusses the role of the church, black religious intellectuals of the 1920s-1930s and certain theologies—the creative authority of God, the idolatry of segregation, the exodus, the person of Jesus, and redemptive love. The chapter reveals how these animated early civil rights actions and activities in Americus.Less
This chapter analyses the theological tenets present in the historical black church tradition undergirding freedom movements. It discusses the role of the church, black religious intellectuals of the 1920s-1930s and certain theologies—the creative authority of God, the idolatry of segregation, the exodus, the person of Jesus, and redemptive love. The chapter reveals how these animated early civil rights actions and activities in Americus.
Daniel R. Bare
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781479803262
- eISBN:
- 9781479803255
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479803262.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Emerging in the midst of the Jim Crow era, American Protestant fundamentalism has often been presented as a white movement. But did this major religious perspective really stop cold in its tracks at ...
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Emerging in the midst of the Jim Crow era, American Protestant fundamentalism has often been presented as a white movement. But did this major religious perspective really stop cold in its tracks at the color line? This book challenges the idea that fundamentalism was an exclusively white phenomenon by examining voices from the black community that embraced the doctrinal tenets of the movement and explicitly self-identified as fundamentalists. Many black Protestants reflected the same concerns, attitudes, and arguments as did their white fundamentalist counterparts, even as the oppressive hand of Jim Crow excluded African Americans from the most prominent white-controlled fundamentalist institutions and social crusades. As a result, the particular social context of the black community provided for unique manifestations of fundamentalist religion across the color line, as black fundamentalists aligned closely with their white counterparts on the theological particulars of “the fundamentals,” while often applying their conservative theology in more progressive, racially contextualized ways. Even as their doctrinal formulations closely paralleled their better-known white counterparts, black fundamentalists used their religious principles to speak to the world from a specifically black perspective—pressing for political reforms, arguing for civil rights, advancing black higher education, and formulating ideas about racial identity based on their fundamentalist convictions.Less
Emerging in the midst of the Jim Crow era, American Protestant fundamentalism has often been presented as a white movement. But did this major religious perspective really stop cold in its tracks at the color line? This book challenges the idea that fundamentalism was an exclusively white phenomenon by examining voices from the black community that embraced the doctrinal tenets of the movement and explicitly self-identified as fundamentalists. Many black Protestants reflected the same concerns, attitudes, and arguments as did their white fundamentalist counterparts, even as the oppressive hand of Jim Crow excluded African Americans from the most prominent white-controlled fundamentalist institutions and social crusades. As a result, the particular social context of the black community provided for unique manifestations of fundamentalist religion across the color line, as black fundamentalists aligned closely with their white counterparts on the theological particulars of “the fundamentals,” while often applying their conservative theology in more progressive, racially contextualized ways. Even as their doctrinal formulations closely paralleled their better-known white counterparts, black fundamentalists used their religious principles to speak to the world from a specifically black perspective—pressing for political reforms, arguing for civil rights, advancing black higher education, and formulating ideas about racial identity based on their fundamentalist convictions.
Kristin Waters
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781496836748
- eISBN:
- 9781496836731
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496836748.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
In 1833 Maria W. Stewart told a gathering at the African Masonic Hall on Boston’s Beacon Hill, “African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in ...
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In 1833 Maria W. Stewart told a gathering at the African Masonic Hall on Boston’s Beacon Hill, “African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in these United States.” She held that the founding principles of the United States must extend to all people, otherwise they are merely the hypocritical expression of an ungodly white power. This first-ever biography of a profoundly significant writer explores her early life as an indentured servant in Hartford, Connecticut. Later, she defied adversity, journeying to Boston where she met and married a wealthy commercial agent and former seaman and became a powerful force within the lively black community on Beacon Hill’s North Slope. Between 1831-1833 Stewart’s “intellectual productions” ranged across topics including true emancipation for African Americans, abolition, the hypocrisy of white Christianity, black liberation theology, and gender inequity. Along with David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, (1829), her body of work constitutes a significant foundation for black radical politics.Less
In 1833 Maria W. Stewart told a gathering at the African Masonic Hall on Boston’s Beacon Hill, “African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in these United States.” She held that the founding principles of the United States must extend to all people, otherwise they are merely the hypocritical expression of an ungodly white power. This first-ever biography of a profoundly significant writer explores her early life as an indentured servant in Hartford, Connecticut. Later, she defied adversity, journeying to Boston where she met and married a wealthy commercial agent and former seaman and became a powerful force within the lively black community on Beacon Hill’s North Slope. Between 1831-1833 Stewart’s “intellectual productions” ranged across topics including true emancipation for African Americans, abolition, the hypocrisy of white Christianity, black liberation theology, and gender inequity. Along with David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, (1829), her body of work constitutes a significant foundation for black radical politics.
David P. Cline
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469630434
- eISBN:
- 9781469630458
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469630434.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The final chapter documents the mainline churches and seminaries in the late sixties experiencing a series of crises in reponse to the great change of the decade. As inner city church membership ...
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The final chapter documents the mainline churches and seminaries in the late sixties experiencing a series of crises in reponse to the great change of the decade. As inner city church membership declined, seminarians sought greater relevance and “authenticity” from their institutions and in their education. In 1968, this was capped off by death of Martin Luther King, and the Columbia Strike and the supportive response at neighboring Union Theological Seminary. As the nation turned its attention outward toward the war in Vietnam and inward toward increasingly volatile urban situtations, SIM was unable to attract needed financial support to continue its growing decentralized program of urban ministry projects, and it disbanded in late spring of 1968.Less
The final chapter documents the mainline churches and seminaries in the late sixties experiencing a series of crises in reponse to the great change of the decade. As inner city church membership declined, seminarians sought greater relevance and “authenticity” from their institutions and in their education. In 1968, this was capped off by death of Martin Luther King, and the Columbia Strike and the supportive response at neighboring Union Theological Seminary. As the nation turned its attention outward toward the war in Vietnam and inward toward increasingly volatile urban situtations, SIM was unable to attract needed financial support to continue its growing decentralized program of urban ministry projects, and it disbanded in late spring of 1968.
Michelle A. Gonzalez
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823257522
- eISBN:
- 9780823261567
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257522.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Latina theologian Michelle A. Gonzalez states that a merely Western theological anthropology will not suffice in a world that is multicultural and globalized. There are various anthropologies, as ...
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Latina theologian Michelle A. Gonzalez states that a merely Western theological anthropology will not suffice in a world that is multicultural and globalized. There are various anthropologies, as each generation of Christians reinterprets the meaning of our humanity in the sociocultural, historical, and political context of the day. Non-Western, contextualized anthropologies, rooted in the insights of liberation and constructive theology, bring to the fore the traditionally marginalized concepts of difference, body, and race. The idea of mestizaje within Latino/a theologies shows, for example, how hybridity is not merely typical for Latino/a culture but can be seen as a fundamental characteristic of human existence in general and of Christ as the full image of humanity in particular. Black theology highlights the problematic connection between the image of God and embodiment and thematizes how racism relates to the construction of what is and is not human. Theology must critically investigate how its constructions of humanity privilege certain traits of human existence over others, which hinders us in genuinely considering all human beings as created in the image of God.Less
Latina theologian Michelle A. Gonzalez states that a merely Western theological anthropology will not suffice in a world that is multicultural and globalized. There are various anthropologies, as each generation of Christians reinterprets the meaning of our humanity in the sociocultural, historical, and political context of the day. Non-Western, contextualized anthropologies, rooted in the insights of liberation and constructive theology, bring to the fore the traditionally marginalized concepts of difference, body, and race. The idea of mestizaje within Latino/a theologies shows, for example, how hybridity is not merely typical for Latino/a culture but can be seen as a fundamental characteristic of human existence in general and of Christ as the full image of humanity in particular. Black theology highlights the problematic connection between the image of God and embodiment and thematizes how racism relates to the construction of what is and is not human. Theology must critically investigate how its constructions of humanity privilege certain traits of human existence over others, which hinders us in genuinely considering all human beings as created in the image of God.
Jesse Curtis
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781479809370
- eISBN:
- 9781479809394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479809370.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
In the years after the civil rights movement, evangelicals on a global stage argued over the very meaning of the gospel. This chapter traces this debate from the famous International Lausanne ...
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In the years after the civil rights movement, evangelicals on a global stage argued over the very meaning of the gospel. This chapter traces this debate from the famous International Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974 to a lesser-known conference named “Evangelizing Ethnic America” in 1985. While black and Latin American evangelicals argued that racism had to be confronted and social justice could not be separated from the gospel message, leading figures in the Church Growth Movement and Southern Baptist Convention took a pragmatic approach, seeking to use race for the purposes of conversion. While concern for social justice seemed to gain the ascendancy at Lausanne, the trajectory to Houston ’85 signaled that colorblind Christians in the United States could become multiethnic without becoming antiracist.Less
In the years after the civil rights movement, evangelicals on a global stage argued over the very meaning of the gospel. This chapter traces this debate from the famous International Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974 to a lesser-known conference named “Evangelizing Ethnic America” in 1985. While black and Latin American evangelicals argued that racism had to be confronted and social justice could not be separated from the gospel message, leading figures in the Church Growth Movement and Southern Baptist Convention took a pragmatic approach, seeking to use race for the purposes of conversion. While concern for social justice seemed to gain the ascendancy at Lausanne, the trajectory to Houston ’85 signaled that colorblind Christians in the United States could become multiethnic without becoming antiracist.
Travis E. Ables
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780823297993
- eISBN:
- 9781531500580
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823297993.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
The pattern of holy substitutes persists into the twentieth century in two streams: the lynching of Black Southerners, and the emergence of the fundamentalist movement. Black preachers and ...
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The pattern of holy substitutes persists into the twentieth century in two streams: the lynching of Black Southerners, and the emergence of the fundamentalist movement. Black preachers and theologians used the cross to expose the brutal injustice of the lynching tree, as James Cone argues. Fundamentalists identified penal substitution as one of the nonnegotiables of the Christian faith. These traditions reveal two sides of the cross this book has traced throughout Western Christian history: its function in legitimating the deaths of rejected peoples for the good of the social body, and its role as a boundary marker. Black bodies were murdered to preserve the purity of white society, and fundamentalists leveraged the cross in a culture war against modernism. In Black theology, however, lynching victims become holy figures who exposed the evil of extrajudicial execution, and who participated in Christ’s innocent death. The chapter closes with a reprise of the argument of the book, and a meditation on Anselm and the limitations of atonement theology.Less
The pattern of holy substitutes persists into the twentieth century in two streams: the lynching of Black Southerners, and the emergence of the fundamentalist movement. Black preachers and theologians used the cross to expose the brutal injustice of the lynching tree, as James Cone argues. Fundamentalists identified penal substitution as one of the nonnegotiables of the Christian faith. These traditions reveal two sides of the cross this book has traced throughout Western Christian history: its function in legitimating the deaths of rejected peoples for the good of the social body, and its role as a boundary marker. Black bodies were murdered to preserve the purity of white society, and fundamentalists leveraged the cross in a culture war against modernism. In Black theology, however, lynching victims become holy figures who exposed the evil of extrajudicial execution, and who participated in Christ’s innocent death. The chapter closes with a reprise of the argument of the book, and a meditation on Anselm and the limitations of atonement theology.
Matthew Harper
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469629360
- eISBN:
- 9781469629384
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469629360.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter introduces the book’s main arguments: that black southerners interpreted political events by discerning God’s purposes in emancipation and that they understood the entire late nineteenth ...
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This chapter introduces the book’s main arguments: that black southerners interpreted political events by discerning God’s purposes in emancipation and that they understood the entire late nineteenth century as an age of emancipation, notwithstanding political setbacks. Although most black Protestants agreed that God had intervened dramatically to free four million slaves, they disagreed in the decades that followed about what exactly God planned for their emancipated race. They placed their own experience within biblical narratives in order to predict a hopeful future. Black Protestants’ end times theology, or eschatology, defied categories of white Protestant theology and mattered in both black political decisions and black self understanding. The book brings state and local politics to the scholarship of black religion by focusing on North Carolina. The introduction argues that historians cannot understand black politics without understanding how black Protestants read different biblical stories and interpreted prophecies of the end times.Less
This chapter introduces the book’s main arguments: that black southerners interpreted political events by discerning God’s purposes in emancipation and that they understood the entire late nineteenth century as an age of emancipation, notwithstanding political setbacks. Although most black Protestants agreed that God had intervened dramatically to free four million slaves, they disagreed in the decades that followed about what exactly God planned for their emancipated race. They placed their own experience within biblical narratives in order to predict a hopeful future. Black Protestants’ end times theology, or eschatology, defied categories of white Protestant theology and mattered in both black political decisions and black self understanding. The book brings state and local politics to the scholarship of black religion by focusing on North Carolina. The introduction argues that historians cannot understand black politics without understanding how black Protestants read different biblical stories and interpreted prophecies of the end times.
Andrea C. Abrams
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814705230
- eISBN:
- 9780814705254
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814705230.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Blackness, as a concept, is extremely fluid: it can refer to cultural and ethnic identity, socio-political status, an aesthetic and embodied way of being, a social and political consciousness, or a ...
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Blackness, as a concept, is extremely fluid: it can refer to cultural and ethnic identity, socio-political status, an aesthetic and embodied way of being, a social and political consciousness, or a diasporic kinship. It is used as a description of skin color ranging from the palest cream to the richest chocolate; as a marker of enslavement, marginalization, criminality, filth, or evil; or as a symbol of pride, beauty, elegance, strength, and depth. Despite the fact that it is elusive and difficult to define, blackness serves as one of the most potent and unifying domains of identity. This book offers an ethnographic study of blackness as it is understood within a specific community—that of the First Afrikan Church, a middle-class Afrocentric congregation in Atlanta, Georgia. Drawing on nearly two years of participant observation and in-depth interviews, the book examines how this community has employed Afrocentrism and Black theology as a means of negotiating the unreconciled natures of thoughts and ideals that are part of being both black and American. Specifically, it examines the ways in which First Afrikan's construction of community is influenced by shared understandings of blackness, and probes the means through which individuals negotiate the tensions created by competing constructions of their black identity. Although Afrocentrism operates as the focal point of this discussion, the book examines questions of political identity, religious expression, and gender dynamics through the lens of a unique black church.Less
Blackness, as a concept, is extremely fluid: it can refer to cultural and ethnic identity, socio-political status, an aesthetic and embodied way of being, a social and political consciousness, or a diasporic kinship. It is used as a description of skin color ranging from the palest cream to the richest chocolate; as a marker of enslavement, marginalization, criminality, filth, or evil; or as a symbol of pride, beauty, elegance, strength, and depth. Despite the fact that it is elusive and difficult to define, blackness serves as one of the most potent and unifying domains of identity. This book offers an ethnographic study of blackness as it is understood within a specific community—that of the First Afrikan Church, a middle-class Afrocentric congregation in Atlanta, Georgia. Drawing on nearly two years of participant observation and in-depth interviews, the book examines how this community has employed Afrocentrism and Black theology as a means of negotiating the unreconciled natures of thoughts and ideals that are part of being both black and American. Specifically, it examines the ways in which First Afrikan's construction of community is influenced by shared understandings of blackness, and probes the means through which individuals negotiate the tensions created by competing constructions of their black identity. Although Afrocentrism operates as the focal point of this discussion, the book examines questions of political identity, religious expression, and gender dynamics through the lens of a unique black church.