Ecowomanist wisdom for justice, faith, and the flourishing of humanity and the earth.
Preaching Black Earth is a groundbreaking collection of sermons, meditations, poems, and interviews that illuminates the powerful intersections of environmental justice, racial justice, and faith. With contributions from Bible scholars, pastors, ecowomanist thinkers, and political activists, this volume offers a profound exploration of how Black and ally communities can craft new theologies to confront the urge...
In this, his premiere work, Cornel West challenges African Americans to consider the incorporation of Marxism into their theological perspectives, thereby adopting the mindset that it is class more so than race that renders one powerless in America. His work reflects political and cultural perspectives borne out of his own formative life experiences. Decades later, his arguments continue to capture the theological imagination of many and influence the critical engagement of generations of schola...
The late Katie Geneva Cannon was the founder of womanist ethics. Her work continues to generate new explorations of womanist moral thought. In this volume, leading womanist ethicists and theologians come together to continue Cannon’s work in four critical areas: justice, leadership, embodied ethics, and sacred texts. The goal is to continue Cannon’s pursuit of a world of inclusivity and hope while realistically analyzing the discrimination, disenfranchisement, and systemic hatred that stand as o...
The first biography of its kind about Desmond Tutu, this book introduces readers to Tutu’s spiritual life and examines how it shaped his commitment to restorative justice and reconciliation.
Desmond Tutu was a pivotal leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and remains a beloved and important emblem of peace and justice around the world. Even those who do not know the major events of Tutu’s life—receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, serving as the first black archbishop of Cap...
The first biography of its kind about Desmond Tutu, this book introduces readers to Tutu’s spiritual life and examines how it shaped his commitment to restorative justice and reconciliation.
Desmond Tutu was a pivotal leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and remains a beloved and important emblem of peace and justice around the world. Even those who do not know the major events of Tutu’s life—receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, serving as the first black archbishop of Cap...
Howard Thurman was famously known as one of the towering giants of American religion in the twentieth century. His writings have influenced some of the most important religious and political figures of the last century, from Martin Luther King to Barack Obama. Theologians such as James Cone and Cornel West regularly signal their indebtedness to him. He was a mystic, a preacher, an educator, a theologian, and much more. It is impossible to understand the African American church today without an a...
The Historic Address to Congress of Henry Highland Garnet
""In a time of division, we can have no better prophetic voice to frame today's discussions of justice and freedom than a one-legged fugitive slave who came to a Capitol without a Dome to tell how the Constitution could be made more perfect, in the name of God.""
—from a letter sent by the President of the Presbyterian Historical Society to the President of the Maryland State Senate
In February 1865, just days after the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery, Presbyterian pastor a...
The struggle for justice is ongoing. In answering the biblical call to act justly and love mercifully, can Christians cross lines of privilege to walk humbly not only with God but with their marginalized neighbors as well? No Innocent Bystanders looks at the role of allies in social justice movements and asks what works, what doesn't, and why. It explains what allies legitimately can accomplish, what they can't, and what kind of humility and clarity is required to tell the differenc...
Considering that the Bible was used to justify and perpetuate African American enslavement, why would it be given such authority? In this fascinating volume, Powery and Sadler explore how the Bible became a source of liberation for enslaved African Americans by analyzing its function in pre-Civil War freedom narratives. They explain the various ways in which enslaved African Americans interpreted the Bible and used it as a source for hope, empowerment, and literacy. The authors sho...
This volume in the Library of Theological Ethics series draws on writings from the early nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries to explore the intersection of black experience and Christian faith throughout the history of the United States. The first sections follow the many dimensions of the African American struggle with racism in this country: struggles against theories of white supremacy, against chattel slavery, and against racial segregation and discrimination. The l...
Writing across theological disciplines, nine African American women scholars reflect on what it means to live as responsible doers of justice. With some classic essays and some contributions published here for the first time, each chapter in this new volume in the Library of Theological Ethics series presents analytical strategies for understanding the story of womanist scholarship in the service of the black community.
This book brings to the fore the difficult realities of racism and the sexual violation of women. Traci West argues for a liberative method of Christian social ethics in which the discussion begins not with generic philosophical concepts but in the concrete realities of the lives of the socially and economically marginalized.
An expansion of the 1971 classic text, this second edition of Liberation and Reconciliation argues for a balance between the quest for liberation and the need for reconciliation in black-white relations. Written by one of the pioneers of Black Theology, it examines biblical and theological themes from the perspective of Black experience and concludes that nonviolent reconciliation is the best response to racial oppression.
How do black political needs and goals relate to black religious experience? What is the meaning of religion--and of Christ--in a racist society? In this classic early articulation of black theology, first published in 1974, J. Deotis Roberts argues that reconciliation is the essence of the good news, but it must be in conjunction with liberation. Ethnicity and theology, he contends, must meet in the specific black religious experience by recognizing the liberal, activist, and ev...
Leading contemporary theologians and scholars present essays on the themes of liberation and reconciliation in tribute to J. Deotis Roberts. The essays are divided into the following sections: Theological Reflection, Faith in Dialogue, and Shaping the Practice of Ministry. The compilation presents an interesting array of perspectives on the ways in which Christian theology, ethics, and ministry are involved in the quests for liberation and reconciliation in North America and the rest...
African American women continue to confess their call to ministry even when they know such a confession may cause them to face criticism and even ostracism from many of the same men and women who nurtured them in the faith. In This Is My Story, thirteen successful African American women clergy tell the powerful, inspirational, and sometimes heartbreaking stories of their calls and ministerial journeys, which they experienced in the midst of anguish, uncertainty, and in many ca...
A study of two of the most significant prophetic leaders in the twentieth century, J. Deotis Roberts's Bonhoeffer and King is an instructive work in theological ethics. This book considers and compares the theological reflections that guided Bonhoeffer's courageous stand against Nazism and King's quest for civil rights in America.
Believing that African American religious studies has reached a crossroads, Cornel West and Eddie Glaude seek, in this landmark anthology, to steer the discipline into the future. Arguing that the complexity of beliefs, choices, and actions of African Americans need not be reduced to expressions of black religion, West and Glaude call for more careful reflection on the complex relationships of African American religious studies to conceptions of class, gender, sexual orientation,...
Drawing on slave narratives found in forty-one volumes of interviews and one hundred autobiographies by former slaves, these contributors explore how enslaved African Americans received the often oppressive faith of their masters but transformed it into a gospel of liberation. This classic work demonstrates how an authentic black theology of liberation today must listen to the divine spirit that once fed and continues to feed the black religious experience. This second edition in...
At the roots of African American Christian life is a powerful force of soul, a dynamic spirituality that provides joy and hope. This African American spirituality empowers a celebration of life that transforms culture. The dynamic experience of African American churches establishes a new kind of freedom that sets an example for all other peoples in their struggles for liberation from the world's shackles. Soul Survivors is a stirring call to celebrate the depths and diversity of spi...
This valuable resource from one of the founding fathers of the black theology movement discusses how to minister to the black community. Using an interdisciplinary approach, J. Deotis Toberts shows how theological concepts can be applied to education, pastoral care, and political and economic issues.
This analysis of four Black religious leaders--Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Joseph H. Jackson, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr.--reviews their differences and determines whether grounds for coalitional activity still exists. These leaders all clearly agreed that racism should be opposed but they vigorously disagreed on the forms the opposition should take.
Robert McAfee Brown's Religion and Violence is a comprehensive introduction to the ethical and moral questions that abound at the intersection of violence and religion. Brown discusses such important issues as nuclear war, terrorism, capital punishment, and revolution.
Challenging all who are concerned about religion in today's world, J. Deotis Roberts outlines a new way of looking at the essential questions. Roberts proposes a theology concerned with concrete and specific situations that also retains a universal vision. In discussing the relationship of American black thought to African, liberation, feminist, Asian, and Euro-American theologies, he covers significant religious issues such as love, justice, power, and evil.
