The Black Church Studies Reader addresses the depth and breadth of Black theological studies, from Biblical studies and ethics to homiletics and pastoral care. The book examines salient themes of social and religious significance such as gender, sexuality, race, social class, health care, and public policy. While the volume centers around African American experiences and studies, it also attends to broader African continental and Diasporan religious contexts. The contributors reflect an interdisciplinary blend of Black Church Studies scholars and practitioners from across the country. The text seeks to address the following fundamental questions: What constitutes Black Church Studies as a discipline or field of study? What is the significance of Black Church Studies for theological education? What is the relationship between Black Church Studies and the broader academic study of Black religions? What is the relationship between Black Church Studies and local congregations (as well as other faith-based entities)? The book's search for the answers to these questions is compelling and illuminating.
This first-ever Black Catholic Studies Reader offers an introduction to the theology and history of the Black Catholic experience from those who know it best: Black Catholic scholars, teachers, activists, and ministers. The reader offers a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach that illuminates what it means to be Black and Catholic in the United States. This collection of essays from prominent scholars, both past and present, brings together contributions from theologians M. Shawn Copeland, Kim Harris, Diana Hayes, Bryan Massingale, and C. Vanessa White, and historians Cecilia Moore, Diane Batts Morrow, and Ronald Sharps, and selections from an earlier generation of thinkers and activists, including Thea Bowman, Cyprian Davis, and Clarence Rivers. Contributions delve into the interlocking fields of history, spirituality, liturgy, and biography. Through their contributions, Black Catholic Studies scholars engage theologies of liberation and the reality of racism, the Black struggle for recognition within the Church, and the distinctiveness of African-inspired spirituality, prayer, and worship. By considering their racial and religious identities, these select Black Catholic theologians and historians add their voices to the contemporary conversation surrounding culture, race, and religion in America, inviting engagement from students and teachers of the American experience, social commentators and advocates, and theologians and persons of faith.
Black Church Beginnings provides an intimate look at the struggles of African Americans to establish spiritual communities in the harsh world of slavery in the American colonies. Written by one of today's foremost experts on African American religion, this book traces the growth of the black church from its start in the mid-1700s to the end of the nineteenth century.As Henry Mitchell shows, the first African American churches didn't just organize; they labored hard, long, and sacrificially to form a meaningful, independent faith. Mitchell insightfully takes readers inside this process of development. He candidly examines the challenge of finding adequately trained pastors for new local congregations, confrontations resulting from internal class structure in big city churches, and obstacles posed by emerging denominationalism.Original in its subject matter and singular in its analysis, Mitchell's Black Church Beginnings makes a major contribution to the study of American church history.
The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.
Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities. In The Black Church in the African American Experience, based on a ten-year study, is the largest nongovernmental study of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study on the subject since the 1930s. Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive historical overview of seven mainline black denominations, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya present an analysis of the Black Church as it relates to the history of African Americans and to contemporary black culture. In examining both the internal structure of the Church and the reactions of the Church to external, societal changes, the authors provide important insights into the Church’s relationship to politics, economics, women, youth, and music. Among other topics, Lincoln and Mamiya discuss the attitude of the clergy toward women pastors, the reaction of the Church to the civil rights movement, the attempts of the Church to involve young people, the impact of the black consciousness movement and Black Liberation Theology and clergy, and trends that will define the Black Church well into the next century. This study is complete with a comprehensive bibliography of literature on the black experience in religion. Funding for the ten-year survey was made possible by the Lilly Endowment and the Ford Foundation.
Religious StudiesOver the last thirty years African American voices and perspectives have become essential to the study of the various theological disciplines. Writing out of their particular position in the North American context, African American thinkers have contributed significantly to biblical studies, theology, church history, ethics, sociology of religion, homiletics, pastoral care, and a number of other fields. Frequently the work of these African American scholars is brought together in the seminary curriculum under the rubric of the black church studies class. Drawing on these several disciplines, the black church studies class seeks to give an account of the broad meaning of Christian faith in the African American experience. Up to now, however, there has not been a single, comprehensive textbook designed to meet the needs of students and instructors in these classes. Black Church Studies: An Introduction will meet that need. Drawing on the work of specialists in several fields, it introduces all of the core theological disciplines from an African American standpoint, from African American biblical interpretation to womanist theology and and ethics to sociological understandings of the life of African American churches. It will become an indispensable resource for all those preparing to serve in African American congregations, or to understand African American contributions to the study of Christian faith. Looks at the diverse definitions and functions of the Black Church as well as the ways in which race, class, religion, and gender inform its evolution. Provides a comprehensive view of the contributions of African American Scholarship to the current theological discussion. Written by scholars with broad expertise in a number of subject areas and disciplines. Will enable the reader to relate the work of African American theological scholars to the tasks of preaching, teaching, and leading in local congregations. Will provide the reader the most comprehensive understanding of African American theological scholarship available in one volume. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Brite Divinity SchoolJuan Floyd-Thomas, Texas Christian UniversityCarol B. Duncan, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityStephen G. Ray Jr., Lutheran Theological Seminary-PhiladelphiaNancy Lynne Westfield, Drew UniversityTheology/Theology and Doctrine/Contemporary Theology
A revealing look at the identity and mission of the Black church What is the true nature and mission of the church? Is its proper Christian purpose to save souls, or to transform the social order? This question is especially fraught when the church is one built by an enslaved people and formed, from its beginning, at the center of an oppressed community’s fight for personhood and freedom. Such is the central tension in the identity and mission of the Black church in the United States. For decades the Black church and Black theology have held each other at arm’s length. Black theology has emphasized the role of Christian faith in addressing racism and other forms of oppression, arguing that Jesus urged his disciples to seek the freedom of all peoples. Meanwhile, the Black church, even when focused on social concerns, has often emphasized personal piety rather than social protest. With the rising influence of white evangelicalism, biblical fundamentalism, and the prosperity gospel, the divide has become even more pronounced. In The Divided Mind of the Black Church, Raphael G. Warnock, Senior Pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., traces the historical significance of the rise and development of Black theology as an important conversation partner for the Black church. Calling for honest dialogue between Black and womanist theologians and Black pastors, this fresh theological treatment demands a new look at the church’s essential mission.
The Black Church is an institution that emerged in rebellion against injustice perpetrated upon black bodies. How is it, then, that black women's oppression persists in black churches? This book engages the Chalcedonian Definition as the starting point for exploring the body as a moral dilemma.
"The history of black people in the United States is a history of challenge and resilience, of suffering and solidarity, of injustice and prophetic resistance. It is a history steeped in the hope and strength that African Americans have derived from their faith in God and from the church that provided safety, community, consolation, and empowerment. In this new volume from pastor and scholar Rev. Dr. Wayne Croft, the history of the black Baptist church unfolds-from its theological roots in the Radical Reformation of Europe and North America, to the hush arbors and praise houses of slavery's invisible institution, to the evolution of distinctively black denominations. In a wonderfully readable narrative style, the author relates the development of diverse black Baptist associations and conventions, from the eighteenth century through the twentieth century's civil rights movement. Ideal for clergy and laity alike, the book highlights key leaders, theological concepts, historic events, and social concerns that influenced the growth of what we know today as the diverse black Baptist family of churches"--
This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the theological challenge presented by the new post-Brexit epoch. The referendum vote for Britain to leave the European Union has led to a seismic shift in the ways in which parts of the British population view and judge their compatriots. The subsequent rise in the reported number of racially motivated incidents and the climate of vilification and negativity directed at anyone not viewed as ‘authentically’ British should be a matter of concern for all people. The book is comprised of a series of essays that address varying aspects of what it means to be British and the ways in which churches in Britain and the Christian faith could and should respond to a rising tide of White English nationalism. It is a provocative challenge to the all too often tolerated xenophobia, as well as the paucity of response from many church leaders in the UK. This critique is offered via the means of a prophetic, postcolonial model of Black theology that challenges the incipient sense of White entitlement and parochial ‘nativism’ that pervaded much of the referendum debate. The essays in this book challenge the church and wider society to ensure justice and equity for all, not just a privileged sense of entitlement for some. It will be of keen interest to any scholar of Black, political and liberation theology as well as those involved in cultural studies from a postcolonial perspective.
