Bitter The Chastening Rod

Bitter the Chastening Rod follows in the footsteps of the first collection of African American biblical interpretation, Stony the Road We Trod (1991). Nineteen Africana biblical scholars contribute cutting-edge essays reading Jesus, criminalization, the enslaved, and whitened interpretations of the enslaved. They present pedagogical strategies for teaching, hermeneutics, and bible translation that center Black Lives Matter and black culture. Biblical narratives, news media, and personal stories intertwine in critical discussions of black rage, protest, anti-blackness, and mothering in the context of black precarity.

Acts of the Apostles presents Roman officials and militarized police criminalizing, prosecuting, and incarcerating a movement of Jesus followers. This book brings Acts into conversation with ancient and modern understandings of crime by tending to laws and by exploring how different writers portray the criminalized.

Transgressing is an appropriate response to race as “a crime against humanity.” No one chooses their race at birth, yet many suffer because of their race. And while many people choose to change citizenship, their accents and faces can give them away as outsiders. Racism thrives on the categorization of people according to their race. Like the Black and White dichotomy, other racial and ethnic discriminations such as casteism, antisemitism, Zionism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia undergird and promote segregation all around the world. Dismantling racism requires challenging racialized oppressions and segregations in sacred texts and contexts, in beloved traditions and hallowed theologies. This book offers such biblical and theological discourses in order to transgress the discriminative segregations of racism in connection with other forms of exploitative systems (or shitstems). The book engages with racialized biblical texts and religious theologies, with acts of racial discrimination in connection with slavery and colonialism, with agonies of people in diaspora, struggles of postcolonial minoritized people, courage of indigenous people to subvert, and with the race-insensitive practices of theological and religious education. The contributors are located in Africa, Asia, North America, Europe, and Oceania.

This is an essential companion to The Presbyterian Hymnal and Hymns, Psalms, & Spiritual Songs. Church musicians and pastors will welcome the ease with which they can locate keywords, topics, and scriptural references.

This book delves into the corporate takeover of public morality, or ‘woke capitalism’. Discussing the political causes that it has adopted, and the social causes that it has not, it argues that this extension of capitalism has negative implications for democracy’s future.

Within the Circle is the first anthology to present the entire spectrum of twentieth-century African American literary and cultural criticism. It begins with the Harlem Renaissance, continues through civil rights, the Black Arts Movement, and on into contemporary debates of poststructuralist and black feminist theory. Drawing on a quote from Frederick Douglass for the title of this book, Angelyn Mitchell explains in her introduction the importance for those "within the circle" of African American literature to examine their own works and to engage this critical canon. The essays in this collection--many of which are not widely available today--either initiated or gave critical definition to specific periods or movements of African American literature. They address issues such as integration, separatism, political action, black nationalism, Afrocentricity, black feminism, as well as the role of art, the artist, the critic, and the audience. With selections from Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, W. E. B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Barbara Smith, Alice Walker, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and many others, this definitive collection provides a dynamic model of the cultural, ideological, historical, and aesthetic considerations in African American literature and literary criticism. A major contribution to the study of African American literature, this volume will serve as a foundation for future work by students and scholars. Its importance will be recognized by all those interested in modern literary theory as well as general readers concerned with the African American experience. Selections by (partial list): Houston A. Baker, Jr., James Baldwin, Sterling Brown, Barbara Christian, W. E. B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, LeRoi Jones, Sarah Webster Fabio, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W. Lawrence Hogue, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, Deborah E. McDowell, Toni Morrison, J. Saunders Redding, George Schuyler, Barbara Smith, Valerie Smith, Hortense J. Spillers, Robert B. Stepto, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, Mary Helen Washington, Richard Wright

Christian Sacred Music in the Americas explores the richness of Christian musical traditions and reflects the distinctive critical perspectives of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music. This volume, edited by Andrew Shenton and Joanna Smolko, is a follow-up to SCSM’s Exploring Christian Song and offers a cross-section of the most current and outstanding scholarship from an international array of writers. The essays survey a broad geographical area and demonstrate the enormous diversity of music-making and scholarship within that area. Contributors utilize interdisciplinary methodologies including media studies, cultural studies, theological studies, and different analytical and ethnographical approaches to music. While there are some studies that focus on a single country, musical figure, or region, this is the first collection to represent the vast range of sacred music in the Americas and the different approaches to studying them in context.

"A new approach to teaching general music. This book is a collection of lesson plans and units that artfully blend music making with relevant issues of social justice. Particularly accessible to middle and high school classroom music teachers, the book includes a companion website with links to all of the music listening and videos. Student-centered lessons include discussion prompts, experiences with diverse genres and styles of music, and music making projects with an integration of technology that activate students' creativity and empathy. Unit topics-ranging from "War" to "Climate Change"-include cross-disciplinary lessons with the arts playing a central role. Well-researched introductory materials as well as "how-to" guides for topics, such as "composing in the classroom," enhance its practicality. This book is a resource, with ready-to-go lessons and classroom materials, offering music teachers a lens for engaging students in purposeful music making toward social justice"--