Conceptions Of God Freedom And Ethics In African American And Jewish Theology

This book is a consideration of major contemporary Black and Jewish understanding of God, examining how profound faith in a just God is sustained, and even strengthened, in the face of particularly horrific and long-standing evil and suffering in a community.

This book is a consideration of major contemporary Black and Jewish understanding of God, examining how profound faith in a just God is sustained, and even strengthened, in the face of particularly horrific and long-standing evil and suffering in a community.

This handbook explores the central theme of Christian faith from various disciplinary approaches and different contexts of black experience in the United States. The central unifying theme is freedom; an important concept both in American culture and Christianity. African American theology represents a Christian understanding of God's freedom and the good news of God's call for all humankind to enter life-true human identity and moral responsibility-in genuine and just community. Contributors to the volume argue that African American theology highlights how racism and other intersecting forms of oppression complicate the human predicament; and that their eradication requires an expansion of salvation to include the liberation of persons who lack full participation in society and enjoyment of the good (and goods) made possible by that society. The essays in this handbook employ the tools of biblical criticism, history, cultural and social analysis, religious studies, philosophy, and systematic theology, in order to explore and assess the nature and impact of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, immigration, and cultural and moral pluralism in America-as well as the intersections between African American and African diasporan religious thought and life.

This text introduces Ben Ammi, the leader and theologian of the African Hebrew Israelite community, as a systematic thinker and theologian. It examines his many books and speeches in order to provide a comprehensive introduction to his thought in the context of both African American and Jewish contemporaries and precursors. Divided into three thematic sections, History, Law, and Language, the text introduces Ben Ammi's understanding of the nature of God, the responsibilities of the human, and the narrative of history. Ben Ammi was a deeply spiritual but also remarkably modern thinker who blended scientific thought into his evolving socio-theology, while seeking to remove religion from the realm of mythology. The book evaluates how Ben Ammi's theology is one bound to concepts of humility and learning how to go with the grain of the natural world in order to find humanity's true center as a part of nature.

Many have used the term 'tragic' to refer to African American religious and cultural experience. After a studied meditation on and articulation of the 'tragic vision,' Johnson argues that African American Christian Consciousness is an expression of the tragic and a tragic expression of the Christian Faith.

Black Lives Matter, like its predecessor movements, embodies flesh and blood through local organizing, national and global protests, hunger strikes, and numerous acts of civil disobedience. Chants like “All night! All day! We’re gonna fight for Freddie Gray!” and “No justice, no fear! Sandra Bland is marching here!” give voice simultaneously to the rage, truth, hope, and insurgency that sustain BLM. While BLM has generously welcomed a broad group of individuals whom religious institutions have historically resisted or rejected, contrary to general perceptions, religion neither has been absent nor excluded from the movement’s activities. This volume has a simple, but far-reaching argument: religion is an important thread in BLM. To advance this claim, Race, Religion, and Black Lives Matter examines religion’s place in the movement through the lenses of history, politics, and culture. While this collection is not exhaustive or comprehensive in its coverage of religion and BLM, it selectively anthologizes unique aspects of Black religious history, thought, and culture in relation to political struggle in the contemporary era. The chapters aim to document historical change in light of current trends and current events. The contributors analyze religion and BLM in a current historical moment fraught with aggressive, fascist, authoritarian tendencies and one shaped by profound ingenuity, creativity, and insightful perspectives on Black history and culture.

In this book Kurt Buhring explores concepts of spirit(s) within various Black religions as a means to make a constructive theological contribution to contemporary Black theology in regard to ideas of the Holy Spirit, or pneumatology. He argues that there are rich resources within African and African-based religions to develop a more robust notion of the Holy Spirit for contemporary Black liberation theology. In so doing, Buhring offers a pneumatology that understands divine power and presence within humanity and through human action. The theology offered maintains the fundamental claim that God acts as liberator of the oppressed, while also calling for greater human responsibility and capability for bringing about liberation.

This work is concerned with the way Black Christian formation, because of the acceptance of universal, absolute, and exclusive Christian doctrines, seems to justify and even encourage anti-African sentiment.