Cut Loose Your Stammering Tongue

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 includes three additional provocative essays.

Black theology's addressing of economic poverty in the Black neighborhoods and communities of the United States gives substantive reasoning to the fact that Black poverty is a theological problem. In connecting the narrative of idolatry to the irreversible harm that is associated with all forms of poverty, this new book interlocks the racial subjugation of Black Americans with the false assumptions of capitalism. Here the inner-city blues of poverty are experienced by those who reside in metropolitan cities and rural towns. The poverty of Black Americans is described with a vision of development and reconciliation--one that is intentional in its use of cultural language and inclusive to the destructive images of Black people's deprivation. In understanding how idolatry foundationalizes deprivation in the inner-city communities, I envision the liberation motif in Black theology working with the mission of the Black church for the purposes of community empowerment and neighborhood development. As a form of material and structural poverty, Black poverty is an interdisciplinary study that requires a holistic approach to ministry. With a theological focus on deprived inner-city communities, this new volume strategically moves the conversation of Black poverty from description to construction to solution.

"Examines the history of worship in the Black Church in America, the enduring effects of white supremacy on its liturgical heritage, and proffers a new liturgical paradigm, using a womanist hermeneutic"--

Liberation theologies are the most important theological movement of our time. In the 20th century, their influence shook the Third and First Worlds, grass root organizations and the affluent Western academy, as well as the lives of priests and laypeople persecuted and murdered for living out their understanding of the Christian message. In the 21st C their insights and goals remain – unfortunately – as valid as ever.

The third and final volume in the first comprehensive history of Black social Christianity, by the "greatest theological ethicist of the twenty-first century" (Michael Eric Dyson) The Black social gospel is a tradition of unsurpassed and ongoing importance in American life, argues Gary Dorrien in his groundbreaking trilogy on the history of Black social Christianity. This concluding volume, an interpretation of the tradition since the early 1970s, follows Dorrien's award-winning The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel and Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel. Beginning in the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr., Dorrien examines the past fifty years of this intellectual and activist tradition, interpreting its politics, theology, ethics, social criticism, and social justice organizing. He argues that Black social Christianity is today an intersectional tradition of discourse and activist religion that interrelates liberation theology, womanist theology, antiracist politics, LGBTQ+ theory, cultural criticism, progressive religion, broad-based interfaith organizing, and global solidarity politics. A Darkly Radiant Vision features in-depth discussions of Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Samuel DeWitt Proctor, Gayraud Wilmore, James Cone, Cornel West, Katie Geneva Cannon, Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Traci Blackmon, William J. Barber II, Raphael G. Warnock, and many others.

"Makes the case that the eternal power of God's liberating presence will ultimately defeat the historical power of white supremacy"--

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.

Named an Honor Book for Nonfiction by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association African American theology has a long and important history. With modern roots in the civil rights movements of the 1960s, African American theology has gone beyond issues of justice and social transformation to participate in broader dialogues of theological inquiry. The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology brings together leading scholars in the field to offer a critical and comprehensive analysis of this theological tradition in its many forms and contexts. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this Oxford Handbook examines the nature, structures, and functions of African American Theology. The volume surveys the field by highlighting its sources, doctrines, internal debates, current challenges, and future prospects in order to present key topics related to the wider palette of Black Religion in a sustained scholarly format. This formative collection presents current scholarship on African American Theology and scripture, eschatology, Christology, womanist theology, sexuality, ontology, the global economy, and much more. The contributors represent a diverse set of faith perspectives, adding to the layered discourses within the volume. These essays further important discussions on the pressing debates and challenges that shape black and womanist theologies.