Philosophy Of Religion And The African American Experience

African American theologians tend not to find philosophy as a meaningful tool to advance their theological positions. African Americans and Christianity offers an engaging and thorough bridge between African American theology and philosophy of religion.

African American theologians tend not to find philosophy as a meaningful tool to advance their theological positions. African Americans and Christianity offers an engaging and thorough bridge between African American theology and philosophy of religion.

This book presents the first introduction to African American academic philosophers, exploring their concepts and ideas and revealing the critical part they have played in the formation of philosophy in the USA. The book begins with the early years of educational attainment by African American philosophers in the 1860s. To demonstrate the impact of their philosophical work on general problems in the discipline, chapters are broken down into four major areas of study: Axiology, Social Science, Philosophy of Religion and Philosophy of Science. Providing personal narratives on individual philosophers and examining the work of figures such as H. T. Johnson, William D. Johnson, Joyce Mitchell Cooke, Adrian Piper, William R. Jones, Roy D. Morrison, Eugene C. Holmes, and William A. Banner, the book challenges the myth that philosophy is exclusively a white academic discipline. Packed with examples of struggles and triumphs, this engaging introduction is a much-needed approach to studying philosophy today.

The first book dedicated entirely to humanists of African descent, The Black Humanist Experience gives African American humanists the opportunity to discuss their reasons for leaving the religious fold and embracing a humanist life stance. As a minority within a minority, African American humanists may often feel isolated and misunderstood. These thoughtful essays help to draw attention to the vitality of the humanist movement within the black community and they put many myths about humanists to rest. Contrary to popular stereotypes, most humanists do not reject religion out of disillusionment, ignorance, desperation, or misanthropy. The contributors to this volume demonstrate that the decision to adopt the humanist viewpoint is based on intellectual honesty and the best information provided by science, history, comparative religion, and other scholarly disciplines. Moreover, they show that a central concern of humanists of all races is preservation and promotion of what humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz calls "the common moral decencies" shared by most religious and ethical systems. At a time when faith-based organizations are favored politically, especially within the black community, this timely collection of essays shows that humanism, with its emphasis on reason, free inquiry, moral decency, and justice, offers much to the challenges facing African Americans.

Black Christology and the Quest for Authenticity constitutes a philosophical inquiry on Black Theology and its attendant Black Christology. This text critically expounds on the methodologies and arguments, which guide how Black Theology specifically affirms Black Christology as the definitive paradigm for authentic Christianity.

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.

The volume expands current scholarship on African American religion and embodiment by going beyond an understanding of black religion as the "Black Church" and underscoring the variety of religious experiences, in both marginal religious traditions and in non-traditional forms of religion.

The Black male scholars within this important book are painfully aware that the brutal murder of George Floyd was not due to a few "bad apples." They understand that they are perceived as "threats" and "criminals" within a distorted white imaginary that is embedded with processes of mythopoetic construction, racial capitalism, and a deep anti-Black male social ontology. Edited by prominent philosopher George Yancy, Black Men from behind the Veil: Ontological Interrogations emphasizes the importance of Black male epistemic agency and the courage to speak the truth regarding an America that values Black male life on the cheap and that attempts to control the movement of Black men, their capacity to breathe, and their being through anti-Black technologies of surveillance, confinement, policing, and white nation-building. There is no single monolithic Black male voice that dominates this crucial and necessary text. Each voice speaks of pain behind the Veil, revealing narrative specificity and an important recursive truth: Black men, within the white American psyche, are both necessary and yet disposable. The existential and sociohistorical weight of this truth is made painfully clear through the voices of these Black men.