The Tragic Vision Of African American Religion

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.

Roots Matter recognizes the impact of transgenerational trauma, as a result of chattel slavery, on the African American community. It emphasizes the importance of discovering the silent stories (those that were overlooked and ignored); unearthing the secret stories (those that were intentionally covered up); and being attentive to the reverberations of the severed stories of slavery and how they influence family history and family members. Interrupting the transference of generational trauma through mourning, forgiveness, and prayers for healing accelerates the transference of generational resilience. Through celebration and blessing, the fortitude, courage, and determination in the family narrative moves current and future generations toward healing and wholeness. Roots Matter prunes the family tree of trauma, the silent, secret, and severed stories that stunt the growth of the family, and tends to family roots, fertilizing them with the recognition of the resilience, achievements, gifts, and talents of the ancestors, thus creating a healthier environment for future generations to flourish.

Using the term "prophetic remembrance" to articulate the expression of a constituent faith in the performative capacity of language, Erica Still shows how black subjectivity is born of and interprets cultural trauma. She brings together African American neo-slave narratives and Black South African postapartheid narratives to reveal the processes by which black subjectivity accounts for its traumatic origins, names the therapeutic work of the present, and inscribes the possibility of the future. The author draws on trauma studies, black theology, and literary criticism as she considers how writers such as Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, John Edgar Wideman, David Bradley, Sindiwe Magona, K. Sello Duiker, and Zakes Mda explore the possibilities for rehearsing a traumatic past without being overcome by it. Although both African American and South African literary studies have addressed questions of memory, narrative, and trauma, little comparative work has been done. Prophetic Remembrance offers this comparative focus in reading these literatures together to address the question of what it means to remember and to recover from racial oppression.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus consistently demonstrated his concern and love for the whole person: soul, mind, and body. That task is carried forward today by pastors and church leaders, who are called to care for people in the midst of individual circumstances as well as seismic cultural shifts. How might that calling be informed by recent developments in psychology? How should the church attend to matters of mental health? How might psychology and counseling aid us in our spiritual formation? Based on the 2018 Center for Pastor Theologians conference, this volume brings together reflections by pastors, theologians, and psychologists who explore the relationships among three fields of study—theological anthropology, spiritual formation, and modern psychology. The result is a vibrant whole-person theology that can aid the church today in its centuries-old call to care for the soul, mind, and body. Based on annual CPT conferences, the volumes in the Center for Pastor Theologians series bring together the reflections of pastors and theologians who desire to make ongoing contributions to the wider scholarly community for the renewal of both theology and the church.

The prominence of religion in recent debates around politics, identity formation, and international terrorism has led to an increased demand on those studying religion to help clarify and contextualise religious belief and practice in the public sphere. While many texts focus on the theoretical development of the subject, this book outlines a wider application of these studies by exploring the role of religious studies scholars and theologians as public intellectuals. This collection of essays first seeks to define exactly what makes an intellectual "public". It then goes on to deal with a few questions of concern: How do public intellectuals construct knowledge in religious and theological scholarship? What is the link between public intellectuals of higher education and their role in society? Do higher education institutions have a responsibility to endorse public intellectualism? Looking at the individual and collective role of religious studies scholars and theologians in public life, this book will be of great interest to all scholars and academics involved in religious studies and theology across the academy.

In The Black God Trope and Rhetorical Resistance: A Tradition of Race and Religion, Armondo R. Collins theorizes Black Nationalist rhetorical strategies as an avenue to better understanding African American communication practices. The author demonstrates how Black rhetors use writing about God to create a language that reflects African Americans’ shifting subjectivity within the American experience. This book highlights how the Black God trope and Black Nationalist religious rhetoric function as an embodied rhetoric. Collins also addresses how the Black God trope functions as a gendered critique of white western patriarchy, to demonstrate how an ideological position like womanism is voiced by authors using the Black God trope as a means of public address. Scholars of rhetoric, African American literature, and religious studies will find this book of particular interest.

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 book presents a study of the rise of American neoliberalism in the aftermath of the modern Civil Rights movement, paying particular attention to the traumatic impact of the neoliberal age on countless African Americans. Author Cedric C. Johnson takes a close look at the manner in which American neoliberalism has been able to preserve, articulate, and exploit constructions of race-based difference. The neoliberal age has engendered an extraordinary growth in economic disparities and social inequalities, with traumatic repercussions for innumerable African Americans. Historically, black religious forms have functioned as contested spaces, capable of organizing alternative modes of cultural, economic, and political life. This project examines forms of black religiosity that function as modes of soul care in this context. Johnson posits an innovative, multi-systems approach that informs practices of care for populations traumatized or threatened by the neoliberal age.