BLACK THEOLOGYPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2022.2103927
Charles Gilmer
{"title":"An African American Christology Based on an Archetypal Folk Chanted Sermon Close","authors":"Charles Gilmer","doi":"10.1080/14769948.2022.2103927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2022.2103927","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay discloses an African American Christology, derived from first-hand experience of the sermonic “close” in traditional Black “folk” preaching, which recounts the crucifixion, and celebrates the empty tomb. This African American Christology portrays Jesus as divinely conceived for the redemption of humanity through his earthly ministry, unjust suffering via crucifixion, subsequent resurrection, and his ultimate vindication. Jesus’ earthly ministry demonstrated solidarity with the oppressed and the brutal suffering of Jesus holds a particularly significant valance for the enslaved and their descendants. I argue that this resource can be deployed to respond to the current reality of challenges facing the African American and other marginalized communities.","PeriodicalId":42729,"journal":{"name":"BLACK THEOLOGY","volume":"20 1","pages":"184 - 197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46118072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BLACK THEOLOGYPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2022.2094599
S. Davidson
{"title":"If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I?: Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority","authors":"S. Davidson","doi":"10.1080/14769948.2022.2094599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2022.2094599","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42729,"journal":{"name":"BLACK THEOLOGY","volume":"20 1","pages":"216 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43536321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BLACK THEOLOGYPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2022.2091813
J. Aldred
{"title":"The Flourishing of the UK African and Caribbean Diaspora in the Twenty-First Century with Reference to Jeremiah’s Letter to Jewish Exiles in Babylon Sixth-Century BCE","authors":"J. Aldred","doi":"10.1080/14769948.2022.2091813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2022.2091813","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper is an attempt to explore how the UK African and Caribbean Diaspora might flourish by focusing more on self-agency. Drawing upon Black Pentecostal and Black theological concepts, the paper highlights, exilic identity, settlement and growth, welfare and prayer and prophetic truth as fecund with ideas towards Black self-determination in the diaspora. These are drawn from Old Testament prophet Jeremiah’s letter to Jewish exiles in Babylon in sixth-century BCE that suggests a framework for flourishing and resisting empire. This is a quasi-autobiographical approach that utilises the writer’s experience and research as a Black Pentecostal and ecumenist, Black theologian, and a member of the UK African and Caribbean Diaspora for over five decades.","PeriodicalId":42729,"journal":{"name":"BLACK THEOLOGY","volume":"20 1","pages":"198 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43630806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BLACK THEOLOGYPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2022.2103928
Anthony G. Reddie
{"title":"Discipleship, Suffering and Racial Justice: Mission in a Pandemic World","authors":"Anthony G. Reddie","doi":"10.1080/14769948.2022.2103928","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2022.2103928","url":null,"abstract":"Discipleship, Suffering and Racial Justice: Mission in a Pandemic World by Israel Olofinjana is a helpful book that contains a number of important insights for the church in Britain reflecting on its mission in light of the pandemic. The author is seeking to explore the ways in which the pandemic has revealed a number of existing fault lines and endemic problems in how churches in Britain have engaged in mission. His chief intellectual point is that Western, predominantly White churches have settled for a corporate form of “cheap grace” in which the inevitable calls for suffering that emerge from the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross have been shunned. That is, that the post enlightenment paradigms that have shaped British Christianity, aided and abetted by postmodern intellectual and cultural facets that have exerted a profound impact on our current epoch, have prevented churches from being able to live into a time of crisis and uncertainty. Upon reading the initial premise of the book in the introduction, I was immediately brought back to a conversation with a friend who is in ministry in the UK, but who lived through the genocide in Rwanda. In the midst of the visceral and psychological pressure of seeing the rising catalogue of deaths from the Coronavirus nightly on the news, she made the point that some people have had to live with trauma as a daily form of existential terror for decades. Perhaps, she argued, it was the presumption of freedom from terror, war and death that had made so many predominantly White British people susceptible to a form of inertia; an inertia against moving into a form of global awareness and solidarity with majority heritage peoples for whom this pandemic is nothing new. It is against this reflective backdrop that I read and have a great deal of appreciation for Israel Olofinjana’s book. The book consists of 4 chapters. Chapter 1 is entitled “Jesus’ Discipleship Model of Suffering and Sacrifice: Hallmarks of Discipleship”. The author states","PeriodicalId":42729,"journal":{"name":"BLACK THEOLOGY","volume":"20 1","pages":"211 - 213"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46278125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BLACK THEOLOGYPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2022.2084229
T. Maluleke
{"title":"Currents and Cross-Currents on the Black and African Theology Landscape Today: A Thematic Survey","authors":"T. Maluleke","doi":"10.1080/14769948.2022.2084229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2022.2084229","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article attempts to lift up the salient, latest most cutting edge currents and cross currents in black and Africantheologies on the continent and in the diaspora. As well as proposing an analytical framework, the article articulates the key challengesfacing black and African theologies today.","PeriodicalId":42729,"journal":{"name":"BLACK THEOLOGY","volume":"20 1","pages":"112 - 124"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47139358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BLACK THEOLOGYPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2022.2086732
Oluwatomisin Oredein
{"title":"Hagar’s Textual Agency: Diversifying Christian Womanist Sources of Interpretation","authors":"Oluwatomisin Oredein","doi":"10.1080/14769948.2022.2086732","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2022.2086732","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, I converse with two women – Muslim religious scholar, Aysha Hidayatullah and Arabic poet, Mohja Kahf – to constructively explore the story of Hajar/Hagar through an interreligious Christian womanist theological lens. In her classic work Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, womanist figurehead Delores Williams rightly highlights Middle-Eastern socio-religious culture in her exploration of Hagar’s story as a critical resource for Black women’s Christian religious thought. I continue in this interpretive vein by centreing contemporary scholastic reflection and poetic interpretation concerning Arabic women’s visibility and voice through the themes of water, abandonment, and wandering, ultimately illumining Hagar’s permanence; hers is a narrative always in accompaniment to Abraham’s.","PeriodicalId":42729,"journal":{"name":"BLACK THEOLOGY","volume":"20 1","pages":"167 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49479145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BLACK THEOLOGYPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2022.2085911
Jibril Latif
{"title":"Victims or Victors? The Challenges of Launching a Black American Muslim Conference","authors":"Jibril Latif","doi":"10.1080/14769948.2022.2085911","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2022.2085911","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study combines participant observation and textual analysis conducted over a multi-year period. It analyzes the Black American Muslim Conference’s (BAMC) establishment of an annual forum for addressing issues pertinent to the descendants of African slaves in the United States practicing normative Sunni Islam. When announced, it faced backlash for its delimitations of Black American Muslims as an imagined community inheriting an ethnographically distinct theological legacy. A flood of contestations appeared on social media claiming the conference was divisive, irreligious, and racist. Repeatedly challenged on what bound them as an imagined community, organisers were compelled into clarifying the conference’s scope in exchanges on social media while maintaining their expressed inclusivity. The successive conferences have repeatedly struggled to gain wide support from Muslim organisations. Recurring panels have navigated polarisation by balancing individualist and collectivist themes while maintaining weariness towards endorsing victimhood or Uncle Tom narratives.","PeriodicalId":42729,"journal":{"name":"BLACK THEOLOGY","volume":"20 1","pages":"149 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49234320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BLACK THEOLOGYPub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2022.2038909
J. A. Ottuh
{"title":"The 3Cs of Colonisation and their Impacts on African Slavery: The Nigeria’s Experience","authors":"J. A. Ottuh","doi":"10.1080/14769948.2022.2038909","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2022.2038909","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper examines Christianisation, commerce and civilisation (3Cs) as strategies of European imperialist movements and considers the impact such endeavour made on Nigeria’s enslavement. Using the historical method, the paper argues that the methods of the 3Cs adopted by the colonial imperialist, though with some positive impacts, eroded Nigeria’s socio-cultural and politico-economic heritage and consequently breeds the foundation for socio-cultural and politico-economic slavery in contemporary Nigerian society. Specifically, the paper interrogates how the 3Cs fuel some forms of slavery in contemporary Nigeria. By so doing, this paper will contribute to African postcolonial studies.","PeriodicalId":42729,"journal":{"name":"BLACK THEOLOGY","volume":"20 1","pages":"41 - 65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46418303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BLACK THEOLOGYPub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2022.2039860
J. Urbaniak
{"title":"A Critique of H. Kroesbergen’s The Language of Faith in Southern Africa (2019)","authors":"J. Urbaniak","doi":"10.1080/14769948.2022.2039860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2022.2039860","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The essay offers a critique of Hermen Kroesbergen’s 2019 book titled The Language of Faith in Southern Africa: Spirit World, Power, Community, Holism. Kroesbergen holds that, far from offering additional information about reality (designation), in the African grammar of faith, references to the spirit world, power, community and holism, are in fact responses to the world (connotation): they provide a way to deal with that which cannot be explained, controlled or predicted. Special attention is given to Kroesbergen’s creative account of a “material quality” of words. Three major criticisms of the book concern respectively: (a) the unfair dismissal of the role of African and Black theologies, (b) distracting references to the future of a global church considered from a distinctly Western perspective, and relatedly, (c) lack of an explicit link between Kroesbergen’s personal commitment to the idea of a global church and his reflection on an African language of faith.","PeriodicalId":42729,"journal":{"name":"BLACK THEOLOGY","volume":"20 1","pages":"91 - 98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43055568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
BLACK THEOLOGYPub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2022.2041777
B. Msabah
{"title":"“When Are You Going Back to Your Country?”: The Refugee Phenomenon and the Complexity of Healthcare Services in South Africa","authors":"B. Msabah","doi":"10.1080/14769948.2022.2041777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2022.2041777","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 Refugees’ health is linked to various factors, which explains why their life is characterised by difficult challenges. In the midst of these challenges, refugees find hope and strive for improved well-being. Forced migration in Africa obliges us to re-examine migratory trends to determine how they are linked to the health of forced migrants. This paper highlights migration and health issues from the context of diaconal praxis. The paper demonstrates how forced migrants are often the victims of poor health conditions and that they generally encounter major problems in hospitals simply because they are refugees. It also provides evidence that refugees face various challenges in obtaining appropriate care due to medical xenophobia and attitudinal treatment by most health workers. This paper calls for radical diaconal action. The work is based on a qualitative piece of research conducted with refugees from sub-Saharan Africa through a series of semi-structured interviews.","PeriodicalId":42729,"journal":{"name":"BLACK THEOLOGY","volume":"20 1","pages":"78 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43973836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}