The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia

In Soul Liberty, Nicole Myers Turner challenges the idea of black churches as having always been politically engaged. She uses local archives and church and convention minutes to show how freedpeople in Virginia adapted strategies for pursuing the freedom of their souls to worship as they saw fit—and to participate in society completely in the evolving landscape of emancipation.

As emancipation included opportunities to purchase properties, freedpeople sought to organize the geographies that they could in favor of their religious and political agendas at the outset of Reconstruction. After freedmen obtained the right to vote, an array of black-controlled institutions increasingly became centers for political organizing on the basis of networks that mirrored those established earlier by church associations.

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Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“A masterful exploration of post-Emancipation black religious life in Virginia. . .  A must-read for those interested in the evolution of black religious life in America.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Taking readers on the journey from the hush harbors of slavery to the great upheavals of emancipation through the Readjuster movement, Soul Liberty’s broad compass traces African Americans’ efforts to make freedom real. Illuminating the intersections of postbellum religious and political history, Turner reveals the ways black Virginians used their religious institutions to define political strategies for embracing their full citizenship rights.”—Kidada Williams, Wayne State University

“How did black Christians in the South organize themselves both religiously and politically in the wake of the Civil War? Nicole Turner’s answer to that question unfolds in a nuanced and forceful demonstration that challenges common views of black political activity in churches. Turner’s methodology combines traditional archival materials with more recent tools such as GIS mapping, reminding historians that new understandings of the past come from new ways of approaching the sources and the data.”—Mary Beth Mathews, University of Mary Washington

 

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

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Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois

In Faith in Black Power, Kerry Pimblott discusses the impact of religion on the black power movement through the story of Cairo, Illinois. In 1969, nineteen-year-old Robert Hunt was found dead in the Cairo police station, and while authorities ruled it a suicide, many members of the African American community believed that Hunt had been murdered. This event triggered a wave of protests across the city, and Cairo suddenly emerged as an important battleground for black survival in America and became a focus for many civil rights groups, including the NAACP.

Other groups began mobilizing in Cairo as well, including the United Front, a black power organization founded and led by Reverend Charles Koen. Pimblott challenges conventional narratives of the de-Christianization of the movement by discussing the ways in which black churches supported and shaped the United Front, thereby revealing that Cairoites embraced both old-time religion and revolutionary thought. She also investigates the impact of female leaders on the organization and their influence on young activists, offering new perspectives on the hypermasculine image of black power.

This groundbreaking book contributes to and complicates the history of the black freedom struggle in America by not only adding a new element to the study of African American religion, but also by illuminating the relationship between black churches and black politics during this tumultuous era.

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Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“By attending so carefully to the social history of Cairo, the author forces a reconsideration of older arguments about the relationship of religion, civil rights, and black power, that have grown stale and usually depend on the statements of national figures such as King, Stokely Carmichael, and so forth. What we get here is an intensive on-the-ground examination of how religion and the rhetoric and practice of black power actually operated in a local community that had a very particular history, and one that did not look like the Deep South familiar from the civil rights movement.”―Paul Harvey, Professor of History, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

“Pimblott’s Faith in Black Power offers a new and unique interpretation of the relationship between the Black church and the Black power years of the Civil Rights Movement. Rooted in an enormous amount of newly discovered primary sources, this path-breaking book contributes greatly to our understanding of the second phase of the African American led Freedom struggle.”―Journal of Pan African Studies

“Among the greatest strengths of Faith in Black Power is the depth of its detail. By diving into the intricacies of movement making in Cairo, Pimblott is able to offer more nuanced and historically specific analyses of two categories of particular interest to scholars of religion: ‘black theology’ and ‘the black church.’ Discussions of black theology can sometimes read as though they are essentially intellectual debates set in seminaries. Faith in Black Power takes those discussions into the streets, as it were, and emphasizes the ‘United Front leaders [who] constructed a grassroots black power theology and movement culture capable of bridging intraracial divisions and sustaining the movement over the long haul.'”―The Journal of Religion

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

A Collection of Artistic Poetry

In Empty Room with Light, Ann Hostetler’s first collection of poems, she draws on her training as a visual artist to articulate moments of illumination in everyday life. She pulls from a rich collection of memories to create poems that all have a distinctive voice and image, showcasing things like the beauty of her Amish Aunt’s flower garden and the psychedelic swirls on her own painted toes.

Hostetler organizes her poems in a series of frames named after different forms of visual display, such as “Family Album,” “Exhibitions,” and “En Plein Air.” Each section of the book illuminates a different facet of her journey through life, and offers a sense of connection to the reader through a beautification of the mundane.

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Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Hostetler turns family and its daily routines into poetry high mass, with all the garments, incense, and sensuality that often accompany ritual. Here a daughter traces the surface of her mother’s bathwater with her fingertips; a son in blue nylon shorts and high tops helps iron napkins that turn to prayer flags. With precise imagery and language Hostetler’s poems reach into the rush and plenty of family, making luminaries out of all.”—Susan Firer

“These poems beautifully enact the passing of family history and ritual from generation to generation, recording for us the recurrent journeys we often take between joy and sorrow, and affirming what can stand when all else falls–the love that ties us to our lives and to each other. Ann Hostetler has written a strong and moving first book.”—Gregory Djanikian

”Hostetler combines her painter’s eye with a sensitivity to language informed by her work as a literary scholar. Her poems are filled with images of the world and populated with delightfully willful beings caught in the act of making lives with whatever is at hand. I appreciate the honest way this work traces the impatient negotiations of a Baby Boomer’s life–admitting its fast food and undone laundry, celebrating family’s small but significant joys, all the while, never relenting her utterance. In one poem, she says, ‘I want you to know I was there,/ a soul on a journey.’ And we do. “—Julia Kasdorf

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

On Wayward Gifts, Characteristic Damage, and Sin

In The Dangers of Christian Practice, Lauren Winner challenges the central place that “practices” have recently held in Christian theology. She argues that sometimes, beloved Christian practices go horrifyingly wrong, extending violence rather than promoting its healing. Winner discusses concrete instances of when these practices can go bad, such as a slave-owning woman praying for her slaves’ obedience, or the connection between the Eucharist and the sacrament’s central role in medieval Christian murder of Jews.

Arguing that practices are deformed in ways that are characteristic of and intrinsic to the practices themselves, Winner proposes that the way in which Christians might best think about these practices is that of “damaged gift.” In this bracing book, Winner provocatively challenges the assumption that the church possesses a set of immaculate practices that will definitionally train Christians in virtue and that can’t be answerable to their histories.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Elegantly weaving together history and theology, Winner provides a needed constructive intervention that makes the turn to ‘practice’ in Christian thought more honest without leaving the reader in despair.”—Eric Gregory, Princeton University

“Does the church ever hurt those it means to help? This book is for those who worry that it does—those who may cause, feel, see, or seek to mend the harm that even baptism and communion can inflict.”—Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., University of North Carolina at Greensboro

“A fascinating analysis of how Christian practices can, and characteristically do, go bad ‘under the pressure’ of sin in this world. I highly recommend this to anyone who thinks that becoming a Christian is any kind of straightforward ‘solution’ to your problems, or to the problem that is you.”—Charles Mathewes, University of Virginia

“Lauren Winner, one of our most insightful Christian intellectuals, understands the ways Christian practice has been deeply involved in white supremacy, capitalism, and oppression. For everyone concerned about the future of theological education and the survival of the theological academy, this ground-breaking book is required reading.”—Willie James Jennings, Yale Divinity School

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Lauren F. Winner is an associate professor of Christian spirituality at Duke Divinity School. Her interests include Christian practice, the history of Christianity in America and Jewish-Christian relations.

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Finding Authentic Faith by Breaking the Rules

In Outlaw Christian, Jacqueline Bussie discusses the unspoken “laws” that govern modern Christian life: #1: Never get angry at God; #2: Never doubt; #3: Never question; #4: Never tell your real story; #5: Always speak in clichés about evil and suffering; and #6: Always believe hope comes easy for those who truly love God. Bussie knows that many Christians feel burnt out trying to follow these laws, and she believes that living according to these rules is killing real Christian life. In Outlaw Christian, Bussie proposes a rebellious, life-giving, authentic alternative.

Bussie uses captivating stories that are often brutally honest in order to give concrete, practical strategies to help readers cultivate hope, seek joy, confront grief, and more. She tackles difficult questions head on, speaking to progressive and conservative Christians alike in order to provide a new way to handle the difficult and troubling questions of life.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“There’s nothing fluffy about this book.  It is raw, sassy, and from the heart…This is a fresh invitation to the faith for skeptics, doubters, seekers, and even folks who like that old-time-religion.  Become an outlaw Christian. God likes holy rebels.” —Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution, Jesus for President, and the new book Executing Grace

“While this is a Christian book, its gifts are available to anyone who has ever wrestled with the seemingly impossible task of making sense of suffering, loss, evil, inequity, and loneliness—including atheists like me. Reading Dr. Bussie’s call to reject clichés and sit with uncertainty, I found myself hoping this book makes its way into the hands of every Christian who has ever had their questions or pain shut down by a platitude or an easy answer.” —Chris Stedman, author of Faitheist and Executive Director of the Yale Humanist Community

“I served as a parish pastor for twenty five years.Walking with my people in times of crisis and deep pain I came to realize that some of their deepest struggles were not about loss nor about making sense out of what had happened, but finding the space within themselves and within their faith communities to speak honestly and openly about their doubt and anger toward God. Now Jacqueline Bussie, a theologian of the church, shares her experience and gives voice to all who have been caught in the belief that doubt is faithlessness and anger toward God is blasphemy. Quite the opposite, Dr. Bussie argues, doubt and anger are real expressions of a living faith. Outlaw Christian might break the rules but it opens up the possibility of deeper faith.” —The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton, Presiding Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

For more information on the publication, click here.

Dr. Jacqueline Bussie is an award-winning author, professor, and theologian. An active servant-leader in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Jacqueline teaches religion, theology and interfaith studies classes at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, where she also serves as the Director of the Forum on Faith and Life.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our contributors, click here, #PLTcontributors. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.