Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement

While existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, Freedom Farmers, by Monica White, showcases agriculture as a site of resistance. It follows the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC) started by renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer in 1967, which was a community-based rural and economic development project. Growing from a mere 40 acres to a staggering 600 acres, the FFC was a hallmark of the Mississippi Delta.

By showcasing the FFC, White expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern black farmers. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans–an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. It offered a community and a sense of purpose to local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers. This book shares a historical story, as well as adding context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces today.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Meticulously researched, trenchantly analyzed, and engagingly written, this book brings to life the culture, the theorists, the scientists, the farmers, and the organizers that have kept agriculture at the center of African American emancipation, civil rights, and present-day movements for human rights and self-determination. From a rising activist-scholar, a visionary book of remembrance and hope.”—Eric Holt-Giménez, executive director of Food First

“A refreshing and potentially paradigm-shifting study, combining narrative and an interdisciplinary methodology that draws on archival research and ethnography. It moves the African American agrarian experience into the twentieth century, reconceptualizing it, not just as an experience of oppression, but as a strategic approach to black liberation.”—Sundiata Cha-Jua, University of Illinois

“Freedom Farmers is an incredible love letter helping Black people return to and reclaim our true agrarian, radical, collective selves. Through this important book, Dr. White brilliantly disrupts the disempowering narrative that Black communities have a painful relationship with farming and land. While Black people have suffered tremendously via exploited labor and the violence of slavery in this country, that is not the summation of our history with land. Dr. White documents important historical lessons for us and shows us what we’ve known and at times forgotten–that the land both heals and frees us. This book is an urgent reminder and an absolute must read for all of us.”—Dara Cooper, National Black Food and Justice Alliance

For more information on the publication, click here.

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 Biography

In this book, author Peter Manseau tells the story of the Jefferson Bible, an edition of the New Testament that was edited with a penknife and glue to remove all mention of miracles and other supernatural events. Manseau tells the story of this book not just as an investigation in the fascinating world of Jefferson’s mind, but also to explore how each new generation has reimagined the bible in its own image, and for their own purposes.

Thomas Jefferson created his bible because he was inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, and hoped to reconcile Christian tradition with reason by presenting Jesus as a great moral teacher instead of a divine one. It was completed in 1820 and then lost for decades before being rediscovered, and since it’s republication it has meant many different things to many different people. Some have held it up as evidence that America was founded as a Christian nation, while others see it as proof of the Founders’ belief in separation of church and state; Manseau, however, works to contextualize it as part of Jefferson’s personal philosophy.

The Jefferson Bible is inseparable from American religious disputes over the interpretation of scripture, and the search for the historical Jesus. The Jefferson Bible helps readers grapple with both the legacy of the man who made it and the place of religion in American life.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Excellent. . . . As Manseau observes, the ways in which Americans have received the Jefferson Bible may be more interesting than the ways by which Jefferson conceived it.”—John Miller, Angelus

“A brilliant account. The reader is in for an enlightening foray that explains Jefferson’s book for what it tells us about Jefferson himself, the cultural history of interpreting scripture, and the religious and political import of how Americans have viewed Jesus.”—Sylvester A. Johnson, author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom

“A page-turner for thoughtful readers. Manseau offers a compelling window onto Jefferson’s intellectual processes and a unique perspective on the larger history of religion in America, especially as it relates to American cultural divides concerning efforts to sort out the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith.”—Timothy Beal, author of The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book

For more information on the publication, click here.

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.

Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire

In Biblical Porn, author Jessica Johnson delves into the storied history of the Mars Hill Church. A small bible study founded by Mark Driscoll in 1996, it quickly rose to prominence and became a megachurch with 15 total locations. The church closed its doors in 2014 after being beset by scandal, with former attendees testifying to spiritual abuse, emotional manipulation, and financial exploitation.

In this book, Johnson examines not only the history of the church, but also how it is that the Mars Hill congregants became entangled in processes of religious conviction. She contends that they were recruited into sexualized and militarized dynamics of power through the use of what she calls “biblical porn”, which is the affective labor of communicating, promoting, and embodying Driscoll’s teaching on biblical masculinity, femininity, and sexuality. It also simultaneously worked as a marketing strategy, social imaginary, and biopolitical instrument, drawing in more and more followers even as it continued to condition the ones who were already there. Johnson theorizes that the congregants circulated and amplified feelings of hope, joy, shame, and paranoia, which the church capitalized on to grow at all costs.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Jessica Johnson’s Biblical Porn is a magnificent contribution to the field of anthropology, especially given anthropology’s affective turn in recent years. Moreover, it is a meaningful contribution to both religious studies and gender studies given its attention to evangelicalism in the America and masculinist studies. . . . Her attention to affect and affect theory, though, is what makes Biblical Porn stand out as an original contribution to all of these fields.” — Alejandro Stephano Escalante, Religion and Gender

“Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill churches in Seattle took Calvinist insecurity to new levels, producing an everyday world of acute affective precarity. His church people lived in a slurry of shame, fear, threat, care, intimidation, hope, joy, and paranoia. Wives were exhorted to be their husbands’ porn stars 24/7, and men—the victims of a nation ‘pussified’ by feminists—should man-up, have sex on demand with their wives, and pursue air and ground war campaigns of ‘riot evangelism.’ After nearly a decade of summary dismissals, shunning, demon trials, disciplinary interrogations, mass surveillance, and financial scandals, Driscoll’s evangelical empire imploded. Jessica Johnson was there for the long haul and provides us with a theoretically rich and evocative reading of this traumatic episode of pastoral governance.” — Susan Friend Harding, author of The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics

“Johnson’s book reminds us that Driscoll was real, that Mars Hill did loom large over the Seattle skyline, and that Driscoll’s liturgy was just as creepy and harmful as we remember it to be, if not more.” — Paul Constant, Seattle Review of Books

For more information on the publication, click here.

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.

Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society

Life After Privacy, by Firmin DeBrabander, sets out to discuss privacy during the digital age in a new and innovative way. It is no secret that privacy is in jeopardy, and we, the digital citizens, are its principal threat, willingly surrendering it to gain access to new technology, and granting the government and corporations immense power over us. But what if we can protect our freedom without privacy?

Here, DeBrabander makes that case that privacy is actually a fairly new value that has not often been enjoyed throughout history. He contends that privacy is actually a poor foundation for democracy, that it is constantly persecuted, and it is politically and philosophically suspect. He argues that currently, the more important thing to focus on is the vitality of the public realm, something that is equally at risk during the digital age.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Life After Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society is an eloquent, compelling call for us to rethink our commitment to privacy by understanding its history and uses. Rather than attempting to double down on a possibly doomed principle, DeBrabander argues that what is really needed is more democracy, and specifically a newly energized commitment to a public sphere that requires open, transparent, and meaningful debate. An indispensable book for our times that does what great political philosophy needs to do – make us question what we mean by our most basic concepts.”—William Egginton, author of The Splintering of the American Mind

“In 2020, more so than in 1984, the Big Brother is watching you. But does this really matter? – asks Firmin DeBrabander’s pungent new book. Ranging from intellectual history to contemporary economics, from Big Data to Big Politics, from confession to contestation, Life After Privacy argues that we should finally begin caring for the public realm, rather than obsessing about intrusions into the private domain, which is something of a political fiction. If there is a work with the potential to reframe the very terms of the current debate on privacy, it is the one you are now holding in your hands!”—Michael Marder, author of Political Categories: Thinking Beyond Concepts

“This book makes accessible a counter-intuitive (perhaps even seemingly-contrarian) argument about privacy that deserves a hearing. Not all readers will agree with DeBrabander’s conclusion that privacy is pretty much dead. But this is a view murmured often enough in Silicon Valley to warrant serious attention. DeBrabander understands our skepticisms but skillfully argues that we are inexorably drawn to this conclusion nonetheless. Those who care deeply about privacy, as well as those who look forward to the transparent society, will learn much from this book’s subtle arguments. And remember: the best philosophy books are the ones that strike you as implausible by their title but leave you convinced after you’ve read them.”—Colin Koopman, author of How We Became Our Data

 

For more information on the publication, click here.

Firmin DeBrabander is professor of philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

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.