The Sexual Politics of Black Churches

The Sexual Politics of Black Churches PDF

Author: Josef Sorett

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2022-02-08

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0231547773

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Winner, 2022-2023 Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Award for chapter 5 "Everybody Knew He Was 'That Way': Chicago’s Clarence H. Cobbs, American Religion, and Sexuality during the Post-World War II Period" by Wallace Best This book brings together an interdisciplinary roster of scholars and practitioners to analyze the politics of sexuality within Black churches and the communities they serve. In essays and conversations, leading writers reflect on how Black churches have participated in recent discussions about issues such as marriage equality, reproductive justice, and transgender visibility in American society. They consider the varied ways that Black people and groups negotiate the intersections of religion, race, gender, and sexuality across historical and contemporary settings. Individually and collectively, the pieces included in this book shed light on the relationship between the cultural politics of Black churches and the broader cultural and political terrain of the United States. Contributors examine how churches and their members participate in the formal processes of electoral politics as well as how they engage in other processes of social and cultural change. They highlight how contemporary debates around marriage, gender, and sexuality are deeply informed by religious beliefs and practices. Through a critically engaged interdisciplinary investigation, The Sexual Politics of Black Churches develops an array of new perspectives on religion, race, and sexuality in American culture.

Black Sexual Politics

Black Sexual Politics PDF

Author: Patricia Hill Collins

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-08-02

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1135955387

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In Black Sexual Politics, one of America's most influential writers on race and gender explores how images of Black sexuality have been used to maintain the color line and how they threaten to spread a new brand of racism around the world today.

Passionate and Pious

Passionate and Pious PDF

Author: Monique Moultrie

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2017-12-15

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 082237224X

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In Passionate and Pious Monique Moultrie explores the impact of faith-based sexual ministries on black women's sexual agency to trace how these women navigate sexuality, religious authority, and their spiritual walk with God. Providing churchwomen a space to candidly discuss these issues, these popular ministries exist largely beyond the traditional church, with dialogues about sex taking place in chat rooms and through text messages, social media, email, and other media. Moultrie foregrounds televangelist Juanita Bynum's construction of the black Christian sexual identity these ministries promote while emphasizing how churchwomen reconcile these prescriptive identities with their individual experiences. What does it mean for senior women to exercise sexual agency when their church standing could be questioned? What does celibacy mean for women who experience same-sex desire while believing that such desire goes against God's will? Advancing a womanist sexual ethics, Moultrie reframes biblical interpretations and conceptions of what constitutes a healthy relationship to provide a basis for sexual decision making that does not privilege monogamy or deny female pleasure, thereby calling on black churchwomen to experience responsible and life-enhancing sex.

Their Own Receive Them Not

Their Own Receive Them Not PDF

Author: Horace L. Griffin

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2010-11-01

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 160899595X

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In Their Own Receive Them Not, Griffin provides a historical overview and critical analysis of the black church and its current engagement with lesbian and gay Christians, and shares ways in which black churches can learn to reach out and confront all types of oppression--not just race--in order to do the work of the black community.

Doomed Romance

Doomed Romance PDF

Author: Christine Leigh Heyrman

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2021-02-09

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0525655581

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A thwarted love triangle of heartbreak rediscovered after almost two hundred years—two men and a woman of equal ambition—that exploded in scandal and investigation, set between America's Revolution and its Civil War, revealing an age in subtle and powerful transformation, caught between the fight for women's rights and the campaign waged by evangelical Protestants to dominate the nation's culture and politics. From the winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize in History. At its center—and the center of a love triangle—Martha Parker, a gifted young New England woman, smart, pretty, ambitious, determined to make the most of her opportunities, aspiring to become an educator and a foreign missionary. Late in 1825, Martha accepted a proposal from a schoolmaster, Thomas Tenney, only to reject him several weeks later for a rival suitor, a clergyman headed for the mission field, Elnathan Gridley. Tenney's male friends, deeply resentful of the new prominence of women in academies, benevolent and reform associations, and the mission field, decided to retaliate on Tenney's behalf by sending an anonymous letter to the head of the foreign missions board impugning Martha's character. Tenney further threatened Martha with revealing even more about their relationship, thereby ruining her future prospects as a missionary. The head of the board began an inquiry into the truth of the claims about Martha, and in so doing, collected letters, diaries, depositions, and firsthand witness accounts of Martha's character. The ruin of Martha Parker's hopes provoked a resistance within evangelical ranks over womanhood, manhood, and, surprisingly, homosexuality, ultimately threatening to destroy the foreign missions enterprise.

The Black Church in the African American Experience

The Black Church in the African American Experience PDF

Author: C. Eric Lincoln

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1990-11-07

Total Pages: 538

ISBN-13: 0822381648

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Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities. In The Black Church in the African American Experience, based on a ten-year study, is the largest nongovernmental study of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study on the subject since the 1930s. Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive historical overview of seven mainline black denominations, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya present an analysis of the Black Church as it relates to the history of African Americans and to contemporary black culture. In examining both the internal structure of the Church and the reactions of the Church to external, societal changes, the authors provide important insights into the Church’s relationship to politics, economics, women, youth, and music. Among other topics, Lincoln and Mamiya discuss the attitude of the clergy toward women pastors, the reaction of the Church to the civil rights movement, the attempts of the Church to involve young people, the impact of the black consciousness movement and Black Liberation Theology and clergy, and trends that will define the Black Church well into the next century. This study is complete with a comprehensive bibliography of literature on the black experience in religion. Funding for the ten-year survey was made possible by the Lilly Endowment and the Ford Foundation.

The Divided Mind of the Black Church

The Divided Mind of the Black Church PDF

Author: Raphael G. Warnock

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1479806005

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A revealing look at the identity and mission of the Black church What is the true nature and mission of the church? Is its proper Christian purpose to save souls, or to transform the social order? This question is especially fraught when the church is one built by an enslaved people and formed, from its beginning, at the center of an oppressed community’s fight for personhood and freedom. Such is the central tension in the identity and mission of the Black church in the United States. For decades the Black church and Black theology have held each other at arm’s length. Black theology has emphasized the role of Christian faith in addressing racism and other forms of oppression, arguing that Jesus urged his disciples to seek the freedom of all peoples. Meanwhile, the Black church, even when focused on social concerns, has often emphasized personal piety rather than social protest. With the rising influence of white evangelicalism, biblical fundamentalism, and the prosperity gospel, the divide has become even more pronounced. In The Divided Mind of the Black Church, Raphael G. Warnock, Senior Pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., traces the historical significance of the rise and development of Black theology as an important conversation partner for the Black church. Calling for honest dialogue between Black and womanist theologians and Black pastors, this fresh theological treatment demands a new look at the church’s essential mission.

An End to this Strife

An End to this Strife PDF

Author: Demetrius K. Williams

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published:

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9781451406481

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Williams's important work argues that taking the New Testament and particularly Galatians 3:28 seriously should lead black churches to challenge sexism and racism not only in society at large but also in African American churches and denominational bodies. By addressing oppressive practices in African American and other churches, they remain true to the liberation principle of the Bible-the equality of all people before God-which has been used effectively by black churches. His argument unfolds first through looking at the biblical text, especially the figure of Jesus and his ministry and how he broke the social barriers of his day. It then shows how African American Christians have historically appropriated this lens and legacy in their own religious and social experience and explains how this vision pertains to the state of black women in the churches today. Williams's book will help all Christian churches reappropriate the biblical text and serve as a model for how the Bible can be responsibly employed in the churches and the public arena to promote equality for all people.

Spirit in the Dark

Spirit in the Dark PDF

Author: Josef Sorett

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0199844933

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While many of the most significant black intellectual movements of the second half of the twentieth century have been perceived as secular, Josef Sorett demonstrates in this book that religion was actually a fertile, fluid and formidable force within these movements. Spirit in the Dark examines how African American literary visions were animated and organized by religion and spirituality, from the New Negro Renaissance of the 1920s to the Black Arts movement of the 1960s.