Bitter the Chastening Rod follows in the footsteps of the first collection of African American biblical interpretation, Stony the Road We Trod (1991). Nineteen Africana biblical scholars contribute cutting-edge essays reading Jesus, criminalization, the enslaved, and whitened interpretations of the enslaved. They present pedagogical strategies for teaching, hermeneutics, and bible translation that center Black Lives Matter and black culture. Biblical narratives, news media, and personal stories intertwine in critical discussions of black rage, protest, anti-blackness, and mothering in the context of black precarity.

A hallmark of American Black religion is its distinctive use of the Bible in creating community, resisting oppression, and fomenting social change. Stony the Road We Trod accomplishes this--and much more. This expanded edition contains a new introduction and three new essays that underscore the historic importance of this book for a new generation.

This is an essential companion to The Presbyterian Hymnal and Hymns, Psalms, & Spiritual Songs. Church musicians and pastors will welcome the ease with which they can locate keywords, topics, and scriptural references.

True to Our Native Land is a pioneering commentary of the New Testament that sets biblical interpretation firmly in the context of African American experience and concern. The second edition includes updated commentaries and essays.

Transgressing is an appropriate response to race as “a crime against humanity.” No one chooses their race at birth, yet many suffer because of their race. And while many people choose to change citizenship, their accents and faces can give them away as outsiders. Racism thrives on the categorization of people according to their race. Like the Black and White dichotomy, other racial and ethnic discriminations such as casteism, antisemitism, Zionism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia undergird and promote segregation all around the world. Dismantling racism requires challenging racialized oppressions and segregations in sacred texts and contexts, in beloved traditions and hallowed theologies. This book offers such biblical and theological discourses in order to transgress the discriminative segregations of racism in connection with other forms of exploitative systems (or shitstems). The book engages with racialized biblical texts and religious theologies, with acts of racial discrimination in connection with slavery and colonialism, with agonies of people in diaspora, struggles of postcolonial minoritized people, courage of indigenous people to subvert, and with the race-insensitive practices of theological and religious education. The contributors are located in Africa, Asia, North America, Europe, and Oceania.

Acts of the Apostles presents Roman officials and militarized police criminalizing, prosecuting, and incarcerating a movement of Jesus followers. This book brings Acts into conversation with ancient and modern understandings of crime by tending to laws and by exploring how different writers portray the criminalized.

Autobiography of a People is an insightfully assembled anthology of eyewitness accounts that traces the history of the African American experience. From the Middle Passage to the Million Man March, editor Herb Boyd has culled a diverse range of voices, both famous and ordinary, to creat a unique and compelling historical portrait: Benjamin Banneker on Thomas Jefferson Old Elizabeth on spreading the Word Frederick Douglass on life in the North W.E.B. Du Bois on the Talented Tenth Matthew Henson on reaching the North Pole Harriot Jacobs on running away James Cameron on escaping a mob lyniching Alvin Ailey on the world of dance Langston Hughes on the Harlem Renaissance Curtis Morriw on the Korean War Max ROach on "jazz" as a four-letter word LL Cool J on rap Mary Church Terrell on the Chicago World's Fair Rev. Bernice King on the future of Black America And many others.

True to Our Native Land is a pioneering commentary on the New Testament that sets biblical interpretation firmly in the context of African American experience and concern. In this second edition, the scholarship is cutting-edge, updated, and expanded to be in tune with African American culture, education, and churches. The book calls into question many canons of traditional biblical research and highlights the role of the Bible in African American history, accenting themes of ethnicity, class, slavery, and African heritage as these play a role in Christian Scripture and the Christian odyssey of an emancipated people.

Critics from three major racial/ethnic minority communities in the United States—African American, Asian American, and Latino/a American—focus on the problematic of race and ethnicity in the Bible and in contemporary biblical interpretation. With keen eyes on both ancient text and contemporary context, contributors pay close attention to how racial/ethnic dynamics intersect with other differential relations of power such as gender, class, sexuality, and colonialism. In groundbreaking interaction, they also consider their readings alongside those of other racial/ethnic minority communities. The volume includes an introduction pointing out the crucial role of this work within minority criticism by looking at its historical trajectory, critical findings, and future directions. The contributors are Cheryl B. Anderson, Francisco O. García-Treto, Jean-Pierre Ruiz, Frank M. Yamada, Gale A. Yee, Jae-Won Lee, Gay L. Byron, Fernando F. Segovia, Randall C. Bailey, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Demetrius K. Williams, Mayra Rivera Rivera, Evelyn L. Parker, and James Kyung-Jin Lee.

Within the Circle is the first anthology to present the entire spectrum of twentieth-century African American literary and cultural criticism. It begins with the Harlem Renaissance, continues through civil rights, the Black Arts Movement, and on into contemporary debates of poststructuralist and black feminist theory. Drawing on a quote from Frederick Douglass for the title of this book, Angelyn Mitchell explains in her introduction the importance for those "within the circle" of African American literature to examine their own works and to engage this critical canon. The essays in this collection--many of which are not widely available today--either initiated or gave critical definition to specific periods or movements of African American literature. They address issues such as integration, separatism, political action, black nationalism, Afrocentricity, black feminism, as well as the role of art, the artist, the critic, and the audience. With selections from Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, W. E. B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Barbara Smith, Alice Walker, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and many others, this definitive collection provides a dynamic model of the cultural, ideological, historical, and aesthetic considerations in African American literature and literary criticism. A major contribution to the study of African American literature, this volume will serve as a foundation for future work by students and scholars. Its importance will be recognized by all those interested in modern literary theory as well as general readers concerned with the African American experience. Selections by (partial list): Houston A. Baker, Jr., James Baldwin, Sterling Brown, Barbara Christian, W. E. B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, LeRoi Jones, Sarah Webster Fabio, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W. Lawrence Hogue, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, Deborah E. McDowell, Toni Morrison, J. Saunders Redding, George Schuyler, Barbara Smith, Valerie Smith, Hortense J. Spillers, Robert B. Stepto, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, Mary Helen Washington, Richard Wright