Exploring the concept of church as refuge, offers a way to bridge the gap between black theology, with its social and political concerns, and black churches, with their emphases on pastoral care and piety.

Black Practical Theology is a gift to both teacher and student.

In a world that is more culturally diverse than ever, pastors and lay leaders need skills and competencies to serve in multicultural contexts. This rich blend of astute analysis and practical guidance offers a praxis of paying attention, study, and discernment that leads to genuine reconciliation and shared life empowered by the gospel.

Two white pastors share the best practices they have discovered from their years of ministry with the black church and relationships among African-American Christian leaders. Contributors include Sheila Bailey, Cynthia Hale, Donald Hilliard, A. Louis Patterson, Gina Stewart, and Ralph Douglas West.

Respond to God's unfolding drama to bring healing and reconciliation. In this major revision of his classic book, Dr. Edward Wimberly updates his narrative methodology by examining current issues in African American pastoral care and counseling.

"When the church embraces the responsibility of living as faith managers of God's vast resources [as Psalm 24:1 teaches], the community of faith will prosper." So begins this practical and theological study of stewardship, both in the context of the African-American church tradition and beyond. After all, a systematic approach to stewardship undergirds the ministry and mission of the church universal. A stewardship consultant, Amerson draws upon his experience to help churches develop a theology of generosity; define stewardship leadership roles; celebrate the offering each week; and establish endowment giving. While recognizing still-relevant traditions, he also points to newer tactics and strategies convenient to both members and congregations--including electronic giving, contribution statements, and year-end giving. A highlight of the book is Amerson's explanation of the development of a narrative budget/narrative spending plan. He also writes about stewardship education at multiple levels. This book is a solid resource for financial stewardship education.

Drawing on his experience as a member of the clergy and the questions and concerns that arose in the course of ministering to congregants, Robert London Smith, Jr. explores exactly what function the black church performs and, importantly, why. In this provocative work, he argues that much black church praxis is less authentic, relevant, and constructive today because it continues to be implicated by certain values and meanings that are themselves rooted in a historical black thematic universe that is fading and being replaced by a new set of values and meanings located within a contemporary black thematic universe. Using a practical theology method, Smith develops a theological framework (context-praxis) to create an approach to understanding and creating an informed praxis for the black church. He then sets forth a bold project that calls for the critical engagement of black church praxis and what he calls the black thematic universe in its historical and contemporary manifestations. The goal is to transform this praxis so that it remains authentic to the Gospel and the religious traditions and history of those who come to interpret and live out its message in the world, while being relevant to the issues and challenges of the present historical context in which the black church lives out its meaning and purpose, and constructive for the building up and equipping of the Body of Christ. Smith's creation of a black existential and theological hermeneutic is an approach that moves toward the realization of this ambitious goal. This book challenges many traditional views of black church praxis, including pastoral care, worship, and fellowship, and creates a space for a renewed and much-needed dialogue about the acts of the black church within contemporary America. As such, it is an important text for students of practical theology and African American religion as well as those interested in developing a critical understanding of the implications of the intersection of faith and culture.

The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.

Postcolonializing God examines how African Christianity especially as a practical spirituality can be truly a postcolonial reality. The book offers thoughts as to how African Christians and by that token others who were colonial subjects, may practice a spirituality that bears the hallmarks of their authentic cultural heritage, even if that makes them distinctly different from Christians from the colonizing nations. There are themes in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures in which God's activities result in shattering hegemony, overthrowing the powerful, diversifying communities and affirming pluralism. These have by and large been ignored or downplayed in the formation of Christian communities by western and westernized Christians in Africa. The effect of this is that much of the practice of African Christians imitates that of a European Christianity of bygone times. Postcolonializing God charts a different course uplifting these ignored readings of scripture and identifying how they are expressed again by Africans who courageously seek through the practices of mysticism and African culture to portray a God whose actions liberate and diversify human experience. Postcolonializing God seeks to express the human diversity that seems to be the Creator's ongoing desire for the world and thereby to continue to manifest the manifold and diverse nature and wisdom of God. It is only as humans refuse to be created in the image of any other human beings, that the richness and complexity of the divine image will be more closely viewed throughout the world.