Abstract
The Womanist Preacher: Proclaiming Womanist Rhetoric from the Pulpit
by Kimberly P. Johnson
Rhetoric, Race, and Religion. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019. 208 pp. $39.99. ISBN 978-1-4985-4207-4.
Kimberly Johnson performs a close textual analysis of five womanist sermons to answer the question: how does womanist preaching attempt to transform/adapt the tenets of womanist thought to make it rhetorically viable in the church? And what is gained and lost in this? The sermons come from five women who are considered exemplars of womanist preaching: Elaine M. Flake, Gina M. Stewart, Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, Melva L. Sampson, and Claudette A. Copeland. This book takes the first step in womanist scholarship to dissect what is rhetorically going on in womanist preaching, to categorize womanist sermons under the four tenets of womanist preaching, and to then create four rhetorical models that reflect the rhetorical attributes of the four different categories or phrased tenets that Stacey Floyd-Thomas uses to represent Alice Walker’s “womanist” definition.
Ingenuity: Preaching as an Outsider
by Lisa L. Thompson
Nashville: Abingdon, 2018. 210 pp. $29.99. ISBN 978-1-5018-3259-8.
Ingenuity introduces a theology and practice of preaching that emerges from the faith and wisdom of Black women. Preaching has been resourced and taught from a narrow field of cultural or gendered experiences, historically. Without much support from established channels, Black women are left to “figure it out” on their own, and others discern how to preach from a limiting scope. Thompson contends that the best preachers understand their own voices and the voices of others. They stretch and grow, and this enables them to preach more effectively. Ingenuity equips readers to negotiate tradition, life experiences, and theological conviction in the creative work that makes way for sacred speech.
Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture
by Tamura Lomax
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. 288 pp. $25.95. ISBN 978-1-4780-0107-2.
Tamura Lomax traces the use of the Jezebel trope in the Black church and in Black popular culture, showing how it is pivotal to reinforcing men’s cultural and institutional power to discipline and define Black girlhood and womanhood. Drawing on writing by medieval thinkers and travelers, Enlightenment theories of race, the commodification of women’s bodies under slavery, and the work of Tyler Perry and Bishop T. D. Jakes, Lomax shows how Black women are written into religious and cultural history as sites of sexual deviation. She identifies a contemporary Black church culture where figures such as Jakes use the Jezebel stereotype to suggest a divine approval of the “lady” while condemning girls and women seen as “hos.” The stereotype preserves gender hierarchy, Black patriarchy, and heteronormativity in Black communities, cultures, and institutions. In response, Black women and girls resist, appropriate, and play with the stereotype’s meanings. Healing the Black church, Lomax contends, will require ceaseless refusal of the idea that sin resides in Black women’s bodies, thus disentangling Black women and girls from the jezebel narrative’s oppressive yoke.
Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody: The Making of a Black Theologian
by James H. Cone
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2018. 192 pp. $28.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-6269-8302-1.
James H. Cone is widely recognized as the founder of Black Liberation Theology and one of the most prophetic and challenging voices of our time. In this powerful and passionate memoir—his final work—Cone describes the obstacles he overcame to find his voice, to respond to the signs of the times, and to offer a voice for those—like the parents who raised him in Bearden, Arkansas in the era of lynching and Jim Crow—who had no voice. Recounting lessons learned both from critics and students, and the ongoing challenge of his models King, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, he describes his efforts to use theology as a tool in the struggle against oppression and for a better world.
Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion
by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove; foreword by William J. Barber II
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2018. 192 pp. $20.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8308-4534-7.
Just as Reconstruction after the Civil War worked to repair a desperately broken society, our compromised Christianity requires a spiritual reconstruction that undoes the injustices of the past. Wilson-Hartgrove, who grew up in the Bible Belt as a faithful church-going Christian, traces his journey from the religion of the slaveholder to the Christianity of Christ. Reconstructing the gospel requires facing the pain of the past and present, from racial blindness to systemic abuses of power. Grappling seriously with troubling history and theology, Wilson-Hartgrove recovers the subversiveness of the gospel that sustai-ned the church through centuries of slavery and oppression, from the civil rights era to the Black Lives Matter movement and beyond.
Virtue & Theological Ethics: Toward a Renewed Ethical Method
by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2018. 248 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978-1-6269-8304-5.
Salzman and Lawler draw upon foundational insights from virtue and theological ethics to propose a Catholic ethical methodological schema for the twenty-first century. Discussing topics such as natural law, conscience, and human dignity, the authors show how their new method may be used to treat issues of human sexuality in light of Catholic social teaching.
Fragile World: Ecology and the Church
edited by William Cavanaugh
Studies in World Catholicism. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018. 388 pp. $45.00. ISBN 978-1-4982-8340-3.
In this collection of essays, scholars and activists from Christian communities as far-flung as Honduras, the Philippines, Colombia, and Kenya present a global angle on the global ecological crisis—in both its material and spiritual senses—and offer Catholic resources for responding to it. The volume explores the deep interconnections, for better and for worse, between the global North and the global South, and analyzes the relationship among the physical environment, human society, culture, theology, and economics—the “integral ecology” described by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’. Integral ecology demands that we think deeply about humans and the physical environment, but also about the God who both created the world and sustains it in being. At its root, the ecological crisis is a theological crisis, not only in the way that humans regard creation and their place in it, but in the way that humans think about God.
Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature
by Meredith J. C. Warren
Writings from the Greco-Roman World, 14. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2019. 206 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978-1-6283-7238-0.
Meredith J. C. Warren identifies and defines a new genre in ancient texts that she terms hierophagy, a specific type of transformational eating where otherworldly things are consumed. Multiple ancient Mediterranean, Jewish, and Christian texts represent the ramifications of consuming otherworldly food, ramifications which were understood across religious boundaries. Reading ancient texts through the lens of hierophagy helps scholars and students interpret difficult passages in Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Ezra, Revelation 10, and the Persephone myths, among others.
Bodies on the Verge: Queering Pauline Epistles
edited by Joseph A. Marchal
Semeia Studies, 93. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2019. 378 pp. $46.95. ISBN 978-1-6283-7225-0.
Interpretation of Paul’s letters often proves troubling, since people frequently cite them when debating controversial matters of gender and sexuality. Rather than focusing on the more common defensive responses to those expected prooftexts that supposedly address homosexuality, the essays in this collection reflect the range, rigor, vitality, and creativity of other interpretive options influenced by queer studies. Thus key concepts and practices for understanding these letters in terms of history, theology, empire, gender, race, and ethnicity, among others, are rethought through queer interventions within both ancient settings and more recent history and literature.
The Essential Karl Barth: A Reader and Commentary
by Keith L. Johnson
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019. 384 pp. $40.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-5409-6073-3.
Karl Barth is one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. His work is considered essential reading for nearly every student of theology. Reading Barth’s theology poses a challenge, however, because of the sheer size of his corpus, the complexity of his claims, and the distance between his context and the context of his readers. In this accessible introduction, a respected scholar in Barthian studies offers a one-stop resource on Barth’s thought, providing a selection of his most important writings, critical commentary, and detailed introductory and concluding chapters.