Good Reads
Bearing the ancestral memory of enslavement, Black Americans are particularly susceptible to what Tricia Hersey calls "the grind culture (which) is a collaboration between capitalism and white supremacy." Add a bit of unhealthy "Keep on working for the Master" theology to the mix, and the result is generations of tired Black saints. In this collection, Hersey offers practices of rest.
Columbia Theological Seminary's Sechrest offers fresh perspectives on New Testament texts, considering how the issues raised "rhyme" with those in our present day.
What happens when a Black Christian and a Black secular humanist come together to ponder issues of religion, race, and justice? Readers are challenged. Faith in God and humanity are strengthened. Hard questions are raised. Brilliance emerges.
Dr. Gafney (see "Family You Should Know") offers in-depth, creative perspectives on well- and lesser-known women in the Bible, rooted in the Black American preaching tradition
In this 2010 work, Dr. Sneed (see "Family You Should Know") challenged Black religious and cultural critics to re-think traditional theological and ethic viewpoints on same-sex attraction or activity.
Columbia University's Hendricks explores how right-wing evangelicals have strayed far from a living faith to a destructive one. For Hendricks, American Evangelical Christianity is the anti-thesis of the message of Jesus.
Good Reads
A Catholic whose dissertation was about women in the Church of God in Christ, Butler is chair of the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Religious Studies. For this book and her record of scholarship, Dr. Butler received the 2022 Martin E. Marty Public Understanding of Religion Award from the American Academy of Religion.
This thoughtful, personal, scholarly volume is a testament to the power, necessity and possibilities of applying a Black hermeneutic to reading the Bible.
The translators strived for not a mere “spot cleaning for male pronouns,” but “a fresh dynamic translation into modern English, carefully crafted to let the power and poetry of the language shine forth.” John 3:16 is rendered: "Yes, God so loved the world
as to give the Only Begotten One, that whoever believes may not die, but have eternal life."
Dr. Gafney (see "Family You Should Know") offers in-depth, creative perspectives on well- and lesser-known women in the Bible, rooted in the Black American preaching tradition
In this 2010 work, Dr. Sneed (see "Family You Should Know") challenged Black religious and cultural critics to re-think traditional theological and ethic viewpoints on same-sex attraction or activity.
Columbia University's Hendricks explores how right-wing evangelicals have strayed far from a living faith to a destructive one. For Hendricks, American Evangelical Christianity is the anti-thesis of the message of Jesus.