The Sexual Politics of Black Churches

The Sexual Politics of Black Churches PDF Author: Josef Sorett
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231547773
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
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.

The Sexual Politics of Black Churches

The Sexual Politics of Black Churches PDF Author: Josef Sorett
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231547773
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Sexuality and the Black Church

Sexuality and the Black Church PDF Author: Douglas, Kelly Brown
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608337936
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description


Black Sexual Politics

Black Sexual Politics PDF Author: Patricia Hill Collins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135955387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
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
ISBN: 082237224X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
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
ISBN: 160899595X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
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.

Your Spirits Walk Beside Us

Your Spirits Walk Beside Us PDF Author: Barbara Dianne Savage
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674267036
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Even before the emergence of the civil rights movement with black churches at its center, African American religion and progressive politics were assumed to be inextricably intertwined. In her revelatory book, Barbara Savage counters this assumption with the story of a highly diversified religious community whose debates over engagement in the struggle for racial equality were as vigorous as they were persistent. Rather than inevitable allies, black churches and political activists have been uneasy and contentious partners. From the 1920s on, some of the best African American minds—W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Benjamin Mays, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mary McLeod Bethune, Charles S. Johnson, and others—argued tirelessly about the churches’ responsibility in the quest for racial justice. Could they be a liberal force, or would they be a constraint on progress? There was no single, unified black church but rather many churches marked by enormous intellectual, theological, and political differences and independence. Yet, confronted by racial discrimination and poverty, churches were called upon again and again to come together as savior institutions for black communities. The tension between faith and political activism in black churches testifies to the difficult and unpredictable project of coupling religion and politics in the twentieth century. By retrieving the people, the polemics, and the power of the spiritual that animated African American political life, Savage has dramatically demonstrated the challenge to all religious institutions seeking political change in our time.

Homophobia in the Black Church

Homophobia in the Black Church PDF Author: Anthony Stanford
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313398690
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This book explains how faith, politics, and fear contribute to the homophobic mindset within the Black Church and the African American community. Homophobia in the Black Church: How Faith, Politics, and Fear Divide the Black Community explores the various reasons for the Black Church's aversion—and the general black cultural inflexibility—toward homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and acceptance of the LGBT community. It connects black cultural resistance toward homosexuality to politics, faith, and fear; follows the trail of faith-based funding to the pulpit of black mega-churches; and spotlights how members of the black clergy have sacrificed black LGBTQ Christians for personal and political advancement. The author systematically builds his case, linking the reasons blacks are intolerant of deviation from acceptable sexual behavior to the 1960s struggle for racial equality, and tying longstanding black sexual mores to present day politics, social conservatism, and the lure of federal funding to black churches and religious and social organizations. He also spotlights specific homophobic black ministers and draws back the curtain on their alliance with White social conservatives and religious and political extremists to reveal an improbable but powerful union.

Doomed Romance

Doomed Romance PDF Author: Christine Leigh Heyrman
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0525655581
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
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 Divided Mind of the Black Church

The Divided Mind of the Black Church PDF Author: Raphael G. Warnock
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479806005
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
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
ISBN: 9781451406481
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
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.