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Papers by Stacey Floyd-Thomas

Research paper thumbnail of Epigraph

Religion, Race, and COVID-19

Research paper thumbnail of Religion, Race, and COVID-19

Religion, Race, and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore how religion, race, and civi... more The COVID-19 pandemic offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore how religion, race, and civil unrest are interconnected. As a collection of essays, this book reveals the intense necessity to collaborate, both as people and as a nation, in creating alternatives to dehumanizing systems. This volume is founded upon the conviction that such an enterprise requires an intersectional as well as a multidisciplinary analysis. Most importantly, it demonstrates how deep solidarity, coupled with a compassionate critique rooted in the best virtues and values bestowed by religious imperatives, can help us bring this country into better view. Several critical insights have emerged, because of what the coronavirus has revealed about the United States. Some lessons are crystal clear, while others might be somewhat more obscure, as exemplified by the manner in which citizens who typically went largely unnoticed and undervalued suddenly came into focus as “essential workers,” risking their lives ...

Research paper thumbnail of “First Natural, Then Spiritual”

Religion, Race, and COVID-19

This chapter considers how the multiple, merged COVID-19 crises have reawakened the activist visi... more This chapter considers how the multiple, merged COVID-19 crises have reawakened the activist vision of the sanctuary movement. Much as hush harbors, the Underground Railroad, and other historic segregated and subversive endeavors brought together spiritual courage and secular concerns, this modern-day sanctuary movement relies upon an invisible institution’s spirituality in order to save Black lives. This new, impromptu sanctuary movement is a rapid response to stay-at-home mandates and racial hostility in which the faith of Black people resurfaces in live-streaming spaces to provide asylum and amelioration in the face of national indifference to a lethal virus and systemic racism. Through media analysis and clergy/congregational COVID case studies, the author examines those experiencing deadly stress as pandemic and violent racism collide. She explores the ways this pandemic has compelled the pragmatic saliency of Black faith to strip away pretenses and proclaim what matters most i...

Research paper thumbnail of Liberation theologies in the United States: an introduction

Choice Reviews Online, 2010

... communities. Martin Luther King Jr. and others associated with this movement echoed the inter... more ... communities. Martin Luther King Jr. and others associated with this movement echoed the interests and commitments of African American religionists of an earlier age, such as David Walker, Maria Stewart, and oth-ers. Beginning ...

Research paper thumbnail of 1. “First Natural, Then Spiritual”: The Context and Contours of Black Faith in the COVID-19 Era

Religion, Race, and COVID-19

Research paper thumbnail of Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society

International Journal of Public Theology, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of Deeper Shades of Purple

Research paper thumbnail of Katie's Canon: Enfleshing Womanism, Mentoring, and the Soul of the Black Community

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

I first began pondering the relationship between faith and ethics as a schoolgirl, while listenin... more I first began pondering the relationship between faith and ethics as a schoolgirl, while listening to my grandmother teach the central affirmations of Christianity within the context of a racially segregated society. My community of faith taught me the principles of God’s universal parenthood, which engendered a social, intellectual, and cultural ethos that embraced the equal humanity of all people. Yet, my city, state, and nation declared it a punishable offense against the laws and mores for blacks and whites to “travel, eat, defecate, wait, be buried, make love, play, relax and even speak together, except in the stereotyped context of master and servant interaction.”1

Research paper thumbnail of Beyond the Pale: Reading Ethics from the Margins

... He is the author of Position and Responsibility: Jürgen Habermas, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the C... more ... He is the author of Position and Responsibility: Jürgen Habermas, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Co-Reconstruction of the PositionalImperative (2009) and ... He has also taught at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johan-nesburg, South Africa, where he served as the treasurer ...

Research paper thumbnail of Teaching the Canon and Cannon Formation as Incarnation and Conjure: Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon as Womanist Mentor and Muse

The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching

Written by her first doctoral student, this essay is a tribute to the legacy and lessons of Dr. K... more Written by her first doctoral student, this essay is a tribute to the legacy and lessons of Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon (1950-2018), the progenitor of womanist ethics. The author embraces Cannon’s signature womanist embodied pedagogy, which takes embodiment as a Black woman seriously and serves as a paradigm for those who purposefully and poignantly live intersecting roles of race, gender, and class. Through both a personal account of the grief experienced by the passing of her mentor and a critical reflection on lessons learned by Cannon’s legacy, the author exposes the daunting challenges faced by womanist scholars as they navigate the front line of the classroom and the frequently death-dealing and dismissive terrain of higher education. See companion contributions to this Forum written by Edwin David Aponte, Miguel A. De La Torre, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, Karen K. Seat, and Angela D. Sims.

Research paper thumbnail of “Be Real Black for Me”: The Icon, Idol, and Incarnation of America’s First Black President

Research paper thumbnail of Con un pie a cada lado/With a Foot in Each Place

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Oh Say Can You See?’ in advance

Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics

This article employs an intersectional analysis of ethical discourse guiding the US context in th... more This article employs an intersectional analysis of ethical discourse guiding the US context in the era of Trump. Illustrating the viability of intersectionality for the broader utility of Christian social ethics, this essay explores the contemporary development of surreality and sub-rosa morality indicative of the current political situation in the United States in the wake of Donald Trump’s political ascendancy from the reality TV boardroom of The Apprentice to the Oval Office of the White House. Faced with the escalating nature of lies and deception emanating from the Trump administration, this article provides the moral rationale for civil disobedience as well as suggesting prescriptions for a redemptive ethic intended to remedy the legitimation crises which have become the defining ethos of our time.

Research paper thumbnail of Got Ethics?: Envisioning and Evaluating the Future of Our Guild and Discipline

Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics

Research paper thumbnail of A Field of Study as a Field of Dreams: The Contours of Black Church Studies

The Black Church Studies Reader, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of “I Am Black and Beautiful, O Ye Daughters of Jerusalem …”: African American Virtue Ethics and a Womanist Hermeneutics of Redemption

African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod, 2008

Research paper thumbnail of The African-American Experience in Social Ethics Professor: Dr

Research paper thumbnail of Facing the Medusa: Confronting the Ongoing Impossibility of Women's Studies

Research paper thumbnail of Redemptive Difference: What Can a Black Woman Teach Me?

Research paper thumbnail of Interdisciplinarity as Self and Subject: Metaphor and Transformation

This paper is based on our experience of team teaching an interdisciplinary course on multicultur... more This paper is based on our experience of team teaching an interdisciplinary course on multicultural families. We propose a theoretical model to demonstrate collaborative teaching that trasverses multiple disciplines. The model, presented as a heuristic metaphor and using geological imagery to capture the dynamic nature of interdisciplinary experience, emphasizes the liberatory and transformative interaction between self and subject. Components of the model are exposing the fault lines, mining the motherlode, sorting epistemological treasures, and forging new gifts. We demonstrate each stage of the model and show how students and teachers made new discoveries about interdisciplinarity at each stage.

Research paper thumbnail of Epigraph

Religion, Race, and COVID-19

Research paper thumbnail of Religion, Race, and COVID-19

Religion, Race, and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore how religion, race, and civi... more The COVID-19 pandemic offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore how religion, race, and civil unrest are interconnected. As a collection of essays, this book reveals the intense necessity to collaborate, both as people and as a nation, in creating alternatives to dehumanizing systems. This volume is founded upon the conviction that such an enterprise requires an intersectional as well as a multidisciplinary analysis. Most importantly, it demonstrates how deep solidarity, coupled with a compassionate critique rooted in the best virtues and values bestowed by religious imperatives, can help us bring this country into better view. Several critical insights have emerged, because of what the coronavirus has revealed about the United States. Some lessons are crystal clear, while others might be somewhat more obscure, as exemplified by the manner in which citizens who typically went largely unnoticed and undervalued suddenly came into focus as “essential workers,” risking their lives ...

Research paper thumbnail of “First Natural, Then Spiritual”

Religion, Race, and COVID-19

This chapter considers how the multiple, merged COVID-19 crises have reawakened the activist visi... more This chapter considers how the multiple, merged COVID-19 crises have reawakened the activist vision of the sanctuary movement. Much as hush harbors, the Underground Railroad, and other historic segregated and subversive endeavors brought together spiritual courage and secular concerns, this modern-day sanctuary movement relies upon an invisible institution’s spirituality in order to save Black lives. This new, impromptu sanctuary movement is a rapid response to stay-at-home mandates and racial hostility in which the faith of Black people resurfaces in live-streaming spaces to provide asylum and amelioration in the face of national indifference to a lethal virus and systemic racism. Through media analysis and clergy/congregational COVID case studies, the author examines those experiencing deadly stress as pandemic and violent racism collide. She explores the ways this pandemic has compelled the pragmatic saliency of Black faith to strip away pretenses and proclaim what matters most i...

Research paper thumbnail of Liberation theologies in the United States: an introduction

Choice Reviews Online, 2010

... communities. Martin Luther King Jr. and others associated with this movement echoed the inter... more ... communities. Martin Luther King Jr. and others associated with this movement echoed the interests and commitments of African American religionists of an earlier age, such as David Walker, Maria Stewart, and oth-ers. Beginning ...

Research paper thumbnail of 1. “First Natural, Then Spiritual”: The Context and Contours of Black Faith in the COVID-19 Era

Religion, Race, and COVID-19

Research paper thumbnail of Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society

International Journal of Public Theology, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of Deeper Shades of Purple

Research paper thumbnail of Katie's Canon: Enfleshing Womanism, Mentoring, and the Soul of the Black Community

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

I first began pondering the relationship between faith and ethics as a schoolgirl, while listenin... more I first began pondering the relationship between faith and ethics as a schoolgirl, while listening to my grandmother teach the central affirmations of Christianity within the context of a racially segregated society. My community of faith taught me the principles of God’s universal parenthood, which engendered a social, intellectual, and cultural ethos that embraced the equal humanity of all people. Yet, my city, state, and nation declared it a punishable offense against the laws and mores for blacks and whites to “travel, eat, defecate, wait, be buried, make love, play, relax and even speak together, except in the stereotyped context of master and servant interaction.”1

Research paper thumbnail of Beyond the Pale: Reading Ethics from the Margins

... He is the author of Position and Responsibility: Jürgen Habermas, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the C... more ... He is the author of Position and Responsibility: Jürgen Habermas, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Co-Reconstruction of the PositionalImperative (2009) and ... He has also taught at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johan-nesburg, South Africa, where he served as the treasurer ...

Research paper thumbnail of Teaching the Canon and Cannon Formation as Incarnation and Conjure: Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon as Womanist Mentor and Muse

The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching

Written by her first doctoral student, this essay is a tribute to the legacy and lessons of Dr. K... more Written by her first doctoral student, this essay is a tribute to the legacy and lessons of Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon (1950-2018), the progenitor of womanist ethics. The author embraces Cannon’s signature womanist embodied pedagogy, which takes embodiment as a Black woman seriously and serves as a paradigm for those who purposefully and poignantly live intersecting roles of race, gender, and class. Through both a personal account of the grief experienced by the passing of her mentor and a critical reflection on lessons learned by Cannon’s legacy, the author exposes the daunting challenges faced by womanist scholars as they navigate the front line of the classroom and the frequently death-dealing and dismissive terrain of higher education. See companion contributions to this Forum written by Edwin David Aponte, Miguel A. De La Torre, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, Karen K. Seat, and Angela D. Sims.

Research paper thumbnail of “Be Real Black for Me”: The Icon, Idol, and Incarnation of America’s First Black President

Research paper thumbnail of Con un pie a cada lado/With a Foot in Each Place

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Oh Say Can You See?’ in advance

Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics

This article employs an intersectional analysis of ethical discourse guiding the US context in th... more This article employs an intersectional analysis of ethical discourse guiding the US context in the era of Trump. Illustrating the viability of intersectionality for the broader utility of Christian social ethics, this essay explores the contemporary development of surreality and sub-rosa morality indicative of the current political situation in the United States in the wake of Donald Trump’s political ascendancy from the reality TV boardroom of The Apprentice to the Oval Office of the White House. Faced with the escalating nature of lies and deception emanating from the Trump administration, this article provides the moral rationale for civil disobedience as well as suggesting prescriptions for a redemptive ethic intended to remedy the legitimation crises which have become the defining ethos of our time.

Research paper thumbnail of Got Ethics?: Envisioning and Evaluating the Future of Our Guild and Discipline

Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics

Research paper thumbnail of A Field of Study as a Field of Dreams: The Contours of Black Church Studies

The Black Church Studies Reader, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of “I Am Black and Beautiful, O Ye Daughters of Jerusalem …”: African American Virtue Ethics and a Womanist Hermeneutics of Redemption

African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod, 2008

Research paper thumbnail of The African-American Experience in Social Ethics Professor: Dr

Research paper thumbnail of Facing the Medusa: Confronting the Ongoing Impossibility of Women's Studies

Research paper thumbnail of Redemptive Difference: What Can a Black Woman Teach Me?

Research paper thumbnail of Interdisciplinarity as Self and Subject: Metaphor and Transformation

This paper is based on our experience of team teaching an interdisciplinary course on multicultur... more This paper is based on our experience of team teaching an interdisciplinary course on multicultural families. We propose a theoretical model to demonstrate collaborative teaching that trasverses multiple disciplines. The model, presented as a heuristic metaphor and using geological imagery to capture the dynamic nature of interdisciplinary experience, emphasizes the liberatory and transformative interaction between self and subject. Components of the model are exposing the fault lines, mining the motherlode, sorting epistemological treasures, and forging new gifts. We demonstrate each stage of the model and show how students and teachers made new discoveries about interdisciplinarity at each stage.