My God is Black, My God is Female: Rhetoric, Race, and the Spirituality of Black Lives Matter (original) (raw)
Related papers
Religion in/and Black Lives Matter: Celebrating the Impossible
Religion Compass, 2019
Recent scholarship on Black Lives Matter has focused on the political, economic, intellectual, and theological con-text/s out of which the movement arises, but there has been little engagement with the movement from the perspective of philosophy of religion or history of religions.Phenomenologically, Black life in the United States is relegated to the unthought experience and habitual reenactment of tying one's shoes. But Black people are not shoes in need of tying, so Black people live impossible lives in theUnited States. BLM sacralizes this impossible mode of existence in three ways: first, BLM amplifies impossible black existence; second, BLM exemplifies the impossible Black sociality; and third, BLM reminds the country that Black life is simultaneously indispensable and unthought. Through the hashtags, speak outs, and direct actions, BLM celebrates the irreducible sacredness of Black life in the United States.
The Buried God: Toward a Theology of Black Lives Matter
Enlightenment progress and liberal harmony have found little realization in the black community. Amid a nation of democracy, in the era of the first black president, police brutality, mass incarceration, and poverty still plague black lives. The Black Lives Matter movement which formed as a response to this condition cares nothing for bold political promises. There is a commitment in the Black Lives Matter movement to breaking down idols and false prophets in the fight for liberation. Stirring is a theology of liberation, one which ignores the idealism of secular culture and empowers black people to pursue black freedom. In this paper, I will offer a portrait of a God who refuses to be domesticated by white supremacy and is relentlessly concerned with black lives who suffer. This God blasts the idolatry of liberalism, defaces false prophets who preach peace but perpetuate oppression, challenges orthodoxies which reinforce injustice, and demands the liberation of black lives. This theology will have for its point of departure the material experience of real black lives, particularly as recorded in Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Mary Buser’s Lockdown on Rikers, and as expressed by the music of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. For too long have white theologians neglected the matters of black lives.
Embodied Solidarity, Incarnation, and the Spirituality of the BLM Movement
Sixth Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture, 2019
Despite being born as an overt secular movement, I argue that BLM is not void of spirituality or faith commitments. Even though in their protest activism, they will practice an embodied solidarity and tenants of an incarnational ministry, this spirituality is in many ways not orthodox to many mainstream religious traditions—especially Christianity. However, what one cannot dispute is that through their bodied witness, a spirituality that moves from moral suasion to bearing witness, activists are discovering new and transformative ways to handle issues, problems, and concerns that Black people face daily. As a liberative and prophetic movement, BLM activists have drawn of the Black liberationists movements of the past and discerned the contextual realities confronting them today. In so doing, they have discovered a spirituality that works for and speaks to them.
Is God Sexist?: Black Women's Homiletic Rhetoric Rendered Invisible
Since the early 19th century, Black women have been preaching in the same spheres as Black men, providing messages to Black communities in the United States; however, their contributions have not been equally recorded in the history, rhetoric, or theology books. Scholars within the discipline of homiletics – the art of preaching – describe characteristics of Black preaching, but within its canon are Black male preachers and educators, leaving Black Christian preaching to be relegated as a monolith of male contributors. Increasingly, Black women are claiming a vocation to preach and their voices must be recorded. Therefore four women, selected utilizing a womanist heuristic, will be interviewed and have three of their sermons transcribed and analyzed for rhetorical offerings to the academy, Black community, and wider Christian and secular rhetoric spaces. My research disrupts male-dominated discourses surrounding Black preaching by introducing primary research of Black women preachers and their rhetorical contributions. The fields Homiletics, Rhetoric, and Women and Gender Studies have contributed to Black women's preaching contributions by introducing their theology (God talk) and hermeneutics (Biblical interpretation). My specific contribution is to investigate their rhetorical methods as contributions. I am interested in the scaffolding of sermons. Black men have been lauded for introducing call and response (audience speaker participation), hoopin' (breathing and speaking cadences in preaching), and nommo (the life essence words contain) as criteria of methods of Black preaching. All of these contributions have aided in understanding consciousness of Black people, however this scholarships fails to represent voices of Black women preachers.
Politology of Religion III Bi-Annual Conference 2021: conference proceedings, Miroljub Jevtic and Marko Vekovic (eds.), Center for Study of Religion and Religious Tolerance and Faculty of Political Science - University of Belgrade, Belgrade., 2021
The Black Church played a unique role in Black American history. For a long time, it was a center of Black culture and a source of leadership in politics. During the civil rights era a number of Black churches became involved in social protests. This created a general perception of the Black Church as socio-politically engaged and supportive of Black protest movements. In 2013, however, when #Black Lives Matter originated not all Black churches were ready to grant their support. Many were hesitant, while some entirely rejected the movement. The aim of this article is to analyze the (shifting) attitudes of various Black churches toward the new protest movement as well as their theological arguments for and against #BLM.
The Word Made Flesh: Conflict , Protest, and a Theology of Care in the Black Lives Matter Movement
This work examines a theology of care through protest and activism. This is done by examining the recent deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Freddie Gray in Baltimore. The church has a responsibility, ingrained in scripture, to protest the provocateurs of injustice against black bodies whether they be persons or institutions. This timely work explains the ways in which the Church can address the disparate value placed on black lives in American law and American systems.
Black Catholicism and Black Lives Matter: the process towards joining a movement
This ethnographic study examines how Black Catholics identify with and respond to the Black Lives Matter movement. The study follows several national Black Catholic gatherings since the death of Mike Brown. Using an adaptation of Scott Hunt, Robert D. Benford, and David Snow’s social movement frame analysis, I explore how Black Catholics define and construct the ongoing political issues within the Black Lives Matter movement. I discuss the conditions which contribute to Black Catholic’s participation, or lack thereof, in this social movement through the processes of diagnostic framing, prognostic framing, and motivational framing. I position the larger Black Catholic belief system within frame analysis, examine the relevance of the frames with the Black Catholic community, and analyse the frames’ timing with the Black Lives Matter cycle of protest. This research has implications for intragroup meaning making as Black Catholics start the process towards identifying with the Black Lives Matter social movement.
Race at the Intersection of Rhetoric and Religion
Rhetoric and Religion in the Twenty-First Century Pluralism in a Postsecular Age, 2023
In this chapter, I call on us to understand how we use rhetoric as a method and to explore how rhetorical approaches to religion can contribute to a deeper and more meaningful conception of both religion and race. I use the term "rhetoric" here to refer to language and other forms of symbolic activity that motivate or guide people in matters of belief. I see rhetoric as what communicators invite their audiences to do. I argue that scholars must begin to address rhetoric, race, and religion from both a historical and a contemporary perspective and to examine explicit and implicit warrants in religious discourse that help us theorize ways in which religion(s) and race operate.
The Sacredness of Black Life: Ritual Structure, Intersectionality, and the Image of God
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2020
In this article, we trace arguments for the sacredness of Black life from Sojourner Truth to the Combahee River Collective to the founders of Black Lives Matter, arguing that Black women have consistently drawn on sacred and ritual structures to argue not just that Black life matters but also that Black life has inherent value. As such, we conclude with reflections on Black feminist ethics as an extension of the doctrine of imago dei.
Religious educators must become conversant with the shifts in authority, authenticity and agency which are rapidly becoming evident amidst digital cultural mediation if we are to find constructive ways to engage community and religious identity in the midst of such contested and charged events. The #BlackLivesMatter movement in the US provides a sharp example of the ways in which the social construction of meaning, entangled with the rapid and diverse dynamics of social media, heightens context collapse.