by Kenyatta R. Gilbert (2011)
African-American preaching today is more threatened than one ever could have imagined, as are the churches and communities in which it is practiced. It must now overcome its own apparent irrelevance in an increasingly pluralistic, postmodern age of intense spiritual, social, and economic crisis. But make no mistake, preaching is the single most important task for staving off the death of African-American churches and communities today. African-American preaching uses the power of language and art to interpret the gospel in the context of Black misery and Christian hope. What is intriguing about African-American preaching as an act of worship and ministry practice is that it is truly catalytic, holistic, and most completely actualized only when marked by three constitutive orientations -- the scriptural voices of prophet, priest, and sage, which, theologically, follow a trinitarian pattern. Together, when these voices function in a mutually influential relationship and are synthesized and appropriated in one's preaching life, they become what I describe as trivocal preaching. - Introduction. The Journey and Promise of African American Preaching is a constructive effort to examine the historical contributions of African American preaching, the challenges it faces today, and how it might become a renewed source of healing and strength for at-risk communities and churches. - Publisher.
Chris Beneke
Drawing on pamphlets and broadsides, newspaper exchanges, document collections, personal diaries, church records and legislative journals, this book shows how early Americans learned to live amid a great diversity of beliefs and modes of worship. It examines the factors that contributed to the cultural revolution that took place in America.
Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda
In many ways, religion was the United States' first prejudice—both an early source of bigotry and the object of the first sustained efforts to limit its effects. Spanning more than two centuries across colonial British America and the United States, The First Prejudice offers a groundbreaking exploration of the early history of persecution and toleration. The twelve essays in this volume were composed by leading historians with an eye to the larger significance of religious tolerance and intolerance. Individual chapters examine the prosecution of religious crimes, the biblical sources of tolerance and intolerance, the British imperial context of toleration, the bounds of Native American spiritual independence, the nuances of anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, the resilience of African American faiths, and the challenges confronted by skeptics and freethinkers. The First Prejudice presents a revealing portrait of the rhetoric, regulations, and customs that shaped the relationships between people of different faiths in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America. It relates changes in law and language to the lived experience of religious conflict and religious cooperation, highlighting the crucial ways in which they molded U.S. culture and politics. By incorporating a broad range of groups and religious differences in its accounts of tolerance and intolerance, The First Prejudice opens a significant new vista on the understanding of America's long experience with diversity. - Publisher.
Hela Ouardi
Médine, juin 632. Sous le soleil accablant de l'Arabie, le temps semble s'être arrêté : le Prophète de l'islam a rendu son dernier souffle. Autour de lui, les fidèles de la nouvelle religion, plongés dans la sidération, tremblent à l'idée que la Fin du monde soit proche. Mais où sont passés ses Compagnons? Quelle est cette étrange maladie qui l'a terrassé en quelques semaines? Et pourquoi l'enterrement n'a-t-il pas lieu? Au fil de ce récit au jour le jour de l'événement le plus mystérieux dans l'histoire de l'islam, Hela Ouardi, universitaire tunisienne, explore et confronte les sources sunnites et shiites les plus anciennes. Celles-ci nous révèlent un autre visage du Prophète, celui d'un homme menacé de toutes parts, affaibli par les rivalités internes et par les ennemis nés de ses conquêtes. Tout est entrepris pour qu'il ne laisse aucune directive claire sur sa succession. Ses Compagnons s'engagent dans une lutte pour le pouvoir et son clan se déchire, ouvrant la voie à des guerres meurtrières qui ensanglantent encore notre monde aujourd'hui. Une reconstitution chronologique inédite, où Hela Ouardi oppose aux mémoires idéologisées le portrait d'un homme rendu à son historicité et à sa dimension tragique. [4e de couverture]
Joan Copjec
A collection of essays [written] by theorists in culture and politics. Experts from a variety of fields re-examine the origins of the subject as understood by Descartes, Kant and Hegel, and consider contemporary ideas that revive the subject, including queer theory and national identity. --Publisher description.