Historical criticism attempts to read texts in their original situations, informed by literary and cultural conventions reconstructed from comparable texts and artifacts. African American interpretation extends this approach to questions about race and social location for the ancient text, its reception
history, and its modern readers. It arose as a corrective and alternative to white supremacist use of the Bible in moral and political arguments regarding race, civil rights, and social justice. Accordingly, African American interpretation has combined the
insights of abolitionists and activists with academic tools to demonstrate how biblical interpretation can function as an instrument of oppression, obfuscation, or opportunity. Of course, most of these developments have occurred in the larger framework of American Christianity. Yet, its analyses reach
beyond that specific setting, touching on the connections between the Bible and race in public discourse generally, whether in government, academia, or popular culture.
Some people will undoubtedly
argue that this hermeneutical option is
not the only one, nor even the best one.
They'll suggest that the best among the
available options is to disavow the
Christian faith and consequently be
rid of the obnoxious Bible. And indeed
many Black people especially the
youth have gone further than Steve
Biko who asked rhetorically whether
the decolonization process should not
be accompanied by a process of the de·
christianization of Africa - a process
which if successfully accomplished.
would remove the Bible from Africa.
Young blacks have categorically identified
the Bible as an oppressive documenl
by its very nature and 10 its very
core. Hence the refusal of all oppressors
in South Africa and elsewhere to
part wilh it. They have zealously campaigned
for its expulsion from the
oppressed Black community but with
little success. And this is largely due to
Ihe fact that no easily accessible ideological
silo or storeroom is being
offered to the social classes of our
people that are desperately in need of
liberation. African traditional relig.
ions are 100 far behind most blacks
while Marxism, is to my mind, far
ahead of many blacks,' especially
adult people. In the absence of a better
storeroom of ideological and spiritual
food, the Christian religion and the
Bible will continue for an undeterminable
period of time 10 be the haven of
the Black masses par excellence.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Critique of Christianity in Petals of Bloodinventionjournals
Ngugi wa thiong’o’s Petals of Blood is an interesting study of Kenyan post-colonial context from a socialist perspective. He not only dissects the opportunistic neo-colonial ruling clique, but also exposes the complicity of Church and Empire in the enterprise of Colonialism. Though the novel is seeped with Biblical allusions and a spiritual journey motif, Ngugi questions the white man’s religion and proclaims the necessity for redefining Christianity from a Blackman’s perspective. He rejects both religion and politics as liberating forces, as both are in collusion with capitalism. He rather roots for revolutionary politics as the means of ushering in meaningful change in the socio-politico-economic and cultural conditions of the masses of the Kenyan people, who comprises of peasants, workers and labourers.
Some people will undoubtedly
argue that this hermeneutical option is
not the only one, nor even the best one.
They'll suggest that the best among the
available options is to disavow the
Christian faith and consequently be
rid of the obnoxious Bible. And indeed
many Black people especially the
youth have gone further than Steve
Biko who asked rhetorically whether
the decolonization process should not
be accompanied by a process of the de·
christianization of Africa - a process
which if successfully accomplished.
would remove the Bible from Africa.
Young blacks have categorically identified
the Bible as an oppressive documenl
by its very nature and 10 its very
core. Hence the refusal of all oppressors
in South Africa and elsewhere to
part wilh it. They have zealously campaigned
for its expulsion from the
oppressed Black community but with
little success. And this is largely due to
Ihe fact that no easily accessible ideological
silo or storeroom is being
offered to the social classes of our
people that are desperately in need of
liberation. African traditional relig.
ions are 100 far behind most blacks
while Marxism, is to my mind, far
ahead of many blacks,' especially
adult people. In the absence of a better
storeroom of ideological and spiritual
food, the Christian religion and the
Bible will continue for an undeterminable
period of time 10 be the haven of
the Black masses par excellence.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Critique of Christianity in Petals of Bloodinventionjournals
Ngugi wa thiong’o’s Petals of Blood is an interesting study of Kenyan post-colonial context from a socialist perspective. He not only dissects the opportunistic neo-colonial ruling clique, but also exposes the complicity of Church and Empire in the enterprise of Colonialism. Though the novel is seeped with Biblical allusions and a spiritual journey motif, Ngugi questions the white man’s religion and proclaims the necessity for redefining Christianity from a Blackman’s perspective. He rejects both religion and politics as liberating forces, as both are in collusion with capitalism. He rather roots for revolutionary politics as the means of ushering in meaningful change in the socio-politico-economic and cultural conditions of the masses of the Kenyan people, who comprises of peasants, workers and labourers.
Trump is not dead; the Eternal return of puritanism
#Trump #american-puritanism #puritanism #puritan
https://bittube.tv/post/e9447caa-a07d-4cde-815f-d3eab8e7deef
https://odysee.com/@periodic-reset-of-civilizations:c/Trump-is-not-dead--the-eternal-return-of-puritanism:8
https://tube.midov.pl/w/gMgWi5JoCjtnLD7AAkBxsm
https://www.bitchute.com/video/aD4MWKxiRxNR/
All the platforms I Am on:
https://steemit.com/links/@resetciviliz/link-s
▶ BITCOIN
34c3XCeSyoi9DPRks867KL7GVD7tGVcxnH
▶ ETHEREUM
0xAc1FBaEBaCc83D332494B55123F5493a113cE457
▶ TEESPRING
https://periodic-reset.creator-spring.com
ASSIGNMENT COPY HISTORY 2 PARTHIST - TWO PART POINT OF TOPIC D.docxlesleyryder69361
ASSIGNMENT COPY HISTORY 2 PART
HIST - TWO PART POINT OF TOPIC
DISCUSSION PART ONE
PART ONE Original answer in college level SCHOLOARLY content. Properly cited, plagiarism free
Discussion
USING, book by
Jeanette Keith, in the Introduction to her textbook The South, a Concise History, Vol. 1, provides three categories of themes that she sees at work in the History of the American South, or examine other books and/or journal articles on the topic: History of the American South.
Defense of liberty, is the theme for the original discussion post?
Using reading sources on this topic, highlight and explain an example of the defense of liberty theme in complete, competent professionally well written scholarly content that stays relevant and on topic in 5-7 paragraphs.
PART TWO – Respond to (3) comments in 1-3 paragraphs of relevant RESPONSE content.Bottom of Form
1Top of Form
1. Discussion Response (1)
When examining the History of the American South, there are three key themes which repeatedly surface in this examination. An often overlooked theme in the development of southern history is religion. In order to understand the seriousness of religion in the American South, it is crucial to backtrack to 1517. In the years following Christopher Columbus's voyages, a monumental religious movement known as the Protestant Reformation occurred throughout Europe. This reformation caused large masses of people to at first question some of the teachings of the Catholicism; later many Christians adamantly rejected Catholicism and became who would later be known as Protestants. In the four major European powers of this time (England, Spain, France, and Portugal), Protestantism was most prominent in England while Catholicism remained prominent the nations of Spain, France, and Portugal. It is important to note that not every single person in England was protestant because there were sizable Catholic minorities who, generally speaking, later went into hiding or fled the country when Protestants came to power. Along the same lines, there were small groups of Protestants in Spain, France, and Portugal as well, but again, generally speaking, most people in Catholic-dominated countries tended to identify with Catholicism while a sizable amount of people in England tended to publicly identify with Protestantism.
As Spanish and French colonization of the New World progressed, Jeanette Keith notes that both Catholic and Protestant groups realized the importance of establishing a presence in the New World. With Spain's presence in the Caribbean and in the southern portions of the new continent along with France's presence in the northern reaches (along with a presence in what is now Louisiana) of the New World, Protestants in England began to realize the seriousness of the problem of preserving and expanding the Protestant faith. Exploring and claiming new territories would prevent the expansion of opposing faiths into the claimed territories. Both Protestants and Ca.
The inscription is a presentation regarding the Tulsa Race Massacre that occurred a couple of decades ago, in the state of Oklahoma, in the United States of America.
It is shockingly shocking that the United States government has been reluctant to acknowledge the import of events at the time as a massacre.
CHAPTER28FreedomBrandLIKE MANY ACTIVISTS, W. E..docxbartholomeocoombs
CHAPTER 28
Freedom Brand
LIKE MANY ACTIVISTS, W. E. B. Du Bois reeled from the height of the Nazi
Holocaust of Jews and other non-Aryans. After the United States entered World
War II in 1942, Du Bois felt energized by Black America’s “Double V
Campaign”: victory against racism at home, and victory against fascism abroad.
The Double V Campaign kicked the civil rights movement into high gear,
especially up North, and the long-awaited comprehensive study of the Negro
financed by the Carnegie Foundation kicked it into yet another gear, especially
down South.
In 1936, Carnegie Foundation president Frederick P. Keppel had briefly
considered some White American scholars when he had decided to heed
Cleveland mayor Newton Baker’s recommendation to sponsor a study on the
“infant race.” But there was almost no consideration of Zora Neale Hurston or
the elder statesmen, W. E. B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson. Although White
assimilationists and philanthropists were taking over the racial discourse in the
academy, they were customarily shutting out Black scholars as being too
subjective and biased to study Black people. It was amazing that the same
scholars and philanthropists who saw no problem with White scholars studying
White people had all these biased complaints when it came to Black scholars
studying Black people. But what would racist ideas be without contradictions.1
Carnegie officials drew up a list of only foreign European scholars and White
officials stationed in European colonies who they believed could complete the
study “in a wholly objective and dispassionate way.” They ended up selecting
the Swedish Nobel-laureate economist Gunnar Myrdal, bringing him to the
United States in 1938. With $300,000 in Carnegie funds, Myrdal employed a
classroom of leading Black and White scholars, including Frazier and Herskovits
—seemingly everyone except Hurston, Du Bois, and Woodson.2
In his two-volume, nearly 1,500-page study, published in 1944, Myrdal
shined an optimistic light on what he termed, in his title, An American Dilemma.
He identified the racial problem as a “moral problem,” as assimilationists long
had since the days of William Lloyd Garrison. White Americans display an
“astonishing ignorance about the Negro,” Myrdal wrote. Whites ignorantly
viewed Negroes as “criminal,” as having “loose sexual morals,” as “religious,”
as having “a gift for dancing and singing,” and as “the happy-go-lucky children
of nature.” Myrdal convinced himself—and many of his readers—that ignorance
had produced racist ideas, and that racist ideas had produced racist policies, and
therefore that “a great majority of white people in America would be prepared to
give the Negro a substantially better deal if they knew the facts.” W. E. B. Du
Bois probably shook his head when he read this pas.
The Impact of Martin Luther King’s Religious Life During the Civil Rights Str...AJHSSR Journal
ABSTRACT: This paper shows how Charles Johnson‟simaginative storyintertwines with that ofMartin Luther
King‟s religious lifeas one of the Blacks‟ leaders in the Civil RightsMovement of the 1950s and 1960s. Itis in
fact, theanalysisof King‟s nonviolent struggle for an equalitarian American society.His religious lifehas
undoubtedly influenced the institutionalized disequilibriumof common considerations based on the inequality
and injustice between Blacks and Whites in the United States. This means that King‟speaceful fight for justice is
based on hisfaith in God, constant prayers, and love for their enemies in the United States.
Keywords: Religious life, Injustice, nonviolent struggle, prayers, Civil Rights.
New York Review of BooksVolume 45, Number 10 · June 11, 1998R.docxvannagoforth
New York Review of Books
Volume 45, Number 10 · June 11, 1998
ReviewThe Betrayal of HistoryBy Alexander Stille
OTHER TEXTBOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLEA History of USby Joy Hakim
Oxford University Press, 10 volumes pp., $10.95 each (paper)Build Our Nation
Houghton Mifflin, 704 pp., $38.34America's Story
Harcourt Brace, 718 pp., $36.96Our United States
Silver Burdett Ginn, 656 pp., $39.00United States: Adventures in Time and Space
Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, 765 pp., $51.96
1.
Columbia University Professor Jack Garraty was surprised to open the latest edition of the eighth-grade textbook he had written in 1982 and learn that a Spanish explorer named Bartolomeo Gomez, and not the Englishman Henry Hudson, was credited with being the first European to discover the Hudson River. Garraty, who had taught history for thirty years, had never heard of Bartolomeo Gomez. After some research, he learned that Gomez was in fact Portuguese and not Spanish and that his claim to have discovered the Hudson River was based on extremely slender evidence: he had sailed along the Atlantic Coast and made a map that described three rivers, one of which might, or might not, be the Hudson.
"The map didn't even include Long Island," Garraty said. "He certainly didn't sail into the river." But the publisher of the book, Holt, Rinehart, anxious to create a new multicultural hero and to cater to the substantial Hispanic populations of Texas and California—the largest markets in the nation for textbooks—had elevated this obscure Portuguese explorer into the Spanish discoverer of the Hudson and inserted him in Garraty's book without his permission.
The American history taught in schools has been rewritten and transformed in recent decades by a handful of large publishers who are much concerned to meet the demands of both the multicultural left and the conservative religious right. In 1994, when Texas announced that it wanted to purchase new social studies textbooks for fifth-grade students, major publishers competed to produce history textbooks that would not be offensive to political and cultural pressure groups in the state. Four textbooks by different publishers were formally adopted as suitable for Texas last year; and children throughout the country will be reading one or another of them during the next five to ten years.
They will be doing so because the states of Texas and California taken together account for 20 percent of the textbooks sold in America. They are the biggest of some twenty-two states that review and choose textbooks on a state-wide basis, and their choices therefore have disproportionate influence among the fifty states. Approval of a textbook series in Texas or California guarantees millions of dollars in sales, while rejection will almost certainly mean financial failure. Textbook publishers spend much time answering angry letters from Christian fundamentalists and counting the illustrations in their books to make sure that they have the requisite num ...
Civil War & Reconstruction: An overviewOnthemellow
This lecture historicizes the Civil War. It includes information on the American Revolution, the Compromises of 1787, and the beginning divide between advocates and opponents of slavery. It is the first in a series of textbook/lecture substitutes designed for students in a college seminar on the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Trump is not dead; the Eternal return of puritanism
#Trump #american-puritanism #puritanism #puritan
https://bittube.tv/post/e9447caa-a07d-4cde-815f-d3eab8e7deef
https://odysee.com/@periodic-reset-of-civilizations:c/Trump-is-not-dead--the-eternal-return-of-puritanism:8
https://tube.midov.pl/w/gMgWi5JoCjtnLD7AAkBxsm
https://www.bitchute.com/video/aD4MWKxiRxNR/
All the platforms I Am on:
https://steemit.com/links/@resetciviliz/link-s
▶ BITCOIN
34c3XCeSyoi9DPRks867KL7GVD7tGVcxnH
▶ ETHEREUM
0xAc1FBaEBaCc83D332494B55123F5493a113cE457
▶ TEESPRING
https://periodic-reset.creator-spring.com
ASSIGNMENT COPY HISTORY 2 PARTHIST - TWO PART POINT OF TOPIC D.docxlesleyryder69361
ASSIGNMENT COPY HISTORY 2 PART
HIST - TWO PART POINT OF TOPIC
DISCUSSION PART ONE
PART ONE Original answer in college level SCHOLOARLY content. Properly cited, plagiarism free
Discussion
USING, book by
Jeanette Keith, in the Introduction to her textbook The South, a Concise History, Vol. 1, provides three categories of themes that she sees at work in the History of the American South, or examine other books and/or journal articles on the topic: History of the American South.
Defense of liberty, is the theme for the original discussion post?
Using reading sources on this topic, highlight and explain an example of the defense of liberty theme in complete, competent professionally well written scholarly content that stays relevant and on topic in 5-7 paragraphs.
PART TWO – Respond to (3) comments in 1-3 paragraphs of relevant RESPONSE content.Bottom of Form
1Top of Form
1. Discussion Response (1)
When examining the History of the American South, there are three key themes which repeatedly surface in this examination. An often overlooked theme in the development of southern history is religion. In order to understand the seriousness of religion in the American South, it is crucial to backtrack to 1517. In the years following Christopher Columbus's voyages, a monumental religious movement known as the Protestant Reformation occurred throughout Europe. This reformation caused large masses of people to at first question some of the teachings of the Catholicism; later many Christians adamantly rejected Catholicism and became who would later be known as Protestants. In the four major European powers of this time (England, Spain, France, and Portugal), Protestantism was most prominent in England while Catholicism remained prominent the nations of Spain, France, and Portugal. It is important to note that not every single person in England was protestant because there were sizable Catholic minorities who, generally speaking, later went into hiding or fled the country when Protestants came to power. Along the same lines, there were small groups of Protestants in Spain, France, and Portugal as well, but again, generally speaking, most people in Catholic-dominated countries tended to identify with Catholicism while a sizable amount of people in England tended to publicly identify with Protestantism.
As Spanish and French colonization of the New World progressed, Jeanette Keith notes that both Catholic and Protestant groups realized the importance of establishing a presence in the New World. With Spain's presence in the Caribbean and in the southern portions of the new continent along with France's presence in the northern reaches (along with a presence in what is now Louisiana) of the New World, Protestants in England began to realize the seriousness of the problem of preserving and expanding the Protestant faith. Exploring and claiming new territories would prevent the expansion of opposing faiths into the claimed territories. Both Protestants and Ca.
The inscription is a presentation regarding the Tulsa Race Massacre that occurred a couple of decades ago, in the state of Oklahoma, in the United States of America.
It is shockingly shocking that the United States government has been reluctant to acknowledge the import of events at the time as a massacre.
CHAPTER28FreedomBrandLIKE MANY ACTIVISTS, W. E..docxbartholomeocoombs
CHAPTER 28
Freedom Brand
LIKE MANY ACTIVISTS, W. E. B. Du Bois reeled from the height of the Nazi
Holocaust of Jews and other non-Aryans. After the United States entered World
War II in 1942, Du Bois felt energized by Black America’s “Double V
Campaign”: victory against racism at home, and victory against fascism abroad.
The Double V Campaign kicked the civil rights movement into high gear,
especially up North, and the long-awaited comprehensive study of the Negro
financed by the Carnegie Foundation kicked it into yet another gear, especially
down South.
In 1936, Carnegie Foundation president Frederick P. Keppel had briefly
considered some White American scholars when he had decided to heed
Cleveland mayor Newton Baker’s recommendation to sponsor a study on the
“infant race.” But there was almost no consideration of Zora Neale Hurston or
the elder statesmen, W. E. B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson. Although White
assimilationists and philanthropists were taking over the racial discourse in the
academy, they were customarily shutting out Black scholars as being too
subjective and biased to study Black people. It was amazing that the same
scholars and philanthropists who saw no problem with White scholars studying
White people had all these biased complaints when it came to Black scholars
studying Black people. But what would racist ideas be without contradictions.1
Carnegie officials drew up a list of only foreign European scholars and White
officials stationed in European colonies who they believed could complete the
study “in a wholly objective and dispassionate way.” They ended up selecting
the Swedish Nobel-laureate economist Gunnar Myrdal, bringing him to the
United States in 1938. With $300,000 in Carnegie funds, Myrdal employed a
classroom of leading Black and White scholars, including Frazier and Herskovits
—seemingly everyone except Hurston, Du Bois, and Woodson.2
In his two-volume, nearly 1,500-page study, published in 1944, Myrdal
shined an optimistic light on what he termed, in his title, An American Dilemma.
He identified the racial problem as a “moral problem,” as assimilationists long
had since the days of William Lloyd Garrison. White Americans display an
“astonishing ignorance about the Negro,” Myrdal wrote. Whites ignorantly
viewed Negroes as “criminal,” as having “loose sexual morals,” as “religious,”
as having “a gift for dancing and singing,” and as “the happy-go-lucky children
of nature.” Myrdal convinced himself—and many of his readers—that ignorance
had produced racist ideas, and that racist ideas had produced racist policies, and
therefore that “a great majority of white people in America would be prepared to
give the Negro a substantially better deal if they knew the facts.” W. E. B. Du
Bois probably shook his head when he read this pas.
The Impact of Martin Luther King’s Religious Life During the Civil Rights Str...AJHSSR Journal
ABSTRACT: This paper shows how Charles Johnson‟simaginative storyintertwines with that ofMartin Luther
King‟s religious lifeas one of the Blacks‟ leaders in the Civil RightsMovement of the 1950s and 1960s. Itis in
fact, theanalysisof King‟s nonviolent struggle for an equalitarian American society.His religious lifehas
undoubtedly influenced the institutionalized disequilibriumof common considerations based on the inequality
and injustice between Blacks and Whites in the United States. This means that King‟speaceful fight for justice is
based on hisfaith in God, constant prayers, and love for their enemies in the United States.
Keywords: Religious life, Injustice, nonviolent struggle, prayers, Civil Rights.
New York Review of BooksVolume 45, Number 10 · June 11, 1998R.docxvannagoforth
New York Review of Books
Volume 45, Number 10 · June 11, 1998
ReviewThe Betrayal of HistoryBy Alexander Stille
OTHER TEXTBOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLEA History of USby Joy Hakim
Oxford University Press, 10 volumes pp., $10.95 each (paper)Build Our Nation
Houghton Mifflin, 704 pp., $38.34America's Story
Harcourt Brace, 718 pp., $36.96Our United States
Silver Burdett Ginn, 656 pp., $39.00United States: Adventures in Time and Space
Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, 765 pp., $51.96
1.
Columbia University Professor Jack Garraty was surprised to open the latest edition of the eighth-grade textbook he had written in 1982 and learn that a Spanish explorer named Bartolomeo Gomez, and not the Englishman Henry Hudson, was credited with being the first European to discover the Hudson River. Garraty, who had taught history for thirty years, had never heard of Bartolomeo Gomez. After some research, he learned that Gomez was in fact Portuguese and not Spanish and that his claim to have discovered the Hudson River was based on extremely slender evidence: he had sailed along the Atlantic Coast and made a map that described three rivers, one of which might, or might not, be the Hudson.
"The map didn't even include Long Island," Garraty said. "He certainly didn't sail into the river." But the publisher of the book, Holt, Rinehart, anxious to create a new multicultural hero and to cater to the substantial Hispanic populations of Texas and California—the largest markets in the nation for textbooks—had elevated this obscure Portuguese explorer into the Spanish discoverer of the Hudson and inserted him in Garraty's book without his permission.
The American history taught in schools has been rewritten and transformed in recent decades by a handful of large publishers who are much concerned to meet the demands of both the multicultural left and the conservative religious right. In 1994, when Texas announced that it wanted to purchase new social studies textbooks for fifth-grade students, major publishers competed to produce history textbooks that would not be offensive to political and cultural pressure groups in the state. Four textbooks by different publishers were formally adopted as suitable for Texas last year; and children throughout the country will be reading one or another of them during the next five to ten years.
They will be doing so because the states of Texas and California taken together account for 20 percent of the textbooks sold in America. They are the biggest of some twenty-two states that review and choose textbooks on a state-wide basis, and their choices therefore have disproportionate influence among the fifty states. Approval of a textbook series in Texas or California guarantees millions of dollars in sales, while rejection will almost certainly mean financial failure. Textbook publishers spend much time answering angry letters from Christian fundamentalists and counting the illustrations in their books to make sure that they have the requisite num ...
Civil War & Reconstruction: An overviewOnthemellow
This lecture historicizes the Civil War. It includes information on the American Revolution, the Compromises of 1787, and the beginning divide between advocates and opponents of slavery. It is the first in a series of textbook/lecture substitutes designed for students in a college seminar on the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Chapter 12 ReflectionCharles Grandison Finney – an evangelistic .docxcravennichole326
Chapter 12 Reflection
Charles Grandison Finney – an evangelistic Presbyterian minister who became the most influential revival leader of the 1820s and 1830s.
Frederick Douglass – the greatest African American of all – and one of the most electrifying orators of his time, black or white – was Frederick Douglass. Born a slave in Maryland, Douglass escaped to Massachusetts in 1838, became an outspoken leader of anti-slavery sentiment. On his return to the United States in 1847, Douglass purchased his freedom from his Maryland owner and founded an antislavery newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York. Douglass demanded for African Americans not only freedom but full social and economic social equality as well.
Henry David Thoreau – leading Concord transcendentalist. Thoreau went even further in repudiating the repressive forces of society. He produced the ideas that individuals should work for self-realization by resisting pressures to conform to society’s expectations and responding instead to their instincts. Thoreau’s own efforts to free himself – immortalized in is most famous book, Walden – led him to build a small cabin in the Concord woods on the edge of Walden Pond, where he lived alone for two years as simply as he could.
Horace Mann – the greatest of educational reformers was Horace Mann, the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, which was established in 1837. To Mann, education was the only way to “counterwork this tendency to the domination of capital and the servility of labor.” He reorganized the Massachusetts school system, lengthened the academic year (to six months, doubled teachers’ salaries, enriched the curriculum, and introduced new methods of professional training for teachers.
Joseph Smith - Mormonism began in upstate New York as a result of the efforts of Joseph Smith, a young, energetic, but economically unsuccessful man, who had spent most oh his twenty-four years moving restlessly through New England and the Northeast. In 1830, he published the Book of Mormon that told a story of an ancient and successful civilization in America, peopled by one of the lost tribes of Israel who had found their way to the New World centuries before Columbus.
Shakers – made a redefinition of traditional sexuality and gender roles central to their society and even embraced the idea of a God who was not clearly male or female.
Transcendentalism - idealistic philosophical and social movement that taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity.
Walt Whitman - the self-proclaimed poet of American democracy, was the son of a Lon Island carpenter and lived for many years roaming from place to place, doing odd jobs, while writing poetry. In his large body of poems, Whitman not only helped liberate verse from traditional, restrictive conventions but also helped express the soaring spirit of individualisms that characterized his age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson – a Unitarian minister in his youth, Emerson left the church i ...
Formal Essay OutlineNameDateModCaseTentative paper titl.docxshericehewat
Formal Essay Outline
Name
Date
Mod/Case
Tentative paper title
I. Introduction
Introductory Paragraph
A. Opening sentence (attention getter)
B. A brief summary to introduce the topic
C. Thesis statement
II. Body
First Body Paragraph (1st supporting point)
A. Topic Sentence states 1st supporting point
B. Expand and give specific details
C. Provide support using examples and if assigned, quotes
D. Analysis (analyze/connect evidence to supporting reason and argument)
Second Body Paragraph (2nd supporting point)
A. Topic Sentence states 2nd supporting point
B. Expand and give specific details
C. Provide support using examples and if assigned, quotes
D. Analysis (analyze/connect evidence to supporting reason and argument)
Third Body Paragraph (3rd supporting point)
A. Topic Sentence states 3rd supporting point
B. Expand and give specific details
C. Provide support using examples and if assigned, quotes
D. Analysis (analyze/connect evidence to supporting reason and argument)
III. Conclusion
A. Restate main point of the essay
B. Summarize supporting reasons
C. Concluding thoughts to leave a lasting impression on the reader
New York Review of Books
Volume 45, Number 10 · June 11, 1998
ReviewThe Betrayal of HistoryBy Alexander Stille
OTHER TEXTBOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLEA History of USby Joy Hakim
Oxford University Press, 10 volumes pp., $10.95 each (paper)Build Our Nation
Houghton Mifflin, 704 pp., $38.34America's Story
Harcourt Brace, 718 pp., $36.96Our United States
Silver Burdett Ginn, 656 pp., $39.00United States: Adventures in Time and Space
Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, 765 pp., $51.96
1.
Columbia University Professor Jack Garraty was surprised to open the latest edition of the eighth-grade textbook he had written in 1982 and learn that a Spanish explorer named Bartolomeo Gomez, and not the Englishman Henry Hudson, was credited with being the first European to discover the Hudson River. Garraty, who had taught history for thirty years, had never heard of Bartolomeo Gomez. After some research, he learned that Gomez was in fact Portuguese and not Spanish and that his claim to have discovered the Hudson River was based on extremely slender evidence: he had sailed along the Atlantic Coast and made a map that described three rivers, one of which might, or might not, be the Hudson.
"The map didn't even include Long Island," Garraty said. "He certainly didn't sail into the river." But the publisher of the book, Holt, Rinehart, anxious to create a new multicultural hero and to cater to the substantial Hispanic populations of Texas and California—the largest markets in the nation for textbooks—had elevated this obscure Portuguese explorer into the Spanish discoverer of the Hudson and inserted him in Garraty's book without his permission.
The American history taught in schools has been rewritten and transformed in recent decades by a handful of large publishers who are much concerned to meet the demands of both the ...
460 THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORYagainst slavery and aga.docxalinainglis
460 THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY
against slavery and against national oppression led humankind onto an
increasingly progressive path” (p. 137).
Garrison and Mazzini were not without their differences, however. On the
one hand, Garrison was committed to nonviolence. He also scorned those
who worked within the political framework of the slaveholding American
republic to promote antislavery causes. On the other hand, Mazzini advocated
for violent upheavals against Italy’s overlords. And his goal of creating a
republic was inherently political. Despite these differences, Garrison and
Mazzini were equally steadfast in adhering to their principles, even against
pressure from fellow reformers. Garrison’s abolitionist movement splintered
into competing factions, with some former allies engaging in politics and
others encouraging armed resistance against slaveholders. Meanwhile,
Mazzini was often forced into exile for refusing to compromise. He was
therefore physically and politically marginalized when others who did not
share his commitment to democracy unified the peninsula.
Parallel lines never cross. But parallel lives can intersect. Garrison and
Mazzini met twice, in 1846 and 1867. Dal Lago claims that the two formed
“a lifelong friendship” (p. 116). However, he never shows that Garrison and
Mazzini were more than acquaintances with similar views and mutual
respect. Not that it matters; they clearly supported one another’s causes.
In 1849 Garrison endorsed the short-lived Roman Republic, which elected
Mazzini to its executive triumvirate. He also printed Mazzini’s abolitionist
essays and authored an introduction to a posthumous collection of Mazzini’s
autobiographical writings. Curiously, Dal Lago cites few of these presumably
rich sources. Moreover, other sources he includes suggest a more interesting
narrative—one with London as the center of gravity in the Atlantic’s galaxy
of reformers, with foreign stars like Garrison and Mazzini orbiting around
British sympathizers. After all, it was the British politician William Henry
Ashurst who introduced Garrison and Mazzini. And it was Ashurst’s daugh
ter, Emily Ashurst-Venturi, who arranged for Garrison to provide the intro
duction to Mazzini’s autobiography.
Comparative biography is a tricky genre. Dal Lago does an admirable job
of focusing on the similarities between abolitionism and democratic nation
alism, despite alternating between Garrison and Mazzini. But was a compar
ative biography of two leaders the best vehicle for conducting such a study?
Happily, Garrison got to witness the abolition of slavery. In contrast,
Mazzini, the fierce republican, was hardly satisfied when the Kingdom of
Italy was proclaimed in 1861. Let’s just say that this book leaves its readers
feeling more like Mazzini than Garrison.
Princeton University C r a ig B. H o l l a n d e r
To Raise Up a Nation: John Brown, Frederick Douglass, and the Making
o f a Free Country. By Will.
a. AnnotationsEach citation should be followed by a brief (about.docxannetnash8266
a. Annotations
Each citation should be followed by a brief (about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.Include one or more sentences that (a) summarize the content of the book or article, (b) evaluate the authority or background of the author, (c) compare or contrast this work with others you have cited, or (d) explain how this work illuminates your bibliography topic. Each annotation does not need to include all four aspects, but the ideal annotation will. If needed, Cornell has a wonderful guide for evaluating and critically analyzing sources here: http://guides.library.cornell.edu/criticallyanalyzing
This is the only assignment this semester in which sentence structure, grammar, and mechanics matter. I highly encourage all of you to reread and revise your annotations multiple times to ensure mechanically sound and well written sentences. The writing center is a tremendous resource in this regard. They offer all kinds of support for students, including specific support for non-native English speakers. Please visit their website to see the resources available: http://www.temple.edu/writingctr/index.asp
The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr 5
The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr
(1929-1968)
Ί am many things to many people', Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledged
in 1965, in an article in the magazine Ebony, 'but in the quiet recesses of
my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher. This is my
being and my heritage for I am also the son of a Baptist preacher, the
grandson of a Baptist preacher and the great-grandson of a Baptist
preacher.'
1
In a great deal of King's own published work, and certainly in
much of the literature about him, his specifically Baptist convictions are not
prominent. He emphasised his indebtedness to a variety of academic
influences and in his non-violent campaigns he acknpwledged the influence
of well-known figures such as Gandhi. This enabled him to connect with a
wide range of people. It is also the case that the particular strand within
Baptist life which King represented - one marked by radical, socio-political
involvement - is one that has been somewhat overshadowed by the deeply
conservative political standpoint of some Baptist communities in the USA
in more recent decades. A Baptist who is strongly sympathetic to King, T.
Furman Hewitt, writing in 1998 about Baptists and ethics, spoke of the
common perception of Baptists as 'typically conservative'.
2
In one of his essays in Biography as Theology (first published in
1974), James Wm. McClendon, Jr., explored several different
interpretations of King. He noted that David L. Lewis, in King, A Critical
Biography, treated King as a gifted orator and populist politician who was
ignorant of political realities and was ultimately a failure.
3
Howev.
"The rise of black power had a profound effect upon the appearance of black theology. When Carmichael and other radical black activists separated themselves from King's absolute commitment to nonviolence by proclaiming black power, white Christians especially members of the clergy, called upon their black brothers and sisters in the gospel to denounce black power as unChristian. To the surprise of white Christians, the National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NNC); later to become NCBC) refused to follow their advice and instead wrote a "Black Power Statement" that was published in the New York Time, July 31, 1966.
The Theology of Spirituality: It's Growing Importance Amid the Transformation...Jonathan Dunnemann
Abstract: This article raises issues surrounding the theology of spirituality as a relatively new theological focus. It argues that, faced with a changing world and numerous new (or perceived as new) phenomena, the theology of spirituality, as a scholarly area examining spiritual experience, is becoming a branch of
theological research of increasing importance. The first part of this article focuses on the ever-growing areas of interest found within the theology of spirituality, a growth stemming from the core of the field itself (agere sequitur esse). The second part emphasizes the newer areas of interest within the theology
of spirituality. These new horizons arise from the pluralism of theology itself and the criteria used in differentiating theological disciplines, such as ethno-geographic, doctrinal, and ascetic-practical concerns. In particular, amid a fast-changing world in which information and mutual contact have become incredibly accessible, the interpenetration of cultures and traditions can not only be of great value but also carry the dangers of a chaotic eclecticism. As this accessibility becomes ever easier and more pervasive, contemporary human beings can thus become confused, not only about their worldviews but also concerning their spiritual and religious beliefs. Thus, research into the theology of spirituality is becoming increasingly more important.
Using an interdisciplinary approach and a phenomenological, hermeneutic, mystagogical methodology, this paper explores how children describe the deep fruits of meditation in their lives. Seventy children, aged 7 to 11, from four Irish primary schools were interviewed; all had engaged in meditation as a whole-school practice for at least two-years beforehand. The study sought to elicit from children their experience, if any, of the transcendent in meditation. It concludes that children can and do enjoy deep states of consciousness and that meditation has the capacity to nourish the innate spirituality of the child. It highlights the importance of personal spiritual experience for children and supports the introduction of meditation in primary schools.
ASSESSMENT OF CHARACTER STRENGTHS AMONG YOUTH: THE VALUES IN ACTION INVENTORY...Jonathan Dunnemann
Raising virtuous children is an ultimate goal not only of all parents and educators but also of all societies. Across different eras and cultures, identifying character strengths (virtues) and cultivating them in children and youth have been among the chief interests of philosophers, theologians, and educators. With a few exceptions, these topics have been neglected by psychologists. However, the emerging field of positive psychology specifically emphasizes
building the good life by identifying individual strengths of character and fostering them (Seligman, 2002). Character strengths are now receiving attention by psychologists interested in positive youth development.
African American spirituality provides a rich lens into the heart and soul of the black church experience, often overlooked in the Christian spiritual formation literature. By addressing this lacuna, this essay focuses on three primary shaping qualities o f history: the effects of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement under Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership, and the emergence of the Black Church. Lour spiritual practices that influence African American spirituality highlight the historical and cultural context of being “forged in the fiery furnace,” including worship, preaching and Scripture, the community of faith and prayer, and community outreach. The essay concludes by recognizing four areas o f the lived experiences of African Americans from which the global church can glean: (1) persevering in pain and suffering, (2) turning to God for strength, (3) experiencing a living and passionate faith, and (4) affirming God’s intention for freedom and justice to be afforded to every individual.
Strengths Building, Resilience, and the Bible: A Story-Based Curriculum for A...Jonathan Dunnemann
Depression is the leading cause of illness and disability in adolescents worldwide. Resilience training, founded on principles of positive psychology, is correlated with lower depression and
substance misuse in U.S. adolescents and military personnel. However, resilience training has focused primarily on secular interventions using western material. Religion is strongly correlated
with lower depression and also with well-being in developing countries. Ninety percent of adolescents live in developing countries, and at least two-thirds are oral learners who prefer
learning through stories and drama. This paper proposes a Bible story based curriculum that trains students in problem solving skills, character strengths, and both spiritual and secular
research-tested principles for resilience and well-being. The Bible is available by audio recording in 751 languages and offers a broad base of archetypal stories for teaching resilience. The
program is easily reproducible, culturally adaptable, respectful of all religions, and specifically crafted for oral learners. Through audio recordings to maintain fidelity, train the trainer programs
for dissemination and support of national and community leaders, the proposed curriculum for Global Resilience Oral Workshops (GROW) has potential to lower depression and lift well-being
in adolescents around the world.
Appropriating Universality: The Coltranes and 1960s SpiritualityJonathan Dunnemann
The role of the Black Protestant Church has figured prominently in scholarly discussions of African American music culture, and to some extent its importance has been explored with respect to jazz. However, with the exception of the Nation of Islam, the influence of Eastern religious practices among black Americans has not been significantly researched nor have adequate connections been made between these spiritual pursuits and the musical innovations they inspired. Nevertheless, since the mid-’60s, black American artists have explored Yoga, Hinduism, various sects of Buddhism, Ahmadiya Islam, and Bahá’í. The
aesthetic impact of these pursuits has been multi-dimensional and far-reaching. In their study of Asian philosophy and religion, jazz musicians have been exposed to the sounds and musical processes they have discovered in the cultures from which these traditions have emerged. One can hear this influence in musical borrowings, such as the use of traditional instrumentation, the reworking of melodic material from folk and classical genres, and the incorporation of indigenous
improvisational and compositional techniques. Though less audible, Eastern spiritual traditions have also exerted a more abstract philosophical influence that has shaped jazz aesthetics, inspiring jazz musicians to dissolve formal and stylistic boundaries and produce works of great originality. Contextualizing the spiritual explorations of John and Alice Coltrane within American religious culture and liberation movements of the 1960s, this essay explores the way that
their eclectic appropriation of Eastern spiritual concepts and their commitment to spiritual universality not only inspired musical innovation, but also provided a counter-hegemonic, political, and cultural critique.
Who Is Jesus Christ for Us Today?
To say that Jesus Christ is the truth of the Christian story calls for further examination. It is one thing to assert that the New Testament describes Jesus as the Oppressed One who came to liberate the poor and the weak (Chap. 4); but it is quite another to ask, Who is Jesus Christ for us today? If twentieth-century Christians are to speak the truth for their sociohistorical situation, they cannot merely repeat the story of what Jesus did and said in Palestine, as if it were selfinterpreting for us today. Truth is more than the retelling of the biblical story. Truth is the divine happening that invades our contemporary situation, revealing the meaning of the past for the present so that we
are made new creatures for the future. It is therefore our commitment to the divine truth, as witnessed to in the biblical story, that requires us to investigate the connection between Jesus' words and deeds in firstcentury Palestine and our existence today. This is the crux of the christological issue that no Christian theology can avoid.
The pivotal role of religion and spirituality in the lives of African Americans marks this ethnoracial group as a particularly important target for attention in research on the psychology and sociology of religion. In this chapter we endeavor to achieve three ends: First, we briefly review literature on meanings of religiosity and spirituality among African Americans. Second, we review the literature on the link between religiosity, spirituality, and health among African Americans. Finally, we examine findings regarding the pathways by which religion and spirituality may achieve its ends.
Transformative Pedagogy, Black Theology and Participative forms of PraxisJonathan Dunnemann
"This formative analysis is... on the significant developments in religious education by and for Black people, principally in the US. ..., I describe my own participative approaches to Black theology by means of transformative pedagogy, which utilizes interactive exercises as a means of combining the insights of the aforementioned ideas and themes into a transformative mode of teaching and learning."
"..., I have attempted to combine the radical intent of transformative education arising from the Freirerian tradition with Black liberation theology in order to develop a more participative and interactive mode of theo-pedagogical engagement that moves intellectual discourse beyond mere theorizing into more praxis based forms of practice.
Development of a Program for the Empowerment of Black Single Mother Families ...Jonathan Dunnemann
The most rapid growing family type in the United States is the single parent family. It is the dominant family type in the African-American community. According to the United States Bureau of the Census (2010), 69% of all Black children are born to single mothers. Single mother families are at a dramatically greater risk for drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, suicide, poor educational performance, teen pregnancy, and criminality (National Center for Health Statistics, 1993).
Black Males, Social Imagery, and the Disruption of Pathological IdentitiesJonathan Dunnemann
Throughout the history of the U.S., racialized groups have often had their experiences profoundly shaped by social imagery in ways that have created tremendous hardships in the quest for
self-actualization and a healthy sense of self.
The purpose of this article is to shed light on the manner in which Black males have been one of the primary victims of negative social imagery and how the remnants of these constructions continue to have contemporary influences, ....
In Jude 17-23 Jude shifts from piling up examples of false teachers from the Old Testament to a series of practical exhortations that flow from apostolic instruction. He preserves for us what may well have been part of the apostolic catechism for the first generation of Christ-followers. In these instructions Jude exhorts the believer to deal with 3 different groups of people: scoffers who are "devoid of the Spirit", believers who have come under the influence of scoffers and believers who are so entrenched in false teaching that they need rescue and pose some real spiritual risk for the rescuer. In all of this Jude emphasizes Jesus' call to rescue straying sheep, leaving the 99 safely behind and pursuing the 1.
The PBHP DYC ~ Reflections on The Dhamma (English).pptxOH TEIK BIN
A PowerPoint Presentation based on the Dhamma Reflections for the PBHP DYC for the years 1993 – 2012. To motivate and inspire DYC members to keep on practicing the Dhamma and to do the meritorious deed of Dhammaduta work.
The texts are in English.
For the Video with audio narration, comments and texts in English, please check out the Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF2g_43NEa0
The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian exile.
The Good News, newsletter for June 2024 is hereNoHo FUMC
Our monthly newsletter is available to read online. We hope you will join us each Sunday in person for our worship service. Make sure to subscribe and follow us on YouTube and social media.
The Chakra System in our body - A Portal to Interdimensional Consciousness.pptxBharat Technology
each chakra is studied in greater detail, several steps have been included to
strengthen your personal intention to open each chakra more fully. These are designed
to draw forth the highest benefit for your spiritual growth.
What Should be the Christian View of Anime?Joe Muraguri
We will learn what Anime is and see what a Christian should consider before watching anime movies? We will also learn a little bit of Shintoism religion and hentai (the craze of internet pornography today).
Homily: The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity Sunday 2024.docxJames Knipper
Countless volumes have been written trying to explain the mystery of three persons in one true God, leaving us to resort to metaphors such as the three-leaf clover to try to comprehend the Divinity. Many of us grew up with the quintessential pyramidal Trinity structure of God at the top and Son and Spirit in opposite corners. But what if we looked at this ‘mystery’ from a different perspective? What if we shifted our language of God as a being towards the concept of God as love? What if we focused more on the relationship within the Trinity versus the persons of the Trinity? What if stopped looking at God as a noun…and instead considered God as a verb? Check it out…
Lesson 9 - Resisting Temptation Along the Way.pptxCelso Napoleon
Lesson 9 - Resisting Temptation Along the Way
SBs – Sunday Bible School
Adult Bible Lessons 2nd quarter 2024 CPAD
MAGAZINE: THE CAREER THAT IS PROPOSED TO US: The Path of Salvation, Holiness and Perseverance to Reach Heaven
Commentator: Pastor Osiel Gomes
Presentation: Missionary Celso Napoleon
Renewed in Grace
1. A
AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION
Historical criticism attempts to read texts in
their original situations, informed by literary and
cultural conventions reconstructed from compara-
ble texts and artifacts. African American interpreta-
tion extends this approach to questions about race
and social location for the ancient text, its reception
history, and its modern readers. It arose as a correc-
tive and alternative to white supremacist use of the
Bible in moral and political arguments regarding
race, civil rights, and social justice. Accordingly,
African American interpretation has combined the
insights of abolitionists and activists with academic
tools to demonstrate how biblical interpretation can
function as an instrument of oppression, obfusca-
tion, or opportunity. Of course, most of these devel-
opments have occurred in the larger framework
of American Christianity. Yet, its analyses reach
beyond that specific setting, touching on the con-
nections between the Bible and race in public dis-
course generally, whether in government, academia,
or popular culture.
White Supremacy, Slavery, and the Bible. The
importance of African American interpretation is
evident when viewed in light of white supremacy’s
development in the United States. When propertied
white men during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries were deliberating about their freedoms,
they were also creating rationales for not extending
those liberties to others—poorer white men, white
women, indigenous people, and enslaved blacks
from Africa. There were some who saw the hypoc-
risy of such thinking; some even articulated aspira-
tions for a better day, but such hopes for others
were left to the invisible hand of Providence. Mean-
while, their own freedom required immediate pro-
test, collective action, and even war (Fredrickson
2002, pp. 1–47).
Nevertheless, white supremacy did not reach its
zenith in the United States until the period stretch-
ing from the middle of the nineteenth century to the
first half of the twentieth century. This era included
a series of episodes centered on the control of Afri-
can Americans: (a) the debates about slavery before
the Civil War, accompanied by a variety of violent
incidents; (b) the unconscionable carnage of the
Civil War; (c) a hopeful yet eventually ruined Recon-
struction; and (d) a time of unchecked terrorist
violence to enforce de jure and de facto segregation
(Fredrickson 2002, pp. 49–138).
In each episode, the Bible’s interpretation played a
central role in arguments for and protests against
white supremacy. In arguments over slavery, for
instance, defenders and opponents alike confidently
cited the Bible (Noll 2006, pp. 31–50). Slavery’s
1
2. supporters could easily point to multiple passages
where slavery is regulated and slaves are commanded
to submit to their masters (e.g., Exod 21:1–11; Deut
20:10–18; 1 Cor 7:21; Col 3:22; 4:1; 1 Tim 6:1–2; 1 Pet
2:18–25). Thus, for those who considered the Bible a
divinely inspired rule book, slavery was obviously
morally permissible and its opponents possessed
by impiety. Moreover, the belief in black inferiority
blinded many to the immorality of this race-based
system, not to mention its innumerable abuses such
as family breakup and rape.
Conversely, slavery’s opponents contended that
larger biblical principles should guide the reading
of particular passages. These included creation in
God’s image (Gen 1:26), Jesus’s admonitions on
mutuality, love, and care for the vulnerable (Matt
7:12; 22:34–40; 25:31–46), human unity before God
(Acts 17:26), and the absolution of social barriers for
fellow believers in Christ (Gal 3:28). Because of
the self-interests of some, the simple view of the
Bible for many, and the white supremacy of most,
these latter arguments proved unpersuasive. Instead,
the resolution “was left to those consummate theo-
logians, the Reverend Doctors Ulysses S. Grant and
William Tecumseh Sherman, to decide what in fact
the Bible actually means” (Noll 2006, p. 50).
Antebellum Ancestors. One development, how-
ever, would have lasting, constructive conse-
quences: the emergence of African American
interpretation of the Bible in disputes about
their humanity and societal standing (Noll 2006,
pp. 64–72). In 1810 Daniel Coker, a founding minis-
ter of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, pub-
lished A Dialogue between a Virginian and an African
Minister, where he set forth seven arguments from
the Bible against slavery. In 1813 Lemuel Haynes, a
Congregationalist minister in Vermont, pointed out
the contradictions between the outrage over the
forced service of American sailors in the War of
1812 and the quiet acceptance of slavery’s injustices.
David Walker published his famous Appeal in 1829,
where he argued passionately against slavery on
biblical, moral, and historical grounds. Preferring
their exegetical arguments, Mark Noll, a historian
and an evangelical, concludes that Coker and
Haynes “demonstrated that African American bibli-
cal reasoning could match in theological acumen
the most profound arguments that any white put
forward in that period” (p. 73).
Frederick Douglass, marching to the beat of
a different drum, mustered unequalled eloquence
against biblical and theological defenses of slavery.
Although he taught himself and others literacy with
the Bible, Douglass understood that it was a treach-
erous tool of oppression in the hands of racist,
pro-slavery whites. So much so that Douglass once
publicly argued against raising money for smuggling
Bibles to Southern slaves (Callahan 2006, pp. 21–26).
“He knew that some people reading the Bible under
the slave regime remained tone-deaf to its message
of justice” (p. 24). Thus, he found pro-slavery use of
the Bible simply loathsome. Indeed, he refused to
“play the game” of so-called civil debate. Douglass
concluded that the obvious duplicity of slavery’s
defenders must only be met with derision.
It would be insulting to Common Sense, an outrage
upon all right feeling, for us, who have worn the heavy
chain and felt the biting lash to consent to argue with
Ecclesiastical Sneaks who are thus prostituting their
Religion and Bible to the base uses of popular and
profitable iniquity. They don’t need light, but the sting
of honest rebuke. They are of their father the Devil,
and his works they do, not because they are ignorant,
but because they are base. (Noll 2006, p. 66)
Still, Douglass did not advocate slave revolt. Other
African Americans, however, were unwilling to limit
their protests to advocacy in activism, oratory, and
print. In 1810, slave brothers in Virginia, Gabriel and
Martin, orchestrated a revolt before it was discov-
ered and stopped. Trial testimony indicates that the
Bible was a fundamental inspiration for them. In the
neighboring state of South Carolina, moved by Bible
reading among black Methodists, Denmark Vesey
planned a slave revolt on Bastille Day, 14 July 1822.
His plot was foiled, and he and thirty-six others were
executed. Nine years later in August 1831, back in
Virginia, Nat Turner’s revolt killed sixty whites, and
nearly as many blacks were executed for that upris-
ing. In the aftermath, several states passed laws
2 AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION
3. not only prohibiting African American education
but severely restricting unsupervised gatherings.
Obviously, when these African Americans consid-
ered their circumstances, they did not perceive the
Bible as pointing to their perpetual compliance.
Instead, they saw themselves as similar to the Isra-
elites in Egypt, awaiting emancipation, and like the
Maccabees under Seleucid rule, they considered
human agency a legitimate means of freedom (Call-
ahan 2006, pp. 6–10).
Of course, these men were not alone in their pro-
tests and revolts against slavery. African American
women also resisted the repeated denial of their
humanity. Instead of viewing the Bible as a hand-
book for hierarchy, many of these women saw lib-
erty in its pages. In the latter half of the eighteenth
century, Phillis Wheatley, the first African American
woman to publish a book of poetry, foresaw
redemption in biblical references to salvation for
Ethiopia (e.g., Ps 68:31; Callahan 2006, p. 141). Harriet
Tubman, who escaped from slavery, was inspired by
the account of Israel’s exodus from Egypt and was
called “Moses” for her work in the Underground
Railroad (Callahan pp. 94, 121, 189). Sojourner
Truth, a former slave and, later, an abolitionist and
advocate for women’s rights, contended for the sim-
ple truth that she, too, was a woman, worthy of the
same recognition given to others. Thus, like Tubman,
she anticipated God saving American slaves similar
to the stories of deliverances in the Bible (p. 122).
These women and men saw through the preva-
lent self-serving use of the Bible by the privileged
whites of their day. Life experience and keen obser-
vation apparently taught them the importance of
social location for how one interpreted the Bible.
They discerned the interpretive double standard:
one approach applied to one set of human beings
for the sake of “inalienable rights” and state sover-
eignty. Yet, a different approach applied to this
other set, those deemed subhuman due to skin
pigmentation, and whose labor had become essen-
tial for the others’ economic gain.
Despite learned sophistry to the contrary, these
antebellum African Americans knew they were
deserving of the same respect as any other human
being. For a minister like Coker, a doctorate was not
required to understand that more learned theolo-
gians like Moses Stuart and James Henley Thornwell
were obfuscating the clear meaning of Matt 7:12 in
the King James Version: “Therefore all things what-
soever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets”
(Noll 2006, pp. 56–64, 66). Indeed, three decades
before the Civil War, David Walker asked a pointed
rhetorical question: “Now, Americans! I ask you
candidly, was your sufferings [sic] under Great
Britain, one hundredth part as cruel and tyrannical
as you have rendered ours under you?” (p. 68).
Yet, the resistance of these men and women is
only part of the larger picture. The Bible was more
than a site of contest in arguments about slavery.
African Americans in this era also employed the
Bible in creative ways for religious encouragement
in song and sermon (Callahan 2006, pp. 10–20). Its
language and symbolism were pervasive, providing
the threads with which various tapestries were
woven as expressions of weal and woe:
African Americans found the Bible to be both healing
balm and poison book. They could not lay claim to
the balm without braving the poison. The same book
was both medicine and malediction. To afford them-
selves its healing properties, African Americans
resolved to treat scripture with scripture, much like
a homeopathic remedy. . . . Their cure for the toxicity
of pernicious scripture was more scripture. The anti-
dote to hostile texts of the Bible was more Bible,
homeopathically administered to counteract toxins
of the text. (p. 40)
There were also African Americans in this period
who did not subscribe to the sentiments of David
Walker, Frederick Douglass, or Harriet Tubman.
Some heard and understood the Bible in the terms
provided by their masters. They were willing to
consider that it was indeed their lot to be slaves in
submission to a divinely sanctioned system. Perhaps
some who took this position were simply looking
out for their self-interests, knowing that rebellion
was risky, preferring the known over the unknown.
Still, whatever their motivations, whether sincere or
AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION 3
4. cynical, some conducted themselves as if they did
indeed believe that the Pauline commands of obe-
dience applied directly to them.
In fact, some slaves were so committed to the
status quo that they were informants on others
plotting insurgence. In one infamous example, sev-
eral slaves subverted the Stono Rebellion of South
Carolina in 1739. One slave named July was so
important in stopping that rebellion that he was
commended by the state legislature and emanci-
pated with clothes and shoes. Likewise, a house
slave named Peter Prioleau helped squelch Den-
mark Vesey’s revolt in 1822. Prioleau was emanci-
pated on Christmas and given an annual pension,
which he used for slave purchase (Kennedy 2008,
pp. 32–37). These examples illustrate why someone
like Douglass was unwilling to raise funds for con-
traband Bibles sent to Southern slaves. He
lamented, “I have met many religious colored people,
at the South, who are under the delusion that God
requires them to submit to slavery and to wear
chains with meekness and humility” (Callahan, p. 23).
The Bible’s interpretation among African Ameri-
cans before the Civil War demonstrates how thor-
oughly so many of them understood the importance
of social location. Many of the best black thinkers in
this period were creative and critical “masters of
suspicion” in their scrutiny of the complex relation-
ship between text, reader, and community. They
modeled what would become the subject of aca-
demic debate decades later: the Bible (like any
text) does not necessarily have a definitive, discern-
able meaning, which is universally accessible and
applicable. Rather, its meaning is largely determined
by a community of interpreters who are morally
accountable for how they arrange and apply that
interpretation. This is particularly the case with an
anthology of discrete books like the Bible, whose
texts do not literally speak without the agency of
human interpreters. Thus, appeal to the text as an
independent authority is simply a way of obscuring,
intentionally or unintentionally, the decisive role of
interpreters. Long before literary theorists like Stan-
ley Fish were raising critical questions about the
role of interpretive communities in determining
textual meaning (Fish 1982), African Americans
were asking, “Is there a text on this plantation?”
Social Location after Slavery. This stance of sus-
picion toward the predominate interpretation of the
Bible continued as racism became worse and more
violent in the first half of the twentieth century.
After the Civil War, white terrorism included the
lynching of more than 3,400 African Americans
from 1882 to 1944 (Dray 2002). In addition, as
Douglas Blackmon argued in his Pulitzer Prize–
winning book Slavery by Another Name (2008), in
many respects slavery did not cease with the war in
1865. Instead, a vast public/private system was
orchestrated to virtually re-enslave a significant seg-
ment of African American men. Blackmon concludes
that slavery was not effectively over until the 1940s.
In fact, after the celebrated struggles and suc-
cesses of the civil rights movement, culminating
with landmark legislation in 1964–1965, the power
of racism over the lives of African Americans still
did not come to an end. It did become more oblique,
however. This shows up in paradoxical develop-
ments after that pivotal period. On the one hand,
American society has made tremendous progress in
reducing societal impediments based on race. The
opportunities that became available for African
Americans have been significant and should not be
minimized. This progress recently reached a sym-
bolic plateau unforeseen by many with the election
in 2008 and re-election in 2012 of Barack Obama,
the first African American president.
On the other hand, these strides were often
marked by setbacks. The setbacks were, in fact,
reactions to the progress. In response to employ-
ment gains for African Americans in government,
educational, and privates sectors, for instance, there
was a significant controversy around affirmative-
action policies, a related rise in resentments by
whites, and concomitant complaints by African
Americans about subtle racial bias among profes-
sionals and police. These tensions set the stage for
momentous turmoil in the 1990s, as seen in the riots
that occurred in Los Angeles in 1992 after police
were acquitted of criminal charges despite video
recording of their beating of Rodney King. Likewise,
4 AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION
5. substantial racial strife arose after O.J. Simpson was
acquitted in 1995, also in Los Angeles. These racially
tinged events in the American West some three
decades after the civil rights movement led one
white biblical scholar to write a brief critique of
racism. In his judgment, “The O.J. trial . . . exploded
the myth that racism in America is confined to the
South. And the truth is that his trial is only the most
public example of the racism and racial division that
exist nationwide” (McKenzie 1997, p. vii).
The conflicting perceptions around the presiden-
tial election in 2008 also illustrate the dilemma of
racial progress. Many political observers contend
that reactions to that presidential campaign were
clearly imbued with overt racism and indirect racial
bias. Further, some argue that President Obama’s
racial identity has actually made it more difficult
for him to address race-related issues. Thus, even
an event of this magnitude becomes a two-edged
sword, revealing stirring progress and persistent
prejudice, simultaneously (Kennedy 2011).
This dynamic is not limited to political elections,
either. In other areas, it is actually more troubling
and consequential but admittedly more difficult to
discern. For one willing to look closely, though,
one can observe how social policies significantly
affecting urban areas after the late 1960s were reac-
tions to the gains of the civil rights movement.
These urban centers, such as Detroit, Cleveland,
and, again, parts of Los Angeles, have become
more dilapidated and dysfunctional, with the influx
of illegal drugs, a corresponding increase in prison
sentencing for drug-related crimes, and an extensive
exodus in jobs and taxes by middle-class whites and
blacks.
These debilitating aspects have had a dispropor-
tionate impact on poorer African Americans who
inhabit these spaces. Several social scientists, in
fact, contend that these dysfunctional sites are the
outgrowth of a segregationist past coupled with the
evolution of a nuanced racial stigma, now aug-
mented and diffused by socioeconomic class.
Incomparable incarceration rates for African Amer-
ican men demonstrate the depth of these deleterious
factors. The numbers have skyrocketed since the
civil rights movement, the Black Power movement,
and the race riots in the late 1960s. “The US prison
population is larger than at any time in the history
of the penitentiary anywhere in the world. Nearly
half of the more than two million Americans behind
bars are African Americans, and an unprecedented
number of black men will likely go to prison during
the course of their lives” (Muhammad 2010, p. 1).
Inheritance in the Academy. These larger socio-
historical developments provide the setting for aca-
demic interpretation of the Bible among African
Americans. Yet, no African American held a doctor-
ate in biblical studies before World War II. In 1945,
though, Leon Edward Wright became the first Afri-
can American to earn a PhD in New Testament from
Harvard. He went on to serve as a professor for more
than thirty years at Howard University in Washing-
ton, D.C. Two years later, Charles B. Copher earned
a PhD in Hebrew Bible from Boston University. He
joined the faculty at the Interdenominational Theo-
logical Center (ITC) in Atlanta, teaching there for
more than five decades. In 1953 Joseph A. Johnson
was the first African American student in the Van-
derbilt Divinity School in Nashville and received his
PhD in NT five years later, the third African Amer-
ican to earn a doctorate in biblical studies. Johnson
also taught at ITC, later becoming president of its
Christian Methodist institution, Phillips School of
Theology (Wimbush 2010, p. 8, n. 4).
As these pioneers instructed seminarians at his-
torically black institutions in the 1960s, they wit-
nessed young African Americans moving away
from the integrationist emphasis of the civil rights
movement. Instead, there was a turn to Black
Nationalism, which included a focus on the contri-
butions of African Americans, an affirmation of
physical blackness, and a celebration of origins in
Africa. During this time, many African American
Christians were criticized heavily by other African
Americans and often told that their religion was
“the white man’s religion.” This accusation came
from Black Nationalists generally and from the
Nation of Islam in particular, perhaps most power-
fully expressed by Malcolm X before his split with
Elijah Muhammad.
AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION 5
6. James Cone articulated a response with the pub-
lication of Black Theology and Black Power in 1969
and A Black Theology of Liberation in 1970. Cone
created a theological approach that addressed
African Americans and their societal concerns. He
emphasized “black theology” as an affirmation of
black suffering and in opposition to white oppres-
sion. This blackness was not just about skin color; it
was about a condition in a society still characterized
by white supremacy despite premature self-congra-
tulations after the civil rights movement. This was a
theology of “blackness” in terms of the downtrod-
den, those left to languish in cities wrecked by riots
just a few years earlier. Accordingly, there would be
no salvation for white American Christians until
they rejected the privilege of whiteness and identi-
fied with blackness instead. For Cone, that is the
meaning of the Christian cross at that particular
moment in American history.
Black biblical scholars began to argue for a “black
presence” in the Bible as a complement to and
support for the aims of black theology. Moreover,
in the larger setting of Black Nationalism, African
Americans sought to identify black heroes as a
source of pride as well as a counter to claims of
inferiority. In this logic, if black people are equal,
then history should be replete with examples of
black greatness, examples that have been denied,
suppressed, or stolen by a distorted history. Given
the place of the Bible in American religion and
culture, it became an important site of contest
about race and misrepresentations. To a certain
degree, this was entirely appropriate given the per-
vasiveness of white images in biblically focused
movies, books, and art. Too often, Jesus looked like
a man from Norway rather than from Nazareth
(Blum and Harvey 2012).
Charles Copher can be identified as “the parent of
modern day scholarly study of ‘Blacks in the Bible’”
(Bailey 2000, p. 697). Writing in the 1970s and under
the influence of John Bright’s historiography,
Copher assumed a general reliability for the biblical
accounts, beginning with the list of nations in Gen-
esis 10. He endeavored to show that several of the
places mentioned there and in the rest of the Bible
could be identified as locations in Africa and thus
the inhabitants should be considered black. In
ironic contrast to the disparaging deployment of
Ham by white supremacists, Copher identified
Ham in Genesis 10:6–14 as a black African, and the
sons of Ham delineated there—Egypt, Cush, Put, and
Canaan—were also black. Thus, blacks were not
cursed for slavery but were important, respected,
and valued (Bailey 2000, pp. 697–698; Brown 2004,
pp. 24–34).
Cain Hope Felder employed a similar approach
in the 1980s and 1990s, noting that Southwest Asia
and North Africa are generally populated by people
of color, however dark or light in complexion. The
people who lived in those areas were not white
Europeans. Thus, the Egyptians with their great
accomplishments should be understood as people
of color (Felder 1989). Similarly, the Ethiopian queen
and her official mentioned in Acts 8:26, for instance,
were people of color. When Joseph, Mary, and
Jesus had to flee for safety, they fled to Egypt in
North Africa (pp. 12–14). Again and again, one can
see the presence and importance of people of color
in the Bible.
Felder’s approach dovetailed nicely with an
emphasis on multiculturalism in education during
the 1990s. As he traveled and explained these issues,
he often found receptive audiences; his success was
complemented by editing an important collection of
essays by African American scholars (Felder, 1991).
In addition, Felder published The Original African
Heritage Study Bible (KJV) in 1993, with annotations
addressing the black presence in the Bible.
The impact of this study Bible was as much about
psychological uplift as it was about scholarly spe-
cifics. To be sure, Felder could argue his point. Yet,
in some respects, that was not the most important
effect, at least not on a sociocultural level. African
Americans had seen nothing but images of whites in
biblical depictions for centuries. Now, finally, cre-
dentialed scholars were saying that such a picture
was incomplete at best, and racist at worse. Felder’s
Afrocentric approach resonated and provided a
helpful psychosocial defense against persistently
negative images of African Americans. Understood
6 AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION
7. in these terms, one can appreciate the efforts
of Felder, and of Copher before him. In retrospect,
one can also recognize legitimate criticisms
and preferable alternatives (Bailey 2000, pp. 698;
Brown 2004, pp. 35–53).
For African American scholars entering biblical
studies in the 1990s and since, the conversation has
changed significantly. For one, it was important to
extend the conversation beyond a male-centered
one on race and identity. A full picture of how the
biblical text has been and can be employed must
address gender as well as race and interrogate how
gender and race may be intertwined or separated to
different effects. This applies to the ancient biblical
text as well as its interpretation by modern men and
women. Attempting to take account of these com-
plexities is one distinctive aspect of womanist inter-
pretation compared to feminist criticism (Martin,
1991; Weems, 1991).
African American biblical scholars are also asking
larger historical and cultural questions about the
function of the Bible in diverse black communities,
past and present. How has the Bible functioned? To
what effect? To whose benefit? Moreover, does the
Bible even deserve its sacred standing? Randall Bai-
ley, Hugh Page, Brian Blount, and Vincent Wimbush
have consistently pressed these and other questions.
Besides their individual publications, each of these
scholars has edited an impressive collection of
essays on African American biblical interpretation.
Each collection pushes past traditional conceptions
of what constitutes biblical scholarship. In chapter
after chapter in these edited volumes, biblical inter-
pretation is engaged alongside literature, art, poli-
tics, music, and larger sociopolitical issues.
Brian Blount has also published several books on
biblical interpretation and the African American
church (1998; 2001; 2005). In addition, he is now
the first African American president of Union Theo-
logical Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. In 2010
Vincent Wimbush became the first African Ameri-
can to serve as president of the Society of Biblical
Literature. Characteristically, he pressed the guild
“to start and to sustain ‘talkin’ ‘bout somethin’”
(2010, p. 9).
The Contribution of African American Interpre-
tation. In sum, contemporary African American
scholars of the Bible have adapted their antebellum
inheritance in diverse ways, while remaining faithful
to key aspects of it. They continue to employ biblical
interpretation as a community-centered counter
to various forms of bias and marginalization.
Accordingly, they have resisted the strictures of
so-called mainstream scholarship and its definition
of what constitutes valuable contributions. They
have repeatedly demonstrated an awareness of and
some allegiance to the pressing needs and concerns
of the African American communities that pro-
duced them. They have understood that calls from
the guild to do “typical” scholarship certainly have
their place, especially for professional advancement
and security. Yet, such calls can also come from
privilege and detachment, luxuries that many Afri-
can American scholars feel they cannot afford.
[See also African Biblical Interpretation; Asian
American Biblical Interpretation; Class Criticism;
Cross-Cultural Exegesis; Cultural Studies; Race,
Ethnicity, and Biblical Criticism; and Womanist
Interpretation]
B I B L I O G R A P H Y
Bailey, Randall C. “Academic Biblical Interpretation
among African Americans in the United States.” In
African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and
Social Textures, edited by Vincent Wimbush,
696–711. New York: Continuum, 2000.
Bailey, Randall C. “Beyond Identification: The Use of
Africans in Old Testament Poetry and Narratives.”
In Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical
Interpretation, edited by Cain Hope Felder, 165–184.
Minneapolis, D.C.: Fortress, 1991.
Bailey, Randall C., Tat-siong Benny Liew, and Fernando
F. Segovia, eds. They Were All Together in One Place?
Toward Minority Biblical Criticism. Atlanta: Society of
Biblical Literature, 2009.
Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The
Re-Enslavement of Black America from the Civil War
to World War II. New York: Doubleday, 2008.
Blount, Brian K. Can I Get a Witness?: Reading Revelation
through African American Culture. Louisville, KY.:
Westminster/John Knox, 2005.
Blount, Brian K. Cultural Interpretation: Reorienting New
Testament Criticism. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995.
AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION 7
8. Blount, Brian K. Go Preach!: Mark’s Kingdom Message
and the Black Church Today. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,
1998.
Blount, Brian K. Revelation: A Commentary. The New
Testament Library. Louisville, KY.: Westminster/
John Knox, 2009.
Blount, Brian K. Then the Whisper Put on Flesh: New
Testament Ethics in an African American Context.
Nashville: Abingdon, 2001.
Blount, Brian K., ed. True to Our Native Land: An African
American New Testament Commentary. Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2007.
Blum, Edward J., and Paul Harvey. The Color of Christ:
The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
Brown, Michael Joseph. Blackening of the Bible: The Aims
of African American Biblical Scholarship. New York:
Trinity Press International, 2004.
Callahan, Allen Dwight. The Talking Book: African Amer-
icans and the Bible. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 2006.
Dray, Philip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The
Lynching of Black America. New York: Random
House, 2002.
Felder, Cain Hope, ed. Stony the Road We Trod:
African American Biblical Interpretation. Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1991.
Felder, Cain Hope. Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class,
and Family. Maryknoll N.Y.: Orbis, 1989.
Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority
of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1982.
Fredrickson, George M. Racism: A Short History.
Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Kennedy, Randall. The Persistence of the Color Line:
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency. New York:
Vintage, 2011.
Kennedy, Randall. Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal.
New York: Vintage, 2008.
Martin, Clarice. “The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in
African American Biblical Interpretation: ‘Free Slaves’
and ‘Subordinate Women.’” In Stony the Road We
Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, edited
by Cain Hope Felder, 206–231. Minneapolis: Fortress,
1991.
McKenzie, Steven L. All God’s Children: A Biblical
Critique of Racism. Louisville, KY.: Westminster/John
Knox, 1997.
Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. The Condemnation of Black-
ness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban
America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2010.
Noll, Mark A. The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Page, Hugh R., ed. The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s
Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora.
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010.
Weems, Renita J. “Reading Her Way Through the Strug-
gle: African American Women and the Bible.” In Stony
the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpre-
tation, edited by Cain Hope Felder, 57–77. Minneap-
olis: Fortress, 1991.
Wimbush, Vincent, ed. African Americans and the Bible:
Sacred Texts and Social Textures. New York: Contin-
uum, 2000.
Wimbush, Vincent. “Interpreters—Enslaving/Enslaved/
Runagate.” Journal of Biblical Literature 130 (2010):
5–24.
Wimbush, Vincent. “We Will Make Our Own Future
Text: An Alternate Orientation to Interpretation.” In
True to Our Native Land: An African American
New Testament Commentary. edited by Brian Blount,
63–72. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007.
Joseph Scrivner
AFRICAN BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION
African biblical interpretation is a thriving enter-
prise in and out of the academy, from the ancient
past to contemporary times and is best articulated
in the volumes edited by West and Dube (2000),
Dube (2001), and Dube, Mbuvi, and Mbuwayesango
(2012) that largely inform all the sections of this
article. From the earliest Bible translations, such as
the Septuagint/LXX of Alexandria (ca. third century
B.C.E.) and the Ethiopian Ge0
ez Bible of the fourth
century C.E., to multiple biblical translations of
modern times attest that the Bible has been read
and interpreted in the African continent in various
frameworks as Christianity continues to grow.
While we are yet to fully capture all the frameworks
of African biblical interpretations, some of its char-
acteristics include: (1) reading the Bible with and
through African cultural perspectives; (2) reading
the Bible for liberation; (3) reading the Bible within
the African context and addressing the communal
issues of well-being; (4) studying various Bible
readers for possible frameworks of interpretation;
8 AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION