Bible and African Americans: A Brief History
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Book preview
Bible and African Americans - Vincent L. Wimbush
The Bible and African Americans
The Measure of a Man,
Martin Luther King Jr.
Visionary Women: Three Medieval
Mystics, Rosemary Radford Ruether
The Sayings of Jesus: The Sayings Gospel Q in
English, James M. Robinson
Spirituality of the Psalms,
Walter Brueggemann
Biblical Theology: A Proposal,
Brevard S. Childs
The Contemporary Quest for Jesus,
N. T. Wright
Christian Faith and Religious Diversity,
Mobilization for the Human Family,
John B. Cobb Jr., editor
Who Is Christ for Us? Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Bible and African Americans:
A Brief History, Vincent L. Wimbush
Race, Racism, and the Biblical Narratives,
Cain Hope Felder
Ancient Palestine:
A Historical Introduction, Gösta Ahlström
Traffic in Truth: Exchanges between Science
and Theology, John R. Polkinghorne
The Bible and African Americans
A Brief History
Vincent L. Wimbush
Fortress Press
Minneapolis
THE BIBLE AND AFRICAN AMERICANS
A Brief History
Copyright © 2003 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.
Scripture is from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.
Cover image: Chain. Steve Cole/Getty Images. Used by permission.
Cover and book design: Joseph P. Bonyata
Author photo by Michael Grimaldi.
ISBN: 0-8006-3574-4
eISBN: 9781451419443
For Mom in love and gratitude
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Bible as Language-World
Reading 1
African Sensibilities as the Center of the Circle: First Contact
Reading 2
Creating the New World
Circle: Folk Culture
Reading 3
Establishing the Circle: National(ist) Identities and Formations
Reading 4
Reshaping the Circle: Re-mixes and Re-formations
Reading 5
Stepping Outside the Circle: Fundamentalism
Reading 6
Making the Circle True: Women’s Experiences
Ongoing Engagement
Notes
Acknowledgments
In this small volume, I have returned to the question of how African American engagement with the Bible can best be understood over its many centuries and radically diverse circumstances. I do so by revising and updating my earlier work in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Fortress Press, 1991). I want first to express my thanks to the Fund for Theological Education, Inc., for permission to publish the work that follows as a revised standalone volume.
Thanks are also due to the honest and constructive critics of the recent lectures I delivered that were the basis of my revisions: Professor Dieter Georgi and the scholars, clergy, and students who participated in the colloquium on the future of biblical studies, near Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, in October 2001; Professor Dennis Smith and the faculty, students, alumni/ae, and clergy who attended the Ministers’ Week Conference sponsored by Phillips Theological Seminary, Tulsa, Oklahoma, in January 2001; Ms. Gertrude Albert and the members of the Ridgewood Presbyterian Church, Ridgewood, New Jersey, and their guests who attended the Lenten Lectures, March 2002; Professor Frank Kirkland, Hunter College, New York and the members of the Society for the Study of African Philosophy who attended the session held on March 17, 2002; and the Reverend Dr. Jay Rock of the National Council of Churches and the participants in the colloquium on Jewish and Christian Dialogue who met in Stony Point New York, April 15, 2002.
I owe a great deal to students in the various degree programs and fields at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University and my New Testament/Early Christianity colleagues for the inspiration and challenge they have provided me during the last several years. And I deeply appreciate the generous financial support of the Ford Foundation. For the last several years, it has made possible the research project (African Americans and the Bible) and research resources that have helped me fine-tune and reframe the arguments that follow. Ford Foundation officer Constance H. Buchanan, in particular, has been an inspiration and a most valued conversation partner and critic, especially about what could be the broader social and cultural ramifications and political-educational implications of my scholarly work. I hope her challenge to me to put my arguments in popular form and Fortress Press’s invitation to make this work a part of the Facets series, as they have come together in the work that follows, will prove to have been worth their efforts.
We Read in the Bible and We Understan’
We read in the Bible and we understan’
That Samson was the strongest man
Samson went out at one time
And killed about a thousand Philistines.
Delilah fooled Samson, this we know
Because the Holy Bible tells us so.
She shaved off his head just as