Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2021.1990498
Khytie K. Brown
Legend says that River Mumma inhabits the rivers of Jamaica, and all the fish are River Mumma’s children. Sometimes, people say, River Mumma rises out of the river to sit on the rocks and comb her long, black hair. But, like they say, don’t touch River Mumma. Don’t even look at her. There’s no telling what she will do if you try. Some say if you so much as see her, you’ll fall into a trance and she’ll grab you by the heels and drag you under the river. If you try to catch her, the fish will disappear; the river will run dry. It’s best, they say, not to make trouble with River Mumma. – Amy Friedman 1
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Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2021.1997167
Sarojini Nadar
ABSTRACT The purpose of this essay is to critically review the remarkably unique account of Desmond Tutu’s life presented by Michael Battle in his book “Desmond Tutu: A Spiritual Biography of South Africa’s Confessor.” The central contention of this essay is that Michael Battle shifts the paradigm of biographical research about Desmond Tutu beyond the popular trope of “political priest” to that of “freedom fighter-mystic.” Through a careful filtering of Tutu’s life via the three stages of mysticism – purgation, illumination and union, Battle makes a convincing case that Tutu’s political actions for justice were not in spite of his deep spirituality, but because of it. This ethnographic spiritual biography troubles the binaries between the sacred and the secular, between spiritual contemplation and social action, and between God’s justice and social justice, thereby inviting readers to the warm embrace of a more authentic spirituality.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2021.1990493
Terrance Dean
Critical conversations have emerged within the concepts of Afropessimism and Afrofuturism, particularly, the future and/or non-future of Blackness and Black people in the twenty-first century. Moreover, where does Blackness and Black people situate themselves within these framed concepts as it relates to Black Religious faith tradition and Black Religious Thought? How and where does religion and theology take up these matters in relation to Blackness and Black people within their faith traditions and experiences? Scholars, mainly within Black Studies, have taken up these ideologies in an effort to locate Blackness and Black people in a white racist patriarchal system that anchors itself within white right, and white nihilism. Yet, where does the Black faith tradition situate itself in religious discourses centered in white theology, and how can it permeate the discourse on redemption and hope, or failure and the unsalvageable? It is why this special issue journal, Afrofuturism, Afropessimism and Black Religious Thought: Conceptualizing Ideologies of Race, Religion, Gender and Sexuality in the 21st Century, takes up these matters, whereas Black religion scholars consider these concepts within the study of religion and theology. One key question for consideration, where does the recovery work begin, and where does it end in relation to Black person’s race, gender and sexuality, and religious ideologies in Black Religious Thought?” Key voices within Afropessimissm scholarship, Saidiya Hartman, Jared Sexton and Frank Wilderson have made a critical juncture toward naming Blackness and Black people’s lives and experiences a unique distinction within Black suffering. Essentially, Black persons experiences within the concept of liberation or liberatory means is bound to the historied notion of slavery, which has become systemic and structural against Black life progress and liberation. Afropessimism, according to Frank Wilderson, makes the following claims, and it is worth quoting in length,
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Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2021.1990494
Terrance Dean
ABSTRACT Examining the afterlife of slavery, mainly interrogating the futurity of black sexuality and contemptuous Black queer bodies as possible identities of radical futurism in a queer homiletic. I position this essay within the framework of a futuristic queer homiletic, such that, Black queer identity reimagines itself within the plane of Afrofuturism disrupting the continuum of heterosexuality, and Black respectability. The futurity of Black queerness re-turns itself into a living bound subject. I make use of James Baldwin and his gender sexual politics as a Black gay man. Drawing upon his semi-autobiographical essay, “Here Be Dragons,” Baldwin illustrates how he was eliminated from his family, primarily by his step-father, who was disgusted by Baldwin's ugliness and dark skin, and moreover, his effeminate and queer mannerisms. Baldwin, feeling “dumped” by his family, was also displaced, or, “removed” from his black community of Harlem because of his sexuality. He seeks refuge in Greenwich Village, a white community which houses many gay clubs and bars. It is here that Baldwin faces a similar reality of being isolated, neglected, and eliminated for not only his queer identity, but his Black skin and Black identity. Baldwin, in public view, renders as a site of failure in that he is unacknowledged because of his Black queer identity and is rendered, or read as disgust, an 'other.' Thus, he is bounded “out” of society, “out” of sight, and ultimately left searching for a place, a home to call his own. Baldwin reimagines himself, a living subject, bound for life. As such, a futuristic queer homiletic enables Black queerness to the center of Black sexuality and Black identity.
考察奴隶制的来世，主要探讨黑人性取向的未来和黑人酷儿身体作为酷儿说教中激进未来主义的可能身份。我把这篇文章放在未来酷儿说教的框架中，这样，黑人酷儿身份在非洲未来主义的平面上重新想象自己，破坏了异性恋的连续性，以及黑人的可敬性。黑人酷儿的未来重新变成了一个活生生的被束缚的主体。我利用了詹姆斯·鲍德温和他作为黑人同性恋者的性别政治。鲍德温在他的半自传体散文《龙来了》(Here Be Dragons)中描述了他是如何被家庭抛弃的，主要是被他的继父抛弃的，他的继父厌恶鲍德温的丑陋和黑皮肤，更讨厌他的娘娘腔和奇怪的举止。鲍德温感觉自己被家人“抛弃”了，也因为自己的性取向而被迫离开了他所在的哈莱姆黑人社区。他在格林威治村寻求庇护，这是一个白人社区，那里有许多同性恋俱乐部和酒吧。正是在这里，鲍德温面临着一个类似的现实:不仅因为他的酷儿身份，而且因为他的黑皮肤和黑人身份，他被孤立、被忽视、被淘汰。鲍德温，在公众眼中，被描绘成一个失败的地方因为他的黑人酷儿身份没有得到承认，被描绘成，或者被解读为厌恶，一个"他者"因此，他被束缚在“社会”之外，“视线”之外，最终离开，寻找一个地方，一个属于他自己的家。鲍德温重新想象自己，一个活生生的主体，为生活而奋斗。因此，未来的酷儿说教使黑人酷儿成为黑人性和黑人身份的中心。
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Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2021.1990497
Courtney Bryant
ABSTRACT This essay interrogates the Christian concept of incarnation as a salvific device through an womanist/feminist, ethical analysis of the gender/sexuality/race bending storyline and romance of Ruby Baptiste and Christine Braithwaite, in HBO’s cinematic speculative fiction Lovecraft Country. Pressing at the meanings of salvation and ontology, it considers how Lovecraft Country’s queering of incarnational power, gender/sexuality and race critiques, complicates and reimagines the religious, socio-material and erotic significance of “the flesh” and its implications on redemption.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2021.1990496
Christophe D. Ringer
ABSTRACT This article argues that Frank Wilderson's Afropessimism as a analytic contains philosophical contradictions that can be resolved through currents in Afrofuturism. The article argues Wilderson's use of Orlando Patterson's concept of social death results in a performative contradiction as its claims deny the very possibility of their justification. The result is the inability to substantiate that Blackness as coterminous with Slaveness. The article then argues that Wilderson's Afropessimism is better understood as a mythology rather than an analytic. Interpreted as myth, Afropessimism can articulate the grammar of Black suffering through a religious consciousness rather than scientistic or philosophical reason. Afrofuturism serves as a resource in this task by creating images of the past and present simultaneously within consciousness. The claim is evidenced through engaging Amiri Baraka's The Slave and Octavia Butler's Kindred.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2021.1990495
W. Hart
ABSTRACT If stars appear to change position, to be displaced when viewed from different point in the earth's orbit, then by analogy we might say that Afrofuturism and Afropessimism are parallax angles on the afterlife of slavery. Afrofuturism and Afropessimism inhabit forms of imaginative spacetime that are both congruent and incongruent. I will call the triangular relations among the afterlife of slavery, Afrofuturism, and Afropessimism, a “black mood.” While this mood certainly has psychological meaning for individuals, I primarily point toward a sociological phenomenon that shapes the collective mood long term. This black mood is an intellectual disposition with emotional resonance. It produces both empowering joyful affects and disempowering sad affects. Though it is hardly the only black mood, this one is influential in sectors of the Blackamerican intelligentsia both within and beyond the academy. In this article, I explore a few points of contact among Afrofuturism, Afropessimism, and black religion.
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Pub Date : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2021.1949143
Anthony G. Reddie
ABSTRACT This paper arises from a pilot project of the Council for World Mission (CWM) that is seeking to explore the Legacies of Slavery via the archives of the London Missionary Society, the forerunners of CWM. Arguments around the justification of European Christian Mission often focus on the efficacy and utilitarianism of missionary activity, in terms of education, medicine or the removal unethical indigenous religio-cultural practices. This paper seeks to move beyond these justifications to focus on the representational damage imposed on the descendants of enslaved Africans that have traduced Black bodies to “less than” in the body politic of many Western nations in the global North. The denigration of Black bodies has continued beyond the epoch of slavery and finds expression in the absurdity of Black people needing to assert that “Black Lives Matter”.
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Pub Date : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2021.1954372
Madipoane Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele)
prayers. One example is “Benediction for Stepping out into the Empire” [57] with the deploying of “the light, the salt, the hand, the water”. How about being light that liberates, salt that savours, hands that carry, water that washes. Grammar, empire’s tool, is not neutral. In this regard I would have loved to see more prayers in local “tongues in order to ‘mash-up’ empire’s White English grammar”! A “betraying of tradition” has to be pushed to greater lengths. For instance, the able-bodiedness of some of the imagery is striking whether eyes, hands, head, hearts, feet, etc. Then there is an internalising deployment of “light” over darkness [light-bearers, 63] which is troubling. There are some excellent materials around baptism and eucharist, though we seem to be stuck to the inherited sequences of the rituals. I wonder what a full “break-out” from the liturgical empire would look like.
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Pub Date : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2021.1954369
Anthony G. Reddie
A central aspect of Black theology has always been the necessity to rethink historically accepted norms, particuarly in terms of socio-cultural and political phenomena, within the realms of theological and religious traditions. It can be argued that the most central aspect of this facet of rethinking can be seen in the attempt by Black theology to rehabilitate the Black body against centuries of deleterious thinking. Alongside this central necessity, Black theology has sought to rethink all aspects of White, Euro-American hegemony. This issue of Black Theology: An International Journal contains five articles, all of which, draw into our purview substantive attempts to rethink historic phenomena, religious traditions and epistemological norms. Carol Troupe’s article opens this particular issue of our journal. Her work, emerges from a Council for World Mission’s (CWM) funded pilot project that is a part of their prophetic and epoch making “Legacies of Slavery” programme. As part of the Council for World Mission’s Legacies of Slavery project, the author, from her perspective as a descendant of enslaved Africans, explores the themes that emerged during her initial encounter with historical missionary magazine material. This research involved several visits to the London Missionary Society archives held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, in the University of London), in order to interrogate aspects of the historical literature held in their “Special Collections”. Drawing on insights from Black and Womanist theologies, she asks questions about what reflection on these themes can offer to contemporary practice and church mission. Willy L. Mafuta and Chammah J. Kaunda’s jointly written article draws on the insights of the famed British philosopher of religion, John Hick. Drawing from John Hick’s soteriological criterion of religious pluralism, this essay questions the way in which Christianity is often portrayed as the normative standard by which other so called “Primitive” religions are assessed, in terms of their veracity to be seen as legitimate forms of expression of the human quest for matters of ultimate concern. This essay claims that with a modern understanding of the globalized world, it is no longer the norm for a non-Christian religion to meet Christian-like features to be considered a “world religion”. By adopting a universal model that is gained through observing concrete particularizations, where no one religion can claim to serve as the clear and dominant standard for any other, this essay attempts to re-imagine and re-construct African Traditional Religions. While the focus of this article is on African Tradition Religions, particular focus is given to the Zulu religion, its deity, uNkulunkulu, and its moral fabric. This article rethinks how we have conceptualized “World Religions”.
黑人神学的一个核心方面一直是重新思考历史上被接受的规范的必要性，特别是在神学和宗教传统领域内的社会文化和政治现象方面。可以说，这种重新思考的最核心的方面可以从黑人神学试图恢复黑人身体来对抗几个世纪以来的有害思想中看出来。除了这一核心必要性之外，黑人神学还试图重新思考白人、欧美霸权的各个方面。本期《黑人神学:一本国际期刊》包含五篇文章，所有这些文章都将重新思考历史现象、宗教传统和认识论规范的实质性尝试纳入我们的研究范围。Carol剧团的文章是这期杂志的第一期。她的作品来自世界宣教理事会(CWM)资助的试点项目，该项目是其预言性和划时代的“奴隶制遗产”项目的一部分。作为世界传教会奴隶制遗产项目的一部分，作者从被奴役的非洲人后裔的角度，探索了她最初接触历史传教士杂志材料时出现的主题。这项研究包括几次访问在伦敦大学东方和非洲研究学院(SOAS)的伦敦传教士协会档案，以便询问其“特别收藏”中的历史文献的各个方面。根据黑人和女性主义神学的见解，她提出了对这些主题的反思可以为当代实践和教会使命提供什么问题。Willy L. Mafuta和Chammah J. Kaunda共同撰写的文章借鉴了英国著名宗教哲学家John Hick的见解。从约翰·希克(John Hick)关于宗教多元主义的救赎论标准出发，本文质疑基督教经常被描绘成规范标准的方式，而其他所谓的“原始”宗教被评估的标准，就其真实性而言，被视为人类对终极关切问题的追求的合法表达形式。这篇文章声称，随着对全球化世界的现代理解，非基督教的宗教不再符合基督教的特征，被认为是“世界宗教”。通过采用通过观察具体的特殊性而获得的普遍模型，没有一个宗教可以声称作为任何其他宗教的明确和主导标准，本文试图重新想象和重建非洲传统宗教。虽然这篇文章的重点是非洲传统宗教，但特别关注的是祖鲁宗教，它的神，uNkulunkulu和它的道德结构。这篇文章重新思考了我们如何概念化“世界宗教”。
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