The third and final volume in the first comprehensive history of Black social Christianity, by the “greatest theological ethicist of the twenty-first century” (Michael Eric Dyson) The Black social gospel is a tradition of unsurpassed and ongoing importance in American life, argues Gary Dorrien in his groundbreaking trilogy on the history of Black social Christianity. This concluding volume, an interpretation of the tradition since the early 1970s, follows Dorrien’s award-winning The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel and Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel. Beginning in the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr., Dorrien examines the past fifty years of this intellectual and activist tradition, interpreting its politics, theology, ethics, social criticism, and social justice organizing. He argues that Black social Christianity is today an intersectional tradition of discourse and activist religion that interrelates liberation theology, womanist theology, antiracist politics, LGBTQ+ theory, cultural criticism, progressive religion, broad-based interfaith organizing, and global solidarity politics. A Darkly Radiant Vision features in-depth discussions of Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Samuel DeWitt Proctor, Gayraud Wilmore, James Cone, Cornel West, Katie Geneva Cannon, Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Traci Blackmon, William J. Barber II, Raphael G. Warnock, and many others.

The black social gospel emerged from the trauma of Reconstruction to ask what a “new abolition” would require in American society. It became an important tradition of religious thought and resistance, helping to create an alternative public sphere of excluded voices and providing the intellectual underpinnings of the civil rights movement. This tradition has been seriously overlooked, despite its immense legacy. In this groundbreaking work, Gary Dorrien describes the early history of the black social gospel from its nineteenth-century founding to its close association in the twentieth century with W. E. B. Du Bois. He offers a new perspective on modern Christianity and the civil rights era by delineating the tradition of social justice theology and activism that led to Martin Luther King Jr.

Displays of religious faith have become commonplace on America's baseball diamonds, basketball courts, football fields, and beyond. How did religion become so entwined with big-time sports in America? The Spirit of the Game provides the answer to this question by offering a sweeping history of the Christian athlete movement in the United States--and its impact on American religion and the religion of sports.

People organize to protect and fight for what they hold most dear. Using auto-ethnography from over a decade of interfaith Broad-based Community Organizing (BBCO) experiences, Listening to the Spirit makes a case for the political role of sacred values in BBCO, especially as they show up in two organizing practices: the "listening campaign" and the "relational meeting." Aaron Stauffer argues that by centering sacred values in democratic politics, these organizing practices can be seen as religious practices, and that BBCO can build deeper solidarity through sacred values and relational power. Stauffer offers a social ethical, social practical account of religion and grounds democracy in our diverse religious values.

The award–winning author of The New Abolition continues his history of black social gospel with this study of its influence on the Civil Rights movement. The civil rights movement was one of the most searing developments in modern American history. It abounded with noble visions, resounded with magnificent rhetoric, and ended in nightmarish despair. It won a few legislative victories and had a profound impact on U.S. society, but failed to break white supremacy. The symbol of the movement, Martin Luther King Jr., soared so high that he tends to overwhelm anything associated with him. Yet the tradition that best describes him and other leaders of the civil rights movement has been strangely overlooked. In his latest book, Gary Dorrien continues to unearth the heyday and legacy of the black social gospel, a tradition with a shimmering history, a martyred central figure, and enduring relevance today. This part of the story centers around King and the mid-twentieth-century black church leaders who embraced the progressive, justice-oriented, internationalist social gospel from the beginning of their careers and fulfilled it, inspiring and leading America’s greatest liberation movement.