The African American Guide to the Bible makes the case for the relevance of the Bible from the perspective of people of color. It presents a comprehensive biblical view of topics of interest to African Americans and clarifies racial issues for white people. Part 1 addresses the inspiration of the Bible by giving evidence for its authenticity. A considerable amount of time is spent on examining the original text of the Bible, the archeological evidence, and the evidence from predictive prophecy to demonstrate the uniqueness of the Bible. Part 2 deals with the black presence in the Bible by demonstrating the prominence of people of color and black people in particular by highlighting their importance in the plan of God. It explains what it means to be black and demonstrates that the scientific and biblical evidence are both consistent with respect to race. Part 3 is a response to the arguments of racism used by critics of the Bible, for example, "Christianity is the white man's religion" and "Bible supports slavery and racism." These arguments are examined and evaluated in light of scripture and the context of history. Part 4 deals with the unity of humanity from a biblical perspective. It shows why racism is not only unbiblical but is evil when understood from the perspective of God.

Michael Brown offers an overview of the history of the development of African American and Afrocentric biblical interpretation. He then discusses how such scholarship began as an attempt to correct the biases African Americans perceived to be manifest in European and Euro-American biblical scholarship. This corrective, he says, quickly developed a life of its own, and Afrocentric biblical interpretation developed its own interpretive voice and style. Brown also examines Afrocentrism and the "blackening of the Bible," offering a critique of the color politics of Afrocentric criticism. He examines the evolution of womanism as a method of biblical interpretation, and explores and criticizes the ways that ideological and postcolonial criticism has contributed to Afrocentric biblical criticism. Finally, he presents the challenges he thinks confront the practice of such criticism, and he advances a new paradigm for the project that will put it in conversation with a wider audience of biblical scholars, classicists, historians, and theologians. Michael Joseph Brown is Assistant Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Candler School of theology, Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the author of What They Don't Tell You: A Survivor's Guide to Academic Biblical Studies and The Lord's Prayer through North African Eyes: A Window into Early Christianity.

Red letter Daily insights from prominent black church leaders 250 weekday and 52 weekend meditations Book introductions Choice of 3 reading plans JSubject index Articles History of denominations Biographies on contributors 1,472 pp.

Reading Scripture from the perspective of Black church tradition can help us connect with a rich faith history and address the urgent issues of our times. Demonstrating an ongoing conversation between the collective Black experience and the Bible, New Testament scholar Esau McCaulley shares a personal and scholarly testament to the power and hope of Black biblical interpretation.

She Speaks helps African-American women find relevance, purpose, and identity in the Word of God. Each chapter offers a complete list of references to help the reader locate the stories of these inspirational women in the Bible with ease.

This book provides a sophisticated new interdisciplinary interpretation of the formulation and evolution of African American religion and culture. Theophus Smith argues for the central importance of "conjure"--a magical means of transforming reality--in black spirituality and culture. Smith shows that the Bible, the sacred text of Western civilization, has in fact functioned as a magical formulary for African Americans. Going back to slave religion, and continuing in black folk practice and literature to the present day, the Bible has provided African Americans with ritual prescriptions for prophetically re-envisioning, and thereby transforming, their history and culture. In effect the Bible is a "conjure book" for prescribing cures and curses, and for invoking extraordinary and Divine powers to effect changes in the conditions of human existence--and to bring about justice and freedom. Biblical themes, symbols, and figures like Moses, the Exodus, the Promised Land, and the Suffering Servant, as deployed by African Americans, have crucially formed and reformed not only black culture, but American society as a whole. Smith examines not only the religious and political uses of conjure, but its influence on black aesthetics, in music, drama, folklore, and literature. The concept of conjure, he shows, is at the heart of an indigenous and still vital spirituality, with exciting implications for reformulating the next generation of black studies and black theology. Even more broadly, Smith proposes, "conjuring culture" can function as a new paradigm for understanding Western religious and cultural phenomena generally.