This valuable resource from one of the founding fathers of the black theology movement discusses how to minister to the black community. Using an interdisciplinary approach, J. Deotis Toberts shows how theological concepts can be applied to education, pastoral care, and political and economic issues.

Originally published: Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974.

First released in 1971, Liberation and Reconciliation presents a constructive statement that argues for a balance between the quest for liberation and the need for reconciliation in black-white relations. Examining biblical and theological themes from the perspectives of black experience, the book focuses on enlisting all humans of goodwill - black or white - in the cause of racial justice. Roberts concludes that nonviolent reconciliation is the best response to racial oppression. This groundbreaking work, now a classic in the field, is recognized as one of the first texts to move conversations within black theology beyond what black theologians were against toward what the movement sought to affirm.

A vital look at the nature, destiny, and mission of the black family and the black church today. Roots of a Black Future: Family and Church seeks to continue a discussion revolving around families and church in the black experience, both to their symbolic and actual relationship. It explores the deeper meaning of church as family and family as church. Grounded in the context of black families and churches within American society, this book also acknowledges that black communities are affected by society as a whole, a society largely controlled by the white community. But those societal circumstances do not control or determine how the black community unites. The book’s main focus is upon the nature, destiny, and mission of black families and churches in this country, in the hopes of unifying these two parts of life.

Craig Keener and Glenn Usry's highly acclaimed Black Man's Religion showed in impressive detail that Christianity and Afrocentricity can go together. Now they turn to specific, nitty-gritty questions put to the black church by non-Christians: Is everything good in Christianity plagiarized from traditional African religions? Isn't it intolerant to say Christ is the only way to God? Is the Bible reliable? What about criticisms of Christianity made by the Nation of Islam? Keener and Usry meet these and other important questions head-on, providing responses relevant to and especially for black men and women.

Challenging all who are concerned about religion in today's world, J. Deotis Roberts outlines a new way of looking at the essential questions. Roberts proposes a theology concerned with concrete and specific situations that also retains a universal vision. In discussing the relationship of American black thought to African, liberation, feminist, Asian, and Euro-American theologies, he covers significant religious issues such as love, justice, power, and evil.

Seeking to overcome the chasm between church practice and theological reflection, James H. Evans Jr., a major and distinctive voice in American religion, situates theology squarely in the nexus of faith with freedom. There, with a sure touch, he uplifts revelatory aspects of black religious experience that reanimate classical areas of theology, and he creates a theology with a heart, soul, and voice that speak directly to our condition. Edited and introduced by Stephen G. Ray Jr., the second edition, published on the twentieth anniversary of the first, includes three new essays that identify the value of the book for womanist, evangelical, and black church audiences. The new edition concludes with an Afterword by the author himself.