Since its start in 1966, black liberation theology in the United States has continually engaged international developments with Africa and the entire world. But after Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February 1990, there has been an almost twenty-year break in books on black theology and international affairs. Black Theology--Essays on Global Perspectives bridges that post-1990 gap and makes a vital contact with Africa again. This book conceptualizes black theology to take on the global reconfigurations and opportunities brought about by the rapidly shrinking earth of fast-paced, worldwide contacts. In other words, in the specificity of the genealogy of black theology, we need to reforge ties with Africa. This claim is based on tradition. And in the generality of the larger worldwide intertwining of technologies and economics, we need a new type of black theological leadership for the twenty-first century. This claim is based on today's international challenges. The essays in this book draw on tradition and point forward in the midst of today's worldwide challenges and favorable possibilities, given the closeness of all nations and the varieties of cultures.

What do African American men have to do with gender? In this collection of riveting and wide-ranging essays, Dwight N. Hopkins draws on over thirty-five years of wrestling with these questions. Too often gender is seen as a "woman's only" discussion. But in reality, men have a gender too. Some say it is biological; others claim it has to do with socialization. Hopkins's career has focused on defining what a black American man is, and how he builds bridges of support and engagement with women. Hopkins's research as a theologian, and his experiences, substantiate that the importance of religious viewpoints, principled values, and future hope remain key to any successful creation of a new African American male and new healthy male-female interactions.

Shoki Coe was among the first to speak of "contextualization" in theology. Coe argued that theology is not a reiteration of past formulas or doctrines but a response to the self-disclosing initiative of the living God in history and human experience. Yet he remains little known outside his native Taiwan. Wresting with God in Context introduces Coe's work and social vision and evaluates his contributions to the field of missiology and ecclesiology. Eager to offer a creative and critical witness to Christian faith, Coe worked tirelessly to liberate theology from its Western captivity and shaped a generation of theological reflection on God, culture, and history. For thousands of students and church members around the world, Shoki Coe was the spiritual father that guided their contextual theological pursuit to the living reality of God. In order to reflect on his legacy, the chapters in this volume--including original essays from Stephen Bevans, Dwight Hopkins, and Enrique Dussel--tackle the critical, methodological issues related to doing theology, reading the Scriptures, and being the church.

In Vulnerability and Resilience, vulnerability is not the final word. Rather, resilience provides the cutting edge and living breath in the stories of subjects who are vulnerable. And they have many stories: stories of being trapped in bodies, teachings, and/or situations that make them (and others like them) vulnerable to discrimination, hatred, and rejection; stories of being trapped because of their bodies, theologies, and/or cultures; and stories of being trapped for no-good reason. For subjects who are vulnerable, life is like a maze of traps, and stories of resilience keep them going. The contributors to Vulnerability and Resilience refuse to be trapped. At the intersection of body and liberation theologies, they tell their stories in the hope that they will expose cultures that make individuals and communities vulnerable, and that those stories will encourage vulnerable subjects to be resilient and bring change to theological institutions that conserve vulnerability. Because of the location of the contributors—the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, Caribbean, and Oceania—this book is a testimony that vulnerability is present all over the world, and that resilience is a liberating alternative.

Responses to the recent pandemic have been driven by fear, with social distancing and locking down of communities and borders as the most effective tactics. Out of fear and strategies that separate and isolate, emerges what has been described as the “new normal” (which seems to mutate daily). Truly global in scope, with contributors from across the world, this collection revisits four old responses to crises – assure, protest, trick, amend – to explore if/how those might still be relevant and effective and/or how they might be mutated during and after a global pandemic. Together they paint a grounded, earthy, context-focused picture of what it means to do theology in the new normal.

A stirring meditation of being Black and learning to love in a loveless, anti-Black world “Only once in a lifetime do we come across a writer like Danté Stewart, so young and yet so masterful with the pen. This work is a thing to make dungeons shake and hearts thunder.”—Robert Jones, Jr., New York Times bestselling author of The Prophets In Shoutin’ in the Fire, Danté Stewart gives breathtaking language to his reckoning with the legacy of white supremacy—both the kind that hangs over our country and the kind that is internalized on a molecular level. Stewart uses his personal experiences as a vehicle to reclaim and reimagine spiritual virtues like rage, resilience, and remembrance—and explores how these virtues might function as a work of love against an unjust, unloving world. In 2016, Stewart was a rising leader at the predominantly white evangelical church he and his family were attending in Augusta, Georgia. Like many young church leaders, Stewart was thrilled at the prospect of growing his voice and influence within the community, and he was excited to break barriers as the church’s first Black preacher. But when Donald Trump began his campaign, so began the unearthing. Stewart started overhearing talk in the pews—comments ranging from microaggressions to outright hostility toward Black Americans. As this violence began to reveal itself en masse, Stewart quickly found himself isolated amid a people unraveled; this community of faith became the place where he and his family now found themselves most alone. This set Stewart on a journey—first out of the white church and then into a liberating pursuit of faith—by looking to the wisdom of the saints that have come before, including James H. Cone, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, and by heeding the paradoxical humility of Jesus himself. This sharply observed journey is an intimate meditation on coming of age in a time of terror. Stewart reveals the profound faith he discovered even after experiencing the violence of the American church: a faith that loves Blackness; speaks truth to pain and trauma; and pursues a truer, realer kind of love than the kind we’re taught, a love that sets us free.