PROGRAMS  |  BLACK CHURCH INITIATIVE AND LA INICIATIVA LATINA

Clearing House and Resource Center - Black Church Studies

The MultiCultural Programs Department Clearing House and Resource Center features a collection of theological books, sermons, speeches,  workshop presentations, youth and adult sexuality curriculums. The Clearing House and Resource Center serves as a resource to clergy, seminarians, health and human service educators, parents and youth. Resources are available for loan. For more information, contact bciinfo@rcrc.org or call 202-628-7700.

Books

The Black Christ, Kelly Brown Douglas
Kelly Brown Douglas presents a challenging and accessible introduction to an image of long historical and deep religious significance among African Americans; the Black Christ. In The Black Christ, Douglas demonstrates the importance to the community of viewing Christ as one who identifies with the community and in whom the community finds strength. 

Black Theology: A Documentary History, Volume I, James H. Cone, Gayraud S. Wilmore
First published as a single volume in 1979, Black Theology: A Documentary History soon became the classic sourcebook for the emergence of Black theology in the United States. Born out of the Civil Rights Movement and the emerging demand of Black Power, Black theology has struggled for twenty-five years to relate the gospel to the African-American experience. Volume I, based on the original volume, has been substantially streamlined. New introductions, may additional essays and documents, and a revised bibliography have been added.  

Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class, and Family, Cain Hope Felder
This is a comprehensive and challenging look at the significance of the Bible for Blacks and the importance of Blacks in the Bible. Troubling Biblical Waters provides critical resources for studying the Bible, especially in relation to Black religion and the Church.

Africa American Christianity: Essays In History, Paul E. Johnson
In this collection of essays, seven leading scholars give us the most comprehensive book to date on the history of African-American religion from the slavery period to the present. From Albert Raboteau’s opening essay on the importance of the biblical story of Exodus among African-American Christians to Clayborne Carson’s concluding work on the significance of African-American traditions in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s religious development, this volume illuminates the fusion of African and Christian traditions that has characterized African-American Christianity’s unique contribution to American religious history.

Bad Boys of The New Testament: Exploring Men of Questionable Virtue, Barbara J. Essex
Bad Boys of the New Testament, a seven-week small group study session, is part of Essex’s popular series of Bible studies that includes Bad Boys of the New Testament: Exploring Men of Questionable Virtue and Bad Girls of the Bible: Exploring Women of Questionable Virtue. A short commentary follows each scripture review and provides back-ground information to help make the story accessible and understandable to modern readers. Reflection questions conclude each unit, offering participants the opportunity to start a discussion about what can be learned from these characters and their stories.

Plenty Good Room: Women Versus Male Power in the Black Church, Marcia Y. Riggs
In Plenty Good Room: Women Versus Male Power In the Black Church, Riggs discusses African American church life as a case study for ethical reflection about sexual ethics and clergy ethics – the prevailing silence about sexuality in black churches as well as the fact that sexuality us generally a taboo in Christian tradition. The author feels that sexism has been perpetrated by misuse of the Scriptures and by circumscribing the role of women, and seeks to transform current discourse about sexual behavior and clergy misconduct from a concentration on formulating policy to re-train.

The Women of Azusa Street, Estrelda Alexander
The Women of Azusa Street pays tribute to the women who played a vital role – which was typically overlooked or downplayed in literature – in the 1906 Azusa Street Revival, and event in Los Angeles that catapulted the then fledgling Pentecostal Movement into national prominence. In the wake of the 100th anniversary of  the Azusa Street Revival, which was held day and night for nearly three years, Alexander reveals the fascinating stories of Holy Spirit baptized women from various racial and cultural backgrounds – who like Jesus’ disciples – gave up everything and risked their lives to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Black Church In the African American Experience, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya
The Black Church in America has long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institution in black communities. Based on a ten-year study, The Black Church in the African American Experience is the largest nongovernmental survey of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study since the thirties. Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive historical overview of seen mainline black denominations, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya present an analysis of the Black Church as it relates to the history of African Americans and to contemporary black culture.

African American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture, Timothy E. Fulop & Albert J. Raboteau
African-American religions encompass a broad spectrum of beliefs and practices. This volume brings together in one forum the most important essays on the development of these traditions to provide a broad overview of the field and its most important scholars.

Black Faith and Public Talk: Critical Essays on James H. Cone’s Black Theology & Black Power, Dwight N. Hopkins
Black Theology and Black Power was the book that signaled the birth of Black theology, an effort to relate the Christian gospel to the black struggle for liberation. This collection of critical voices—both black and white, male and female—assesses the significance of Cone’s initial work and the subsequent progression of Black Theology.

Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology, Dwight N. Hopkins
The lives of enslaved African Americans, Dwight Hopkins contends, are a foundational source of liberating faith and practice for African Americans today. Down, Up, and Over draws on their religious experience, and the example of their faith and witness, to develop a constructive theology of liberation.  

Righteous Content: Black Women’s Perspectives of Church and Faith, Daphne C. Wiggins
Enter most African American congregations and you are likely to see the century-old pattern of predominantly female audience led by a male pastor. How do we explain the dedication of African American women to the church, particularly when the church’s regard for women has been questioned? Following in the footsteps of Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s pathbreaking work, Righteous Discontent, Daphne Wiggins takes a contemporary look at the religiosity of black women. Her ethnographic work explores what is behind black women’s intense loyalty to the church, bringing to the fore the voices of the female membership of black churches as few have done. Wiggins illuminates the spiritual sustenance the church provides black women, uncovers their critical assessment of the church’s ministry, and interprets the consequences of their limited collective activism. Wiggins paints a vivid portrait of what loved religion is like in black women’s lives today.

The Black Church In America: African American Christian Spirituality, Michael Battle
This book gives readers a broad understanding of the Black Church in America and a sense of its uniqueness in the wider world. It explores the history of the Black Church in America, its African roots, beliefs, practices, politics, and contemporary moral dilemmas and argues that in the Black Church, individual and communal destiny are bound together. 

White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response, Jacquelyn Grant
Christology is especially problematic for feminists. Because Jesus was undeniably male and because the Christian church claims him as the unique God-bearer, feminists Christology confronts the dual tasks of explaining the significance of a male God-bearer for women and creating an adequate Christological model adequate to feminist experience. This work rehearses the development and challenges of feminist Christology and argues that, because it has reflected the experience of White women predominantly, it fails to reflect the concerns of non-White and non-western women. In response to this failure, and as distinguished from feminist theology, the author proposes a womanist theology and Christology that emerges from and is adequate to the reality of contemporary Black women.

Blow the Trumpet in Zion: Global Vision and Action for the 21st century Black Church, Iva E. Carruthers, Frederick D. Haynes, III, and Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.

Introducing Womanist Theology, Stephanie Y. Mitchem
Introducing Womanist Theology demonstrates how theology by women of color is firmly rooted in their varied life experiences. By participating fully in the construction of theology instead of simply learning theology from others, black women are able to analyze church teaching, develop meaningful systems of ethics, and challenge ecclesiastical structures, if needed. This book describes the unique experiences of African American women and explores not only what theology is but, but how it is constructed. It lays out the major components of womanist theology and womanist ethics.

Stony The Road We Trod African American Biblical Interpretation, Cain Hope Felder
This is a splendid collection of 11 essays by African American biblical scholars; the introduction puts the essays, and the consultation out of which they grew, into context. The essays consider biblical authority, African American sources for enhancing biblical interpretation, and the issue of race in the Bible. They also offer reinterpretation of specific biblical texts, while revealing the role blacks played within the Bible. These essays are important for both scholars and general readers, making the book essential for many libraries.

Bad Girls of the Bible: Exploring Women of Questionable Virtue, Barbara J. Essex
Barbara Essex brings to life the Bible’s “Bad Girls” – Notorious women we love to hate. Exploring lives filled with betrayal, deception, rejection, jealousy, and exploitation, essex looks beyond the notoriety to show us women of exceptional boldness, courage, determination, and independence. These stories tell us about women we know – women not that different from ourselves. This twelve-week study is designed for men and women, laity and clergy, who seek fresh ways to preach and teach the stories of biblical women.

Black Church Beginnings: The Long Hidden Realities of the First Years, Henry Mitchell
This book provides an intimate look at the struggles of African Americans to establish spiritual communities in the harsh world of slavery in the American colonies. Written by one of today’s most foremost experts on African American religion, this book traces the growth of the black church from its start in the mid-1700’s to the end of the nineteenth century.

Black Theology A Documentary History, Volume II, James H. Core & Gayraud S. Wilmore
First published as a single volume in 1979, Black Theology: A Documentary History soon became the classic sourcebook for the emergence of Black theology in the United States. Born out of the Civil Rights Movement and the emerging demand of Black Power, Black theology has struggled for twenty-five years to relate the gospel to the African-American experience. Volume II brings the development of Black theology up to the 1990’s, covering such issues as the relevance of Black theology to pastoral ministry, Black biblical interpretation, womanist theology, and the increased dialogue with other third-world theologies.  

Black Spirituality & Black Consciousness, Carlyle Fielding Stewart, III
This book by Carlyle Stewart focuses on the central thesis that African-American spirituality, by the way it shapes, informs and strengthens black life, creates a unique matrix of freedom that accentuates the power, resiliency, and creativity of black people as the means of overcoming their plight.  

Africentric Christianity: A Theological Appraisal For Ministry, J. Deotis Roberts
Seeking to overcome the chasm between church practice and theological reflection, Evans 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, a soul, and a voice that speaks directly to our condition.

We Have Been Believers: An African American Systematic Theology, James H. Evans, Jr.
Seeking to overcome the chasm between church practice and theological reflection, Evans 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, a soul, and a voice that speaks directly to our condition.

The Bible and African American: A Brief History, Vincent L. Wimbush
The unique encounter of African Americans with the Bible has shaped centuries of the spirituality and social engagement of a whole continent. Highly respected biblical scholar Vincent Wimbush here outlines five phases of African American biblical reading and shows how the language of the Bible enabled African Americans to negotiate the strange world into which they were thrust.

Black Theology & Black Power, James H. Cone
Newly updated and expanded, this classic work is a product of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in America during the 1960’s. Black Theology and Black Power is James H. Cone’s initial attempt to identify liberation as the heart of the Christian gospel, and blackness as the primary mode of God’s presence. As he explains in an introduction written for this edition, “I wanted to speak on behalf of the voiceless black masses in the name of Jesus whose gospel I believed had been greatly distorted by the preaching and theology of white churches.”   

Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman
First published in 1949, Jesus and the Disinherited is a brilliant and compassionate look at God’s work in our lives. As we struggle today with issues of poverty, racism, and spiritual disengagements, Howard Thurman’s discerning reading of the message of renewal through self-love as exemplified in the life of Jesus resonates powerfully once again.

Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Churches, Horace Griffin
In this book, Griffin provides a historical overview and critical analysis of the black church and its current engagement with lesbian and gay Christians, and shares ways in which black churches can learn to reach out and confront all types of oppression-not just race-in order to do the work of the black community.

The History of Ancient Israel and Judah: A Compilation, Jerome Ross

They Like to Never Quit Praising God: The Role of Celebration in Preaching, Dr. Frank Thomas
Here is a book that will impact the course of preaching in the twenty-first century. Through the lens of African American preaching, Frank Thomas sheds light on what “good” preaching is and what methods can be employed to achieve it. 

An Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage, Marvin A. McMickle
This book blends biography, story, and commentary on a host of prominent and lesser known people in African American religious history. In this historical guidebook, you will hear the virtual voice of select African American religious leaders and learn of the events, movements, and organizations that have contributed to the formation and development of African American Christianity.

The Courage to Lead: Leadership in the African American Urban Church, James Harris
In this book, Harris examines pastoral and lay leadership in the African American church, drawing on first-hand experience as a church leader as well as data gathered through a survey of African American church members. Harris describes the challenges that face church leaders, including the tendency toward bifurcated religion (the belief that the church should be divided into two branches, the spiritual and the financial); the tendency of some church members to treat participation in church as an extension of their civic duties and social status rather than a spiritual endeavor; clergy/laity relations; and the rold of the church in public policy. Harris argues that ministers and laity in the Black church must actively engage themselves in overcoming the inequities that are still endemic to life in urban America and that affirmative action policies are more important than ever in obtaining a degree of social justice.