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Some Issues of Major Concern in Theological Education in Cuba, the Caribbean, and the U.S.
Get PDFFor many years we here in Cuba have debated whether Cuban theology is or is not a theology of liberation. Therefore we have referred to our Cuban theology in different ways a theology in revolution, a theology of hope, and by many other names. I think that Cuban theology is similar to the theology of liberation in the rest of Latin America, but it has a different context because of the political, economic and social situation of Cuba. Thus our emphasis is in accord with the Cuban situation. Because most Latin American and Caribbean countries are politically oppressed, their emphasis is on political liberation. Here in Cuba we have been a little confused in that regard. Some of us sometimes have said in the past that Cuban theology is liberated or, because we are living in a context of liberation, our countryis completely liberated from all the situations of oppression, etc
Black Theology, Cultural Authentication and African Americans of the United States
Get PDFI’m a sociologist who studies the cultural behavior of African Americans in the United States. I’m particularly interested in religious organizations and their relationship to the practice and creation of a distinct culture in the U.S. I’m also a practicing Christian who knows no contradiction between the scientific work of her profession and her beliefs. I have worked with the Black Theology Project (BTP) since 1975, served on the Board of Directors since 1981, and was formerly Executive Director of the Project
Black Aesthetics and Black Worship
Get PDFFor a long period prior to the Black Revolution of the nineteen sixties many Black people argued mightily against a substantive definition of themselves as anything other than Americans “whose skin happened to be black.” White liberals, who were supposed to be our friends, offered similar views. In the Harlem of the nineteen twenties, which was exploding with the creative energy of poets, musicians, dancers and artists, Melville J. Herskovits could conclude that there was no unique Black cultural expression. “Why, it’s the same pattern, only a different shade,”he wrote. He also recorded that Black artists, writers and intellectuals themselves were refuting any suggestion of a distinctive racial angle of vision. “The proudest boast of the modern young Negro writer,” he said, “is that he writes of humans, not of Negroes.” He concluded that the acculturation of the Negro in America was complete. To his credit the brilliant, perceptive Alain Locke discerned and registered the distinctiveness of Black cultural expression. “The brands and wounds of social persecution are becoming the proud stigmata of spiritual immunity and moral victory,” he wrote in The New Negro in 1925. Locke, nevertheless, felt obligated to argue toward a universalism that tended to blur that distinctiveness. Locke observed a new emphasis evolving from racial substance which was being used solely for the sake of art . . . “something technically distinctive, something that as an idiom of style may become a contribution to the general resources of art.” The latter qualifier suggests that the legitimacy of a Black aesthetic is judged by what it contributes to art in general, that is, its universality. For although Locke recognized the learning effect of the rich racial experience then being unconsciously drawn upon, his measure of its validity is the wide recognition which that art received before the general (read“white”) public
The Dynamics of Black Worship: A Psychosocial Exploration of the Impulses that Lie at the Roots of Black Worship
Get PDFAlbert J. Raboteau in his work, Slave Religion, points out that our slave parents risked floggings to attend forbidden secret gatherings to worship God. Sometimes these meetings lasted long into the night, and at these meetings the slaves poured out their pain, sufferings, and needs to each other and to God. Raboteau goes on to point out that these secret meetings were so important because they provided the slave community an opportunity to fashion its self-image as well as to help others as individuals to shape their self-image. The development of this self-image was contextual and evolved as they reflected on their own experiences, communal symbols, values and stories picked up from their African past and the Bible. In short, they risked their lives in order that they could discover for themselves who they were, where they were going, and how they were going to get there. This task could not be undertaken under the direct supervision of the slave master, however. It had to take place in secret, unhindered by meddling interruptions calling for conformity to the slave master’s specifications
Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, Back Matter, 1986
No full textJournal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, Back Matter, 198
“Call me Mara for I am Bitter:” A Womanist Impression of the Wailing Women of Naomi/Laban Showers, 2022
Get PDFThis paper is one of a series of papers that have come out of a research project entitled “Botho/Ubuntu and Community Building in the Urban Space: An Exploration of Naomi, Laban, Bridal and Baby Showers in Gaborone. The project was carried out by a group of female researchers from across the University of Botswana and was made possible by the generous funding of John Templeton Foundation
Christian Education and Prison Ministry: A Refaction on Structural Differentiation and Ministry, 2014
Get PDFMy basic thesis for this article is that in order for prison ministry to be holistic, it needs a Christian education component that is formative, contextual, and relational. I begin by critiquing the notion that these two entities are separate in department and mission, and endeavor to put them in conversation through a vision for Christian education rooted in models of discipleship