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Black Women and the Sacred: With “Lemonade,” Beyoncé Takes Us to Church

By Yolanda Pierce

…theology, ritual, and doctrine to the experiences and beliefs of enslaved Africans. Within most of these traditional African-born religious practices, women served as powerful healers, conjurers and priests. To evoke these traditions in “Lemonade” contrasts with the skewed demographics of contemporary Christianity, where black women represent more than 80 percent of the membership of their churches, but less than 10 percent of the leadership. Why…

Rev. Ella Pearson Mitchell (1917-2008)

By Jonathan L. Walton

…stication of the black spoken word tradition that extends back to the West African griot. And, more importantly, she helped to open the minds (and improve the preaching) of scores of male clergy who claimed the pulpit as their gendered birthright. Whether in Oakland, Atlanta or Russia she reached beyond the African American community and across gender lines to teach what W.E.B. DuBois suggested over a hundred years ago, “The black preacher is the…

Mexico moves toward national marriage equality; Greek govt announces civil partnership legislation; Pope warns against ‘secularism and relativism’; Global LGBT recap

By Peter Montgomery

…be learned through experiences in life. In every society, there is a small number of people with homosexuality tendencies. “The practice needs regulation like any other human behaviour especially to protect the vulnerable. There is need for further studies to address sexuality in the African context.” It was later found that the study claimed no such thing, and the politicians had been deliberately highlighting phrases which already suited their v…

‘My Name is Legion’: Sources and Forces of White Supremacy in the U.S.

By R. Drew Smith

…th during the 19th century. With abolitionism gaining momentum in the early 1800s, the slavocracy—with southern clergy in the forefront—responded with a variety of defenses of slavery. One of the more prevalent defenses was to argue, in characteristically Calvinistic terms, that social station is predetermined by God. According to 19th century pro-slavery advocates of this position, whites, on their part, were divinely-entrusted with superior qual…

Fusion Politics: A Way Forward for Bernie Sanders?

By Daniel Schultz

…l Mondays movement. Given Hillary Clinton’s deep reservoir of support with African-American voters, it might not have made much difference, but it’s an interesting counter-factual to contemplate. Barber himself seems to have thought along similar lines, suggesting at one point an alliance with the liberal netroots community Daily Kos, long a bastion for support for Sanders. (Full disclosure: I used to be very active at Daily Kos and formerly ran i…

Obama as Lord and Savior

By Edward J. Blum

…and short stories by W. E. B. Du Bois, used lynch victims from the cotton South as the analogues for Christ in America. But it is not only African American poets and artists who have had a vision of Jesus as black—many of these portrayals have been created by white women and men. (I’d argue that these examples complicate the idea put forth by scholars like Jaroslav Pelikan and Stephen Prothero that humans simply portray Jesus “in their own image….

Christians of Color Are Rejecting “Colonial Christianity” and Reclaiming Ancestral Spiritualities

By Deborah Jian Lee

…and combining of distinct belief systems, has always been embraced by many African Americans, she adds. “More are exploring Buddhism, Sufism, and African Traditional Religions in adaptive waves.” Russel Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, describes the hybridized practices adopted by some Asian Americans. He sees how Vietnamese Americans create home shrines that blend the traditional—a single photo of an…

When Children’s Literature is Not Defined by “Innocence”

By Jodi Eichler-Levine

…emory work is a practice, and a very complicated one. In the case of Jews, African Americans, and the overlaps across those identities, we can look at memory in a productive sense, at how pains touch one another, rather than devolving into the rhetoric of comparative suffering. Is there anything you had to leave out? Mormons. When I started this work, it involved a three-way comparison among Jews, African Americans, and Latter-day Saints. But ther…

Marriage Equality: Race, Family Values, and the 99%

By Sikivu Hutchinson

…easing, especially in traditionally conservative Bible Belt regions in the South. African American strongholds like Atlanta have seen a new black “re-migration” driven by the ripple effect of high unemployment, foreclosures, and gentrification in northern urban black communities. According to the Family Equality Council, LGBT families are more racially and ethnically diverse than families headed by married heterosexual couples. Of same-sex couples…

Death in the Desert: Riding With the Samaritans

By Lauri Lebo

…ion that similar laws in Hazleton, Pennsylvania were unconstitutional. The number of deaths have increased even as illegal immigration has fallen dramatically in the past ten years. The economic downturn and high unemployment rates may have deterred immigrants from coming here, both legally and illegally. In addition, the federal government’s stepped-up border patrol forces, combined with local and state crackdowns on illegal immigrants, may have…