Challenges of the Black Church in 21st Century America

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Publisher : Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1638448124
Total Pages : 153 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Challenges of the Black Church in 21st Century America by : Creigs C. Beverly,

Download or read book Challenges of the Black Church in 21st Century America written by Creigs C. Beverly, and published by Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2021-08-04 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book represents not only the storms of life which the authors have experienced but also their unquenchable hope for a better tomorrow. For each, the Black church has been not only a source of personal valuation; but it has also been the foundation upon which each has been sustained, renewed, and revived. The authors hope that the reader of this book will also find something of personal, communal, and spiritual value which will assist them in maintaining hope in a world gone mad. Readers will find the various roles the Black church has provided over the years, along with some examples which can be replicated in twenty-first-century America. The authors believe in the immortal words of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, former president of Morehouse College who said, "It must be borne in the mind that the tragedy in life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is a sin." God bless. Creigs C. Beverly, PhD Olivia D. Beverly, PhD

The Black Church in the Twenty-first Century

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Publisher : Darton Longman and Todd
ISBN 13 : 9780232527926
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (279 download)

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Book Synopsis The Black Church in the Twenty-first Century by : Joe Aldred

Download or read book The Black Church in the Twenty-first Century written by Joe Aldred and published by Darton Longman and Todd. This book was released on 2010 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Church in the 21st Century provides an exciting and fresh look at the key issues facing the Black Church Movement in Britain today, representing a bold attempt for scope and analysis. Now over 50 years old, and having experienced great success, the Black Church is facing an uncertain future as part of a context in which Christianity is itself challenged by an increasingly secular, plural society. The book shows why at a post-modern moment of competing voices and simultaneous calls for faith and cultural cohesion, the Black Church is crucial as a prophetic advocate for the Black Community. Its chapters also demonstrate that current and future social, economic and political challenges demand of the Black Church in Britain greater awareness and progressive change in both style and substance.

From Strength to Strength

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Publisher : Peter Lang
ISBN 13 : 9780820495187
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (951 download)

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Book Synopsis From Strength to Strength by : Robert London Smith

Download or read book From Strength to Strength written by Robert London Smith and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2007 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on his experience as a member of the clergy and the questions and concerns that arose in the course of ministering to congregants, Robert London Smith, Jr. explores exactly what function the black church performs and, importantly, why. In this provocative work, he argues that much black church praxis is less authentic, relevant, and constructive today because it continues to be implicated by certain values and meanings that are themselves rooted in a historical black thematic universe that is fading and being replaced by a new set of values and meanings located within a contemporary black thematic universe. Using a practical theology method, Smith develops a theological framework (context-praxis) to create an approach to understanding and creating an informed praxis for the black church. He then sets forth a bold project that calls for the critical engagement of black church praxis and what he calls the black thematic universe in its historical and contemporary manifestations. The goal is to transform this praxis so that it remains authentic to the Gospel and the religious traditions and history of those who come to interpret and live out its message in the world, while being relevant to the issues and challenges of the present historical context in which the black church lives out its meaning and purpose, and constructive for the building up and equipping of the Body of Christ. Smith's creation of a black existential and theological hermeneutic is an approach that moves toward the realization of this ambitious goal. This book challenges many traditional views of black church praxis, including pastoral care, worship, and fellowship, and creates a space for a renewed and much-needed dialogue about the acts of the black church within contemporary America. As such, it is an important text for students of practical theology and African American religion as well as those interested in developing a critical understanding of the implications of the intersection of faith and culture.

The Black Church Next

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 16 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (832 download)

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Book Synopsis The Black Church Next by : Daniel E. Walker

Download or read book The Black Church Next written by Daniel E. Walker and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Black Church

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781573125574
Total Pages : 128 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (255 download)

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Book Synopsis The Black Church by : Reginald F. Davis

Download or read book The Black Church written by Reginald F. Davis and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reginald F. Davis believes there is a crisis in black America. Disproportionately, black Americans rank at the top in crime, murders, drug abuse, unemployment, incarceration, poverty, education deficiencies, and HIV/AIDS cases. Physical slavery is past and the civil rights bill has been signed, yet the black community is not saved, is not healed, is not organized, is not liberated. Davis's latest book, The Black Church: Relevant or Irrelevant in the 21st Century?, emerges from his great love, admiration, and deep concern for the future of the black community and the black church. Davis contends that a relevant church struggles to correct oppression, not maintain it. An irrelevant church sees the self-destructive behavior, oppression, and powerlessness of the oppressed but refuses to take the necessary steps to eradicate it. How can the black church focus on the liberation of the black community, thereby reclaiming the loyalty and respect of the black community? Davis also challenges the white church to understand and acknowledge what the malignancy of racism has done and still does to the body of Christ. He asserts that the white church cannot continue to remain silent on issues of oppression; it must preach against racism as well as be an agent of justice and liberation. Ultimately, churches-both black and white-must come together to be the Word of God to the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized.

Understanding and Transforming the Black Church

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Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1556353014
Total Pages : 167 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (563 download)

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Book Synopsis Understanding and Transforming the Black Church by : Anthony B. Pinn

Download or read book Understanding and Transforming the Black Church written by Anthony B. Pinn and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the nature and purpose of the Black Church? What is the relationship of the scholar of religion to the Black Church? While black churches have been a major component of the religious landscape of African American communities for centuries, little critical attention has been given to these questions outside an apologetic stance. This book seeks to correct this trend by examining some of the major issues facing black churches in the twenty-first century. From a challenge to traditional ways of addressing sexism within black churches to African American Christianity's relationship to popular culture, this set of reflections seeks to offer new perspectives on what it might mean to be Black and Christian in the United States. "Anthony Pinn's volume seeks to critically understand and sympathetically transform the Black Church. Carrying on in the tradition of William R. Jones, Pinn's perspective on the Black Church is suspicious, loving, critical, committed, exasperating, and exhilarating. One may not always agree with his conclusions, but one cannot ignore his penchant for ferreting out the truth. This book is a passionate yet balanced argument which must be heard by anyone who is interested in the future of the black church."---James H. Evans JR. Robert K. Davies Professor of Systematic Theology, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School "Pinn is required reading in every Black Church Studies department and theological curriculum that seeks self-understanding, transformation, and healing; and an indispensable interlocutor in the broader public conversation about the American dilemma and its democratic possibilities."---Walter Earl Fluker Coca-Cola Professor of Leadership Studies Morehouse College

Blow the Trumpet in Zion!

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Publisher : Fortress Press
ISBN 13 : 9781451409895
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis Blow the Trumpet in Zion! by : Iva E. Carruthers

Download or read book Blow the Trumpet in Zion! written by Iva E. Carruthers and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume's contributors--dynamic and progressive African American church leaders--advocate the prophetic powers of black theology, preaching, and evangelism in support of community and economic development, ministerial and lay leadership, and enhancement of church life. Among the writers are Charles G. Adams, Randall C. Bailey, James H. Cone, James A. Forbes, Jacquelyn Grant, Obery Hendricks, Asa G. Hilliard, Dwight N. Hopkins, Cecil Murray, and Gayraud Wilmore. All were presenters in 2004 at the first Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, established to reinvigorate the social justice agenda of America's black churches.

Biblical Strategies for a Community in Crisis

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Publisher : Urban Ministries Inc
ISBN 13 : 9780940955202
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (552 download)

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Book Synopsis Biblical Strategies for a Community in Crisis by : Colleen Birchett

Download or read book Biblical Strategies for a Community in Crisis written by Colleen Birchett and published by Urban Ministries Inc. This book was released on 1995-04 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through inspirational messages and warnings, 11 leading Christian thinkers share with readers the major challenges facing the African American community and its church. Readers are given biblical strategies for facing these challenges. 12 lessons. Leader's Guide also available.

The Black Church

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1984880330
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (848 download)

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Book Synopsis The Black Church by : Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Download or read book The Black Church written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.

The Black Church in the African American Experience

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822381648
Total Pages : 538 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis The Black Church in the African American Experience by : C. Eric Lincoln

Download or read book The Black Church in the African American Experience written by C. Eric Lincoln and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1990-11-07 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities. In The Black Church in the African American Experience, based on a ten-year study, is the largest nongovernmental study of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study on the subject since the 1930s. Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive historical overview of seven 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. In examining both the internal structure of the Church and the reactions of the Church to external, societal changes, the authors provide important insights into the Church’s relationship to politics, economics, women, youth, and music. Among other topics, Lincoln and Mamiya discuss the attitude of the clergy toward women pastors, the reaction of the Church to the civil rights movement, the attempts of the Church to involve young people, the impact of the black consciousness movement and Black Liberation Theology and clergy, and trends that will define the Black Church well into the next century. This study is complete with a comprehensive bibliography of literature on the black experience in religion. Funding for the ten-year survey was made possible by the Lilly Endowment and the Ford Foundation.

Challenges of Black Pentecostal Leadership in the 21st Century

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Author :
Publisher : SPCK
ISBN 13 : 0281070296
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis Challenges of Black Pentecostal Leadership in the 21st Century by : Phyllis Thompson

Download or read book Challenges of Black Pentecostal Leadership in the 21st Century written by Phyllis Thompson and published by SPCK. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of five pictures which address issues and challenges pertinent (but not exclusively so) to the Black Majority Church in the UK. They sharpen understanding of the way the BM have come to do church, and also challenge whether the vision is to maintain the status quo or be a prophetic church.

The Divided Mind of the Black Church

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Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479806005
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis The Divided Mind of the Black Church by : Raphael G. Warnock

Download or read book The Divided Mind of the Black Church written by Raphael G. Warnock and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing look at the identity and mission of the Black church What is the true nature and mission of the church? Is its proper Christian purpose to save souls, or to transform the social order? This question is especially fraught when the church is one built by an enslaved people and formed, from its beginning, at the center of an oppressed community’s fight for personhood and freedom. Such is the central tension in the identity and mission of the Black church in the United States. For decades the Black church and Black theology have held each other at arm’s length. Black theology has emphasized the role of Christian faith in addressing racism and other forms of oppression, arguing that Jesus urged his disciples to seek the freedom of all peoples. Meanwhile, the Black church, even when focused on social concerns, has often emphasized personal piety rather than social protest. With the rising influence of white evangelicalism, biblical fundamentalism, and the prosperity gospel, the divide has become even more pronounced. In The Divided Mind of the Black Church, Raphael G. Warnock, Senior Pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., traces the historical significance of the rise and development of Black theology as an important conversation partner for the Black church. Calling for honest dialogue between Black and womanist theologians and Black pastors, this fresh theological treatment demands a new look at the church’s essential mission.

The Black American Church

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Publisher : Fulton Books, Inc.
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (873 download)

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Book Synopsis The Black American Church by : Dr. Khandicia N. Randolph

Download or read book The Black American Church written by Dr. Khandicia N. Randolph and published by Fulton Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book seeks to examine the leadership of the Black church through a critical and theoretical lens utilizing historical and anthropological foci to better identify and understand some of the challenges within the paramount institution and its attrition to the Black American community at large and provide appropriate suggestions and generating frameworks for addressing the challenges. The church has always played a pivotal role in Black American culture's identity, development, and progression. Leadership and organizational challenges within the church pervasively matriculate to other Black spaces, historically Black organizations, and a broader societal context. Due to the church's historical and ethnographic context for Blacks in America, many of the challenges faced in the church go unrecognized, unspoken, thus unattended. This manuscript endeavors to identify the challenges, and flaws through research and data, to provide solutions through practical and theoretical implementations to some shortcomings for the betterment of the church and culture. The interconnectedness of culture and religion for Blacks in America established a gargantuan impact factor on the church and its leaders. This manuscript examines the pervading effects of the influence through leadership dispensation. It also explores the understanding of leadership through the lens of Black Christianity, deriving that the foundation of leadership in the Black community was primarily circumscribed by the influence of the church as conglomerate collectivism of almost five hundred years of the history and culture of Africans, African descendants, and members of the African diaspora in what is now America who contributed to the ideal of the Black church. The critical analysis provided is not one of condemnation but likened to a vital performance review through member experiences barred against applicable leadership and organizational development barometers.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

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Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1467464627
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (674 download)

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Book Synopsis The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by : Mark A. Noll

Download or read book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind written by Mark A. Noll and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award (1995) “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism’s most respected historians. Unsparing in his indictment, Mark Noll asks why the largest single group of religious Americans—who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence—have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship. While nourishing believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why have so many evangelicals failed to sustain a serious intellectual life and abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of “high” culture? Over twenty-five years since its original publication, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind has turned out to be prescient and perennially relevant. In a new preface, Noll lays out his ongoing personal frustrations with this situation, and in a new afterword he assesses the state of the scandal—showing how white evangelicals’ embrace of Trumpism, their deepening distrust of science, and their frequent forays into conspiratorial thinking have coexisted with surprisingly robust scholarship from many with strong evangelical connections.

The Ground Has Shifted

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Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 147981038X
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ground Has Shifted by : Walter E. Fluker

Download or read book The Ground Has Shifted written by Walter E. Fluker and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 8. Returning to the Little House Where We Lived and Made Do -- 9. Cultural Asylums and the Jungles They Planted in Them -- 10. Waking Up the Dead -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author

Your Spirits Walk Beside Us

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674267036
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Your Spirits Walk Beside Us by : Barbara Dianne Savage

Download or read book Your Spirits Walk Beside Us written by Barbara Dianne Savage and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-22 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even before the emergence of the civil rights movement with black churches at its center, African American religion and progressive politics were assumed to be inextricably intertwined. In her revelatory book, Barbara Savage counters this assumption with the story of a highly diversified religious community whose debates over engagement in the struggle for racial equality were as vigorous as they were persistent. Rather than inevitable allies, black churches and political activists have been uneasy and contentious partners. From the 1920s on, some of the best African American minds—W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Benjamin Mays, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mary McLeod Bethune, Charles S. Johnson, and others—argued tirelessly about the churches’ responsibility in the quest for racial justice. Could they be a liberal force, or would they be a constraint on progress? There was no single, unified black church but rather many churches marked by enormous intellectual, theological, and political differences and independence. Yet, confronted by racial discrimination and poverty, churches were called upon again and again to come together as savior institutions for black communities. The tension between faith and political activism in black churches testifies to the difficult and unpredictable project of coupling religion and politics in the twentieth century. By retrieving the people, the polemics, and the power of the spiritual that animated African American political life, Savage has dramatically demonstrated the challenge to all religious institutions seeking political change in our time.

In Search of Wisdom

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Author :
Publisher : Abingdon Press
ISBN 13 : 1426734115
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis In Search of Wisdom by : Prof. Anne E. Streaty Wimberly

Download or read book In Search of Wisdom written by Prof. Anne E. Streaty Wimberly and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: edited by Anne E. Streaty Wimberly A guide for pastors, church leaders, and all who help African Americans in their search for a meaningful Christian lifestyle. Forming Christians--leading fallen and flawed human beings into the path of discipleship to a crucified and risen Lord--is one of the central, if not the central, tasks of all Christian churches. It is a difficult enough task anywhere, but for African Americans, beset by racial conflict, personal crises, generational separation, and other concerns, it is especially so. African American churches must work particularly hard to counter the messages their members receive from the dominant and often unfriendly culture. This book employs the biblical text and African tradition to draw on the idea of the search for wisdom as a potent way to help African Americans in their pursuit of genuine Christian discipleship. Wisdom in African American tradition is not simply knowledge; rather, it is those insights, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors,and practices that create and sustain a life of hope and that produce an inherent sense of the worth of one's self. If their members are to engage in the search for wisdom, African American churches must build an intentional ministry of faith formation. Wisdom can be gained, the authors argue, when African Americans listen to the black oral tradition with its proverbial sayings, revered Bible stories, songs, and narratives from the lives of exemplary individuals. The book offers several similar avenues for the search for wisdom, including helpful models of black males mentoring younger black males, as a remedy to the destructive effects that contemporary culture has on this segment of the African American community.