Title: African American readings of Paul : reception, resistance, and transformation /
Authors: Bowens, Lisa M.
Year: 2020
Subjects: Bible. Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Bible.; African American preaching History.; African Americans Religion History.; African American preaching; African Americans Religion
Abstract: The letters of Paul--especially the verse in Ephesians directing slaves to obey their masters--played an enormous role in promoting slavery and justifying it as a Christian practice. Yet despite this reality African Americans throughout history still utilized Paul extensively in their own work to protest and resist oppression, responding to his theology and teachings in numerous--often starkly divergent and liberative--ways. In the first book of its kind, Lisa Bowens takes a historical, theological, and biblical approach to explore interpretations of Paul within African American communities over the past few centuries. She surveys a wealth of primary sources from the early 1700s to the mid-twentieth century, including sermons, conversion stories, slave petitions, and autobiographies of ex-slaves, many of which introduce readers to previously unknown names in the history of New Testament interpretation. Along with their hermeneutical value, these texts also provide fresh documentation of Black religious life through wide swaths of American history. African American Readings of Paul promises to change the landscape of Pauline studies and fill an important gap in the rising field of reception history.
Contents: Foreword / by Emerson B. Powery -- Introduction: African American Pauline hermeneutics -- Early petitions for freedom and liberty that cite Paul -- Jupiter Hammon (1711-[1790-1806?]: the first published African American poet -- Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833): the first ordained Black American -- John Jea (1773-1817[?]): the African preacher and miracle of literacy -- Jarena Lee (1783-1850[?]): one of the first Black women preachers in the African Methodist Episcopal Church -- Zilpha Elaw (1790[?]-?): renowned early Black women preacher -- David Walker (1785/1796-1830): famous abolitionist -- Using Paul to resist, protest, and be subversive -- The Fugitive Slave Act and the letter to Philemon -- Maria Stewart (1803-1879): first female public lecturer on political themes -- James Pennington (1807-1870: the fugitive blacksmith -- Daniel Payne (1811-1893): America&#x2019;s first African American college president -- Julia Foote (1832-1900): ordained female deacon -- Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897): first enslaved African American woman to write an autobiography -- Using Paul to challenge the status quo -- Reverdy Ransom (1861-1959): “inspirer of men and movements” -- William J. Seymour (1870-1922): bringer of hope -- Charles Harrison Mason (1864-1961): founder of largest pentecostal denomination in the United States -- Ida B. Robinson (1891-1946): denominational founder -- Howard Thurman (1899-1981): twentieth-century pastor, activist, mystic, and theologian -- Albert Cleage Jr. (1911-2000): advocate and activist for the black nation -- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968): theologian of resistance -- Pauline hermeneutics in twentieth-century black discourse -- Conversion -- Story of Morte -- Story of Charlie -- I saw Jesus -- Traveling to the third heaven -- Meeting God in the blackb erry patch -- Pauline language permeates the conversion narratives of the enslaved -- Paul as a figure of liberation and equality, and of shared experience -- Paul and the hermeneutic of trust -- Cosmological Paul and “canonical” Paul -- Paul and the Spirit -- Body language: a Pauline body hermeneutic -- (The) text matters: “findin&#x2019; out different” -- Where do we go from here? -- Afterword / by Beverly Roberts Gaventa.