Prophetic Fragments: Illuminations of the Crisis in American Religion and Culture
This volume collects over 50 articles, book reviews, and addresses by a Union Seminary theologian, almost all previously published. The disparate brief pieces are partially connected by West's continual effort to link black and Protestant theological traditions to "progressive" social thought. But this project remains too fragmentary and vague to be convincing, while the political rhetoric often falls into a repetitive style of lament, exhortation, and ideological abstraction. In his book reviews, however, West proves to be an incisive critic of other religious and social thinkers. The most eloquent pieces are those in which West explains and interprets his more personally felt tradition of Afro-American Protestantism. Mel Piehl, Valparaiso Univ. )Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.