Liberation theology is a theological approach emphasizing the "liberation of the oppressed". It engages in socio-economic analyses, with social concern for the poor and "political liberation for oppressed peoples" and addresses other forms of perceived inequality.
Candomblé Ketu is the largest and most influential branch (nation) of Candomblé, a religion practiced primarily in Brazil. The word Candomblé means "ritual dancing or gather in honor of gods" and Ketu is the name of the Ketu region of Benin. Its liturgical language, known as yorubá or Nagô, is a dialect of Yoruba. Candomblé Ketu developed in the early 19th century and gained great importance to Brazilian heritage in the 20th century.
Womanist theology is a methodological approach to theology which centers the experience and perspectives of Black women, particularly African-American women. The first generation of womanist theologians and ethicists began writing in the mid to late 1980s, and the field has since expanded significantly. The term has its roots in Alice Walker's writings on womanism. "Womanist theology" was first used in an article in 1987 by Delores S. Williams. Within Christian theological discourse, Womanist theology emerged as a corrective to early feminist theology written by white feminists that did not address the impact of race on women's lives, or take into account the realities faced by Black women within the United States. Similarly, womanist theologians highlighted the ways in which Black theology, written predominantly by male theologians, failed to consider the perspectives and insights of Black women. Scholars who espouse womanist theology are not monolithic nor do they adopt each aspect of Walker's definition. Rather, these scholars often find kinship in their anti-sexist, antiracist and anti-classist commitments to feminist and liberation theologies.
James Hal Cone was an American Methodist minister and theologian. He is best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of Jesus.
Black churches primarily arose in the 19th century, during a time when race-based slavery and racial segregation were both commonly practiced in the United States. Blacks generally searched for an area where they could independently express their faith, find leadership, and escape from inferior treatment in White dominated churches. The Black Church is the faith and body of Christian denominations and congregations in the United States that predominantly minister to, and are also led by African Americans, as well as these churches' collective traditions and members.
Criticism of Christianity has a long history which stretches back to the initial formation of the religion in the Roman Empire. Critics have challenged Christian beliefs and teachings as well as Christian actions, from the Crusades to modern terrorism. The arguments against Christianity include the suppositions that it is a faith of violence, corruption, superstition, polytheism, homophobia, bigotry, pontification, abuses of women's rights and sectarianism.
The Kairos Document (KD) is a theological statement issued in 1985 by a group of mainly black South African theologians based predominantly in the townships of Soweto, South Africa. The document challenged the churches' response to what the authors saw as the vicious policies of the apartheid regime under the state of emergency declared on 21 July 1985. The KD evoked strong reactions and furious debates not only in South Africa, but world-wide.
Robert Beckford is a British academic theologian and currently Professor of Climate and Social Justice at the University of Winchester, and has associate roles as a Professor of Black Theology at The Queen's Foundation, and a Professor of Theology at VU University, Amsterdam. His documentaries for both the BBC and Channel 4 have caused debate among the religious community, instigated policy change and won national and international awards.
Anthony B. Pinn is an American professor working at the intersections of African-American religion, constructive theology, and humanist thought. Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is founder and executive director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning in Houston, Texas, and Director of Research for the Institute for Humanist Studies in Washington, D.C.
Dwight Nathaniel Hopkins is an American theologian and ordained Baptist minister who serves as a professor of theology at the University of Chicago.
Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas is an American author and educator. She is associate professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt Divinity School and the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Floyd-Thomas is a Womanist Christian social ethicist whose research interests include Womanist thought, Black Church Studies, liberation theology and ethics, critical race theory, critical pedagogy and postcolonial studies.
William Wadé Harris was a Liberian Grebo evangelist, who preached in Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. He has been described as the "most extraordinary one man evangelical crusade that Africa has ever known" and is considered one of the originators of today's prosperity gospel.
Jacquelyn Grant is an American theologian, a Methodist minister. Alongside Katie Cannon, Delores S. Williams, and Kelly Brown Douglas, Grant is considered one of the four founders of womanist theology. Womanist theology addresses theology from the viewpoint of Black women, reflecting on both their perspectives and experience in regards to faith and moral standards. Grant is currently the Callaway Professor of Systematic Theology at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.
Delores Seneva Williams was an American Presbyterian theologian and professor notable for her formative role in the development of womanist theology and best known for her book Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. Her writings use black women's experiences as epistemological sources, and she is known for her womanist critique of atonement theories. As opposed to feminist theology, predominantly practiced by white women, and black theology, predominantly practiced by black men, Williams argued that black women's experiences generate critical theological insights and questions.
Fabien Eboussi Boulaga was a Cameroonian philosopher.
This is a bibliography of works on Black theology.
Political theology in sub-Saharan Africa deals with the relationship of theology and politics born from and/or specific to the circumstances of the region. Arising from the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and nationalist campaigns of the mid- to late twentieth century elsewhere, the increasing numbers of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa has led to an increased interest in Christian responses to the region's continuing issues of poverty, violence, and war. According to the Cameroonian theologian and sociologist Jean-Marc Éla, African Christianity "has to be formulated from the struggles of our people, from their joys, from their pains, from their hopes and from their frustrations today." African theology is heavily influenced by liberation theology, global black theology, and postcolonial theology.
The Catholic Church and race refers to the teachings, practices and approaches of the Catholic Church in regard to the human races. The core teaching of the Catholic Church on human beings, is that all of the races of mankind are required to convert to the Catholic faith to attain eternal salvation. The foundational break between Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism on human beings is that since the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the new covenant with the God, is based not on the concept of a tribal, hereditary definition of a chosen people by blood which excludes gentiles, but on faith and belief, accessible to all of the races of man.
Anthony G. Reddie is a British theologian and academic, who specialises in black theology. He is a professor of Black Theology at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford. He is an Extraordinary Professor and Research Fellow of Theological Ethics at the University of South Africa.
Professor Jean-Joseph Lorimer Denis (1904-1957), known commonly as just Lorimer Denis, was a Haitian Indigenist ethnologist and theorist of the noirist movement. He was an associate of Haitian leader François Duvalier, with whom he founded noirism and published the Les Griots journal with from 1938 to 1940.
