African American Studies Commons^™

"Because God Said So": A Thematic Analysis Of Why People Denounce Black Greek-Letter Organizations, Mea Ashley

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Today, Black Greek-letter organizations (BGLOs) struggle to use empirical data to address financial burden, elitism, hazing, relevance in social justice issues, and the anti-BGLO movement. The anti-BGLO movement frames this study. The movement stems from beliefs that secret societies, fraternities, and sororities are anti-Christian. Society will continue to question the relevance and importance of BGLOs if they cannot overcome the issues plaguing them. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to ascertain why members are leaving BGLOs, in case the organizations find the anti-BGLO movement to be a threat to organizational vitality. Through thematic analysis, 18 YouTube testimonials from denouncers …

George Phillip Holt, Sr. Papers, 1971-1972, G. P. Holt

Center for Restoration Studies Archives, Manuscripts and Personal Papers Finding Aids

Finding aid for the George Phillip Holt, Sr. Papers, 1971-1972.

Interview Of Margaret Mcguinness, Ph.D., Margaret Mcguinness Ph.D., Stephen Pierce

All Oral Histories

Dr. Margaret McGuinness was born in 1953, in Providence, Rhode Island. She went to an all-girls Catholic high school called St. Mary’s Academy Bayview in Providence where she graduated in 1971. McGuinness went on to major in American Studies and Civilization as an undergraduate at Boston University graduating with a B.A in 1975. She continued her work at Boston University where McGuinness earned a master’s of theological studies (M.T.S) focusing on Biblical and Historical Studies in 1979. She would move to New York to work on her dissertation at Union Theological Seminary finishing with her Ph.D. in 1985 concentrating on …

How Long Shall We Tarry? A Reception History Of Tarrying For The Baptism In The Spirit In Early Pentecostal Testimonies, Daniel D. Isgrigg

College of Science and Engineering Faculty Research and Scholarship

This paper, presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, will investigate the methodology of tarrying for the baptism in the Holy Spirit as expressed in the testimonies recorded throughout the thirteen existing issues of the Apostolic Faith (1906-1908) of the Azusa Street Mission. In order to extract the “ordinary theology” expressed by this diverse cross-section of early Pentecostals, this study will engage in a history of reception of how Pentecostals received Jesus’ command to “tarry” and how that reception shaped the expectation of the early Pentecostals experience of receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

Background Of King's Preaching Theology (Chapter One Of King's Speech: Preaching Reconciliation In A World Of Violence And Chasm), Sunggu Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "From birth, King was surrounded and influenced by the black faith community. Both his maternal grandfather and his father were successful African-American Baptist preachers in Atlanta, Georgia. Put simply, "King was a product of the black church in America:" How exactly, then, did the black Baptist church-or the black church in general-influence King's reconciliatory preaching theology? There are at least three significant elements of the black church tradition that influenced King: the freedom tradition, open-ended Christian practices, and the particular interpretative tools of allegory and typology."

Toward A Theology Of Transformation, Hannah Kathleen Griggs

Eddie Mabry Diversity Award

Black liberation theologians come to terms with white supremacy by collectively remembering the story of the Exodus and Jesus' crucifixion--affirming God's preference for freedom and in-the-world salvation. The particular history of white American Christianity requires a different story to provide the foundation for our social memory. As white American Christians, we have certain blind spots—blind spots created by historical and social privileges that have given white people unequal access to power and resources. The story of Zacchaeus has the potential to help reframe white Christianity’s conception of race relations in the United States, shifting from a reconciliation paradigm to a …

The Bible Against American Slavery: Anglophone Transatlantic Evangelical Abolitionists' Use Of Biblical Arguments, 1776-1865, Richard Rodriguez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that transatlantic abolitionists used the Bible to condemn American slavery as a national sin that would be punished by God. In a chronological series of thematic chapters, it demonstrates how abolitionists developed a sustained critique of American slavery at its various developing stages from the American Revolution to the Civil War. In its analysis of abolitionist anti-slavery arguments, “The Bible Against Slavery” focuses on sources that abolitionists generated. In their books, sermons, and addresses they arraigned the oppressive aspects of American slavery. This study shows how American and British abolitionists applied biblical precepts to define the maltreatment …

An Other-Typological Illustration Of The Exodus Story According To Dr. King’S Perception Of Universal Reconciliation In His Sermon On Exodus 14:30, Sunggu Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

The article contends that Dr King makes an other-typological illustrative use of the Exodus story in his preaching – one of the most significant biblical narratives that the Black church in the US holds dear. This peculiar use of the Exodus story differentiates itself from the conventional typological understanding and use of the same story in the Black church’s history. While in the latter the Exodus story has a symbolic meaning of the irreconcilable conflict between the oppressed and the oppressing reality, in the former the same story contains a spiritual lesson that what is really hoped for in the …

Racial Integration In One Cumberland Presbyterian Congregation: Intentionality And Reflection In Small Group, Carolyn Smith Goings

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Negative attitudes toward racial minorities and consequent maltreatment of non-Whites continue to be a crisis in America. The crisis of racism is still realized in phenomena such as residential segregation (Bonilla-Silva, 2014), health disparities (Chae, Nuru-Jeter, & Adler, 2012; Chae, Nuru-Jeter, Francis, & Lincoln, 2011), and in the not-so-uncommon unjust arrests and imprisonment of persons of color (Alexander, 2012). Improvement in race relations through the development of meaningful cross racial relationships in racially integrated settings is one avenue that may lead to reduction of racism (E. Anderson, 2010; Fischer, 2011; Massey & Denton, 1993). Christian congregations are common settings in …

The Bible As Read By African Americans, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

African Americans engagements with the Bible suggest much not only about who the people of the Bible are, how they sound and think, and what they mean and communicate but also about how Scripture functions in society and culture. African Americans use of the Bible as Scripture is varied and wide-ranging and has a storied history. These engagements should be understood as reflections of a people's long and continuing efforts to define and empower themselves. They are at once "readings" of the people of the worlds with which they were forced to negotiate. These engagements reflect the people's consistent aspiration …

Book Review: "Yet With A Steady Beat: Contemporary U.S. Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation" By Randall C. Bailey, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Written at different times for different purposes and occasions, by African American scholars who are differently oriented and differently situated, eight essays have been collected and edited by biblical scholar Randall C. Bailey with a particular focus and purpose in mind. Such focus and purpose are not elaborated upon in the editor's slim introduction. Aside from the issue of the quality of the essays - of uneven quality, as is the case, as everyone knows, with almost all collected essays - what is at stake in this volume, and all volumes that are collections of essays by different authors, is …

Book Review: Ed. Musa W. Dube, Other Ways Of Reading: African Women And The Bible, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

I take great delight in having the opportunity to review this collection ofthirteen essays having to do with contemporary African women and their engagements of the Bible. Ably edited and introduced by Musa W. Dube, Senior Lecturer in the New Testament in the Department ofTheology and Religious Studies at the University ofBotswana, the essays have been long awaited. They fill a tremendous need--among and beyond the women of Africa. They inform and challenge and inspire communities far beyond the circle ofthe discussants in the book. They make a dramatic statement about the powerful voices and sentiments and creative impulses of …

Contemptus Mundi Means "...Bound For The Promised Land...": Religion From The Site Of Cultural Marronage, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

The basic assumption behind this project is that all humanistic inquiries more or less explicitly involve self-discovery. I have chosen to try to be more rather than less explicit. I have realized for some time now that I am both a problem and a promise for the primary field in which I was academically socialized: biblical (New Testament) studies as defined and practiced by the guilds of biblical scholars in North America. I have provided enough evidence that I can “play the game” that the guilds require in terms of publications, research projects, and general scholarly orientation. And as such …

Past As Present, Present As Past: Freedom To Read The Self And The World, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Historical inquiry of the sort that seeks, in its different but necessarily naive ways, merely to "establish the facts," or merely to "defend the race," or "my people," or "my religion/denomination," or "our position," simply to accuse the other as source of current problems, needs to be identified for what it is and renounced. Such "history" is problematic, not so much because it has no insights or tells no truths, but because it cannot generally even adequately, or critically, problematize the "facts" and "truths" it discovers and engages. Put another way, this type of history seems unable to address the …

African Americans And The Bible, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Rationale for a History of "Readings": The history of the engagement of the Bible among African Americans is dramatic and complex and has important implications for biblical interpretation. It provides the student of the Bible not only a conceptual window onto a dramatic and complex history of self-definitions and worldviews among those in the modern world who now call themselves African Americans, but also the opportunity to rethink the basic hermeneutical assumptions about biblical interpretation, especially its focus upon the ancient text and/or ancient historical situation as the starting and end point of interpretation. The critical juxtaposition of the Bible …

Samuel, Patrick And Cato: A History Of The Dallas Fire Of 1860 And Its Tragic Aftermath, William R. Farmer (1921-2000)

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

In this unpublished work, William R. Farmer (1921-2000), former associate professor of New Testament at Perkins School of Theology, recounts the story of the Dallas Fire of 1860 and the events that followed: the hanging of three innocent African American men and the whipping of many local slaves. Farmer’s work explores the causes of these acts of racial terrorism by presenting and discussing numerous primary resources. Accompanying the book manuscript is a related work: “A Reader for the Study of the Dallas Fire of 1860.” Both documents were created in the late 1990s.

Book Review: Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations In Black America, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Reading Texts As Reading Ourselves: A Chapter In The History Of African American Biblical Interpretation, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Literature, especially religious literature, ideally aims to trigger degrees of empathy in readers who share a particular universe of meaning, with the goal of entertaining, provoking, challenging, and persuading. The literary text that has achieved something of the status of a "classic" is one that has consistently--that is, "beyond its time...beyond its space"--proved to be engaging and empathetic, consistently challenging and inspiring the spirit, provoking thoughts and arresting the imagination of those generally sharing a universe of meaning, or culture. But such texts, precisely because of their empathy-producing qualities, should also inspire among readers again and again over time a …

The Bible And African-American Culture, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

The history of the influence, uses, and functions of the Bible among African Americans is dramatic and complex, and reflects the different, sometimes conflicting, sociopolitical and religious self-understandings, orientations, and aspirations of a dominant segment, if not the great majority, of African Americans.

African American Traditions And The Bible, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Introduction: Reading the Bible = Reading the Self and the World. African Americans' engagement of the Bible is complex and dynamic. It is a fascinating historical drama, beginning with the Africans' involuntary arrival in the New World. But as sign of the creativity and adaptability of the Africans and of the evocative power of the Bible, the drama continues to the present day, notwithstanding the complexity and controversies of intervening periods. Thus, there is in African Americans' engagement of the Bible potential not only for an interpretive history of their readings as a history of their collective self understandings, visions, …

African Americans And The Bible: Outline Of An Interpretive History, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Since every reading of important texts, especially mythic or religious texts, reflects a "reading" or assessment of one's world, and since the Bible has from the founding of the nation served as an icon, a history of African Americans' historical readings of the Bible is likely to reflect their historical self-understandings—as Africans in America.

Biblical-Historical Study As Liberation: Toward An Afro-Christian Hermeneutic, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

In the sense that they have always sought to know and articulate "the biblical position" on all matters pertaining to existence, including liberation for their people, all African American leaders--predominantly, though not exclusively, Christian--have been biblical theologians. But very few of these leaders have had as their major concern the academic study of the Bible apart from preparation for, and acceptance of, the presuppositions of confessional vocations. The paucity of African American biblical scholars only confirms the point.

Historical/Cultural Criticism As Liberation : A Proposal For An African American Biblical Hermenutic, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Historical and cultural criticism can serve to aid minority, culturalist readings of the Bible to stand with integrity against alien imperialistic readings. Historical criticism is necessary in order to gain perspective on the historically determined nature of all religious constructs, including those in biblical texts. Cross-cultural analysis is necessary in order to interpret the symbols and referents of biblical cultures and contemporary dominant cultures, so as to determine which symbols and referents from any culture are relevant and affirming.

Ua77/1 Western Alumnus, Vol. 45, No. 1, Wku Alumni Relations

WKU Archives Records

WKU alumni magazine. Features the following articles:

• Relevance - Western Environmental Programs
• The Environmental Sciences & Technology Building
• Snodgrass, Jim. Environmental Education
• Hurst, Teri. Carpooling - The Energy Saver
• Henderson, Ray. A Piece of the Rock - Football
• Mud, Rice and Camellias
• Conlin, Bill. Hilltoppers Classy Club - Football
• Feix, Jimmy. Western Pays Its Tribute to This Dear & Gentle Man - Nick Denes
• Bruce, Don. Teacher of the Year - Paula Morgan
• Ward, Robert. Letters from Ireland
• Conway, Sheila. A Dream Come True - Randy Yeager
• Remember When? - Faculty Photograph
• Governor Julian Carroll Honors Dr. L.Y. Lancaster for …

Chapel Transcript: February 22, 1974 - "Blackness And Christianity" Bishop G.O. Patterson, Holy Spirit Research Center, Oral Roberts University

Chapel AV & Transcripts

This is a transcript of a chapel service from February 22, 1974 on the campus of Oral Roberts University. The guest speaker is Bishop G.O. Patterson of the Churches of God Christ, the largest Pentecostal denomination in North America. Also in attendance is Bishop Charles E. Blake, presiding bishop of California. Oral Roberts invited Bishop Patterson in honor of "Negro History Week".

Bishop Patterson's topic was "blackness and Christianity." He discusses the idea that Christianity is not a "white man's religion" as some in his day were saying. He traces the historic roots of Christianity into Africa, through Church history …

Ua3/1/3 Scrapbook, Wku President's Office - Cherry

WKU Archives Records

Scrapbook created by Southern Normal School president Henry Cherry regarding anti-cigarette league, manufacturing in the South and education.

• A Beautiful Thought, p. 63
• A Divided Heart, Hosea 10:2, p. 63
• A Fickle Life, p. 42
• Anti-Cigarette League, p. 49
• As a Beacon Light – Vitae-ore, p. 89
• Awarding Business College Diplomas, p. 47
• Awarding November College Diplomas, p. 37
• Be Ready Pa, p. 2
• Bogus Advertising, p. 60
• Brilliant Sayings of Robert Ingersoll, p. 71
• Capital Turning to the South, p. 85
• Carnegie, Andrew, p. 65
• Charge to the Pastor, p. 64
• Cherry, Henry. The Balancing Pole, p. 253
• Cigarette …

Ua3/1/4 Speeches & Ideas Book, Henry Cherry

WKU Archives Records

Notebook created by Henry Cherry entitled Talks Made at Morning Exercises. It contains handwritten speeches, clippings of sermons, poetry, cartoons and illustrations. Many pages were blank, those pages were not digitized. Page numbers match pdf file.

• A Dream Dreamed Over 37
• A Proposition from Epictetus 58
• A Railroad Man’s Prayer 2
• A Scientific Demonstration 54
• A Valuable Reminder, Ram’s Horn, nd 90
• A Vision, np, nd 37
• A Wasted Life 55
• An Important Question, Ram’s Horn, nd 86
• Bab’s Liberal Sermon – Worship in Church & In Green Fields Compared, np, 7/30/1896 7
• Baptist & Reflector, Vol. X, No. 9, …