DET

I’ve been meaning to post about this book for a couple months now but either the time didn’t seem right or other things got in the way. But I don’t want to delay any longer because folks need to know about this book. The author, Kate Hanch , is a friend and pastor in town (so please forgive me for using her first name rather than her surname in what follows), and I’ve benefited from pretty regular theological conversations with her for a number of years now. She always brings figures and ideas to the conversation that I haven’t encountered before, or haven’t encountered intensively enough before, and I always walk away feeling that my intellectual horizon has expanded. I can only hope she feels the same way.   This book lifts up the lives and witness of three black women preachers from 19th-century American: Zilpha Elaw, Julia Foote, and Sojourner Truth. Of these women, Truth was the only one I had even heard of before meeting Kate, and I’m glad to have had the chance to learn f

I read a lot of books in 2019. Here are my top 5. Featured Books:  -Balmer,  Evangelicalism in America -Heschel,  The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence -Hunsinger,  Karl Barth and Radical Politics, 2nd edition -Marable,  Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention -Weinberg & Bealer,  The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug ================================== Follow @WTravisMcMaken Subscribe to Die Evangelischen Theologen

I read a lot of books in 2018. Here are my top 5. The original tweet. Featured books: Taylor, From BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society Brown, Ransom of the Soul Pedersen, The Eternal Covenant ================================== Follow @WTravisMcMaken Subscribe to Die Evangelischen Theologen

I haven’t been reading as much as I used to, what with this administrative appointment, but I’m still reading and I still want to share something about what I’m reading with you all, gentle readers. However, I don’t have time to write up a proper review that could go into the “What Am I Reading?” series, so I’ve decided to write up a few shorter “Brief Book Notes.” Here’s the first one. (And yes, some of my students may have got me going with bitmojis...) James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Orbis, 2012). Sadly, my education was incredibly light on the African American experience, much less black theology, so I knew very little about Malcolm X and not much more about Martin Luther King, Jr. before I read this book. I did know, however, that James Cone (now, sadly, of blessed memory ) would steer me right, having read a number of his books previously to my great benefit. And he didn’t disappoint. In addition to simply learning a great deal

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a post giving you, gentle readers, a peek into a book that I’ve been reading. In fact, the last time I did so was back in May of 2017 ( index of book reviews here ). But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been reading: I have been. And I’ve been reading some interesting and thought-provoking stuff, including the book that I want to highlight for you today. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016). This book taught me a great deal about the black American experience, about the history of the struggle for black liberation, about the important role played by black urban rebellions of the 1960s and the successes of the Civil Rights movement, about how electoral politics has failed black America and castrated the hard-won gains of that earlier generation, about how “colorblindness” coincides with victim blaming and how it dovetails with the legitimization role played by the black elite, and

Jürgen Moltmann was an ally of liberation theology from very early, and this comes out well in his autobiography. But being an ally to liberation theology doesn’t mean that one’s own thought escapes criticism, and Moltmann reflects on various places in his autobiography concerning such criticism and when he felt it landed against him and when he felt it didn’t. He tells a story as part of this about a conference that occurred in Mexico City in 1977. The conference was billed as “Encounter of Theologies,” and it came at a time when liberation theology was taking a more militant stance against first world theology. So much for setting the stage. I’ll let Moltmann tell the story. As usual, bold is mine. Jürgen Moltmann, A Broad Place (Fortress, 2009), 229–30. By Maeterlinck (Own work) [ CC BY-SA 4.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons The conference in Mexico City had its surprising climax on the last day. The black theologian James Cone went through the rows of the liberation theologian