Wrestling with a Wounding Word: Reading the Disjointed Lines of African American Spirituality

This essay examines African American spirituality as a complex web of arguments constituted by and shaped around a struggle with Christianity. With these arguments, this essay examines the dominant way in which Afro‐American spirituality is defined, along the lines of an essential African reality. T...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Modern theology 1997-01, Vol.13 (1), p.139-170
Main Author: Jennings, Willie James
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Black culture
Black history
Spirituality
Theology
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Summary:This essay examines African American spirituality as a complex web of arguments constituted by and shaped around a struggle with Christianity. With these arguments, this essay examines the dominant way in which Afro‐American spirituality is defined, along the lines of an essential African reality. This definition is shown to be a part of the struggle against Christianity. The positing of this essentialist definition is also a form of spiritual practice which points to a deep longing for freedom from the continuing power of the colonialist’s theologically derogatory vision of the African. However the effect of this definition is to render all Christian articulation and expression of the African transparent, pointing always and only to their blackness. Thus Afro‐spirituality as it is commonly articulated re‐establishes the colonialist vision of the African as always presenting a theological alterity, an inauthentic Christian.
ISSN:0266-7177
1468-0025
DOI:10.1111/1468-0025.00035