Telling the Truth and Shaming the Devil: Using Caribbean Proverbial Wisdom for Raising the Critical Consciousness of African Caribbean People in Postcolonial Britain

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This article outlines a creative, innovative and interdisciplinary approach to conscientizing ordinary Black people on the margins of British society. This approach is one I have termed “participative” Black theology. It seeks to move beyond largely theorizing to that which enables ordinary people to be active in a more praxis-based approach to building theological discourse from the bottom up. This particular, participative approach to Black theology is one in which I engage with Jamaican proverbs, as a means of utilizing African Caribbean folk wisdom in order to create a practical resource for raising the critical consciousness of ordinary Black people. This practical schema for engaging with Caribbean proverbial wisdom is used as a means of engaging critically with the Bible, in order to develop a reading strategy that will lend itself to more subversive and improvisatory approaches to understanding Black life in Britain.