The Black Church Studies Reader: An Introduction

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, Black Church Studies, both as an academic discipline and programmatic thrust and as a congregational and communal commitment, is at an important crossroads. Numerous media headlines underscored in the nation’s most recent presidential campaign and the two-time election of President Barack Obama that the “Black Church” is the fault line between many progressives and conservatives, women and men, the young and the old, the haves and the have-nots, wherever communities of African descent are to be found. A cursory survey of Black church scholarship in the United States discloses substantive resources in African American church history and Black and womanist theology for African American faith communities, for which we can be grateful. However, such an “endarkened” epistemological stance is far from pervasive among theological scholars and schools, and stands alongside our considerable naivete about Africanized Christianity beyond (and African and Caribbean immigrant churches within) the borders of the United States.1