ABSTRACT The tensions in Black African marriages due to the conflict between indigenous (traditional) African marriage norms and the influence of westernisation and its consequent culture pose challenges among couples both on the African continent and in other global (diaspora) spaces. Couples are trapped in an in-between space where they oscillate between traditional marriage expectations and Western norms. In this situation, the following emerging questions are posed: What are the root causes of the tensions in modern African marriages? What pastoral care interventions can be employed to mitigate the destructive effects of these tensions and foster marriage stability and flourishing? This article employs public pastoral intervention as a practical theological hermeneutical prism to understand marriage tensions and develop a framework to guide modern African marriages. The article discusses the causes and sources of tensions in modern African marriages and proposes a public pastoral care intervention where a “tension approach” is utilised to diffuse challenges in modern African couples to promote flourishing in marriage.

ABSTRACT This article argues that between 1945 and 1965, Black Chicago gospel music critically and theologically reflected the tensions between the prophetic theology of the Black social gospel and the civil rights movement, and the Black confrontation with the emergent “urban crisis.” This critical theology infused what I call, drawing from David Marriott's reading of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, gospel's aesthetics of wretchedness: its expression of the feeling of the pressure that the exhaustion of the supposed secular promise of the Black Great Migration to Northern U.S. cities exerted on the “motherless” and “fatherless” Black faithful to exhort other Black people to have faith in spiritual redemption. In this paper, I utilise James Baldwin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Shirley Caesar, Black Chicago gospel songs, and archival research on Black Chicago churches. Ultimately, postwar gospel's challenge to normative prophetic religion anticipated critical evocations of urban injustice in hip-hop.

ABSTRACT A significant amount of empirical evidence indicates that children experience better outcomes on multiple indicators when they are raised in two-parent families. In the United States, marriage is the most effective vehicle for creating and sustaining two-parent families. Unfortunately, the marriage rates in African American communities are startlingly low. This issue has attracted the concern and attention of scholars, policymakers, and community leaders for generations. Studies suggest that the African American church has the potential to impact marriage rates and in turn, impact life outcomes in African American communities in significant ways. I propose that promoting marriage should be a priority for African American churches, one that will positively impact African American communities today, and for generations to come.

ABSTRACT Drawing on the Yorùbá proverb Ẹnu àgbà ni òbí ìgbó – “the kola nut ripens better in the mouth of the elder” – this review article reads Anthony G. Reddie’s Living Black Theology: Decolonising Knowledge as a mature, elder-voiced contribution to Black theological thought. The proverb frames Reddie’s work as wisdom refined through experience, grounding theology in oral tradition, communal memory, and lived Black realities. The review article examines his proposal of Participative Black Theology as a decolonial challenge to Eurocentric epistemologies, emphasising everyday Black life, African-derived spiritualities, and narrative methods. It explores his critique of respectability politics and his call to move Black theology from the “Front Room” of white legitimacy into the “Back Room” of diasporan life. Finally, it tests the limits of grounding liberation in ontology through Calvin Warren’s account of Blackness as metaphysical nothingness, and gestures towards a future Black theology shaped by decolonial intimacy and creative risk.

ABSTRACT In spite of its emphasis on equality, diversity and inclusion, British Methodism has been heavily critiqued for its epistemological Whiteness. This essay probes the epistemological roots of this problem by exploring the views of the founder of the Methodist movement. There are a number of studies concerning John Wesley’s responses to slavery and indeed a good number of studies concerning Methodist efforts to end this trade in human trafficking. However, aside from Natalia Cherry’s analysis of the racism of certain abolitionists in the United States during the Antebellum period, little attention has been given to the question as to whether Wesley himself was both anti-slavery and racist. Through an examination of John Wesley’s interactions within his journals, sermons and various other writings, this paper will examine his views in order to explore whether or not he may form a part of the problem facing contemporary Methodism.

ABSTRACT This article engages with Sarojini Nadar’s recently published book, Gender, Genocide, Gaza, and the Book of Esther: Engaging Texts of Terror(ism), analysing its key contributions. The article first draws out and synthesises Nadar’s arguments across the book’s seven chapters. It then highlights what I consider the most important intervention of this text: the work that Nadar does to complexify the story of Esther from its popular reception as a singular narrative of Jewish liberation to a nuanced story of shifting power dynamics where gender and ethnic violence and erasure are sanctioned in a sacred economy of violence. The article builds on this argument to make the case for the complexifying of liberation histories, narratives and theologies more broadly as a necessary practice to ensure that movements for justice do not perpetuate the forms of oppression they seek to oppose.

ABSTRACT This essay explores the theology and hermeneutics of Black suffering through the writings of James Henry Harris and my extended dialogues with him in interviews, podcasts, and published reviews. Harris's trilogy—Black Suffering: Silent Pain, Hidden Hope, Beyond the Tyranny of the Text, and N—forms the basis of a theological vision that interprets Black suffering as both a defining wound of American history and a potential site of hidden hope. Situating Harris within debates on Critical Race Theory, hermeneutics, and African American religious experience, the essay unfolds in four movements: his claim for the historical uniqueness of Black suffering; his literary interludes that blend fiction, memoir, and theology; his hermeneutics of suspicion toward European philosophy and biblical traditions; and N as a case study in the existential stakes of racist language in canonical texts. I argue that critical naming and reinterpretation of suffering sustains a fragile but necessary hope.

ABSTRACT In this article, I apply a Black feminist theory to unmask the biblical experiences of Hagar and The Queen of Sheba, drawing parallels to the experiences of Black South African women and elucidating their roles as immortal symbols of determination. In the process, by synthesising Black feminist ideologies with biblical exposition, this article illuminates the intersections of race, gender, and power dynamic forces within their biblical experiences. Hagar exemplifies the struggles of Black women against subjugation, showcasing resilience and agency in the face of adversity. Similarly, The Queen of Sheba emerges as a symbol of sovereignty and intellect, contesting male-orientated structures and advocating for her community's interests. Conclusively, the biblical experiences of these two women serve as powerful exemplars of strength and purpose for Black South African women. Through their biblical experiences, these women transcend historical or religious figures, becoming symbols of empowerment and agency in the face of oppression.