Rap Music and Its Message

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Pinn
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
The Church

This chapter provides a methodology for exploring and understanding the connections between religion and popular culture, labeled as “nitty-gritty hermeneutics.” Nitty-gritty hermeneutics exhibits a sense of nonconformity. It ridicules interpretations and interpreters who seek to inhibit or restrict liberative movement and hard inquiries into the problems of life. The chapter then discusses nitty-gritty hermeneutics in the blues and rap music. In particular, it argues that rap music is an implicit critique of the black church, an accusation that the church has been consumed with a moralism that fails to take seriously the realities of African American suffering. Though rap has been criticized by some religious voices, it fills a spiritual void and engages in a needed dialogue about the situation of many black lives.

scholarly journals Behold, she stands at the door: Reentry, black women and the black church

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Kathryn V. Stanley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Returning Citizens ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

This paper examines the African American church’s response to the special problems of African American women who reenter the community post-incarceration. The first portion of the paper examines the impact of criminal justice policies on women of color and the attending problems of reentry which resulted. It then surveys the black church’s response to returning citizens, especially women. It concludes by proposing shifts in perspectives and theologies which create barriers to successful reintegration into the community at large, and the church in particular. The intended audience is individuals and faith communities who seek to work effectively with returning women.

scholarly journals Black Protestants in a Catholic Land

2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 258-288
Author(s):  
Christina Cecelia Davidson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Black Church ◽  
African Methodist Episcopal ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Indians ◽  
Methodist Episcopal ◽  
American Immigrant ◽  
The Church

The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, a black Church founded in the United States in 1816, was first established in eastern Haiti when over 6,000 black freemen emigrated from the United States to Hispaniola between 1824 and 1825. Almost a century later, the AME Church grew rapidly in the Dominican Republic as West Indians migrated to the Dominican southeast to work on sugar plantations. This article examines the links between African-American immigrant descendants, West Indians, and U.S.-based AME leaders between the years 1899–1916. In focusing on Afro-diasporic exchange in the Church and the hardships missionary leaders faced on the island, the article reveals the unequal power relations in the AME Church, demonstrates the significance of the southeast to Dominican AME history, and brings the Dominican Republic into larger discussions of Afro-diasporic exchange in the circum-Caribbean.

Call Your "Mutha"

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Caputi
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Mother Nature ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Mother Earth ◽  
Made In

The proposed new geological era, The Anthropocene (a.k.a. Age of Humans, Age of Man), marking human domination of the planet long called Mother Earth, is truly The Age of the Motherfucker. The ecocide of the Anthropocene is the responsibility of Man, the Western- and masculine-identified corporate, military, intellectual, and political class that masks itself as the exemplar of the civilized and the human. The word motherfucker was invented by the enslaved children of White slave masters to name their mothers’ rapist/owners. Man’s strategic motherfucking, from the personal to the planetary, is invasion, exploitation, spirit-breaking, extraction and toxic wasting of individuals, communities, and lands, for reasons of pleasure, plunder, and profit. Ecocide is attempted deicide of Mother Nature-Earth, reflecting Man’s goal to become the god he first made in his own image. The motivational word Motherfucker has a flip side, further revealing the Anthropocene as it signifies an outstanding, formidable, and inexorable force. Mother Nature-Earth is that “Mutha’ ”—one defying translation into heteropatriarchal classifications of gender, one capable of overwhelming Man, and not the other way around. Drawing upon Indigenous and African American scholarship; ecofeminism; ecowomanism; green activism; femme, queer, and gender non-binary philosophies; literature and arts; Afrofuturism; and popular culture, Call Your “Mutha’ ” contends that the Anthropocene is not evidence of Man’s supremacy over nature, but that Mother Nature-Earth, faced with disrespect, is going away. It is imperative now to call the “Mutha’ ” by decolonizing land, bodies, and minds, ending rapism, feeding the green, renewing sustaining patterns, and affirming devotion to Mother Nature-Earth.

African American Religions in the Nineteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Suzanne Clark
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Black Church ◽  
African Methodist Episcopal ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Methodist Episcopal ◽  
African American Religion ◽  
African Methodist Episcopal Church ◽  
Methodist Episcopal Church

The typical story of African American religions narrates the development and power of the Protestant black church, but shifting the focus to the long nineteenth century can reorient the significance of the story. The nineteenth century saw the boom of Christian conversions among African Americans, but it also was a century of religious diversity. All forms of African American religion frequently pushed against the dominance of whiteness. This included the harming and cursing element of Conjure and southern hoodoo, the casting of slaves as Old Israel awaiting their exodus from bondage, the communications between the spirit of Abraham Lincoln and Afro-Creoles in New Orleans, and the push for autonomy and leadership by Richard Allen and the rest of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. While many studies of African American religions in the nineteenth century overwhelmingly focus on Protestantism, this is only part of the story.

A theology of gratitude for rising generations

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-359
Author(s):  
Stephanie Townes
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Practical Theological ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

Rising generations (Millennials and Gen Z) already have a solid understanding of gratitude from gratitude’s pervasiveness in popular culture, and because of this, gratitude is an opportunity for the Church to reach rising generations where they already are. To do this, the Church should underscore a theological why of gratitude and a practical theological how of gratitude. The theological why of gratitude is based on Kathryn Tanner’s gift-giving nature of God, from her book Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity. The practical theological how of gratitude will rise up from our holy habits of gratitude, both personal and collective, reinforced by the Eucharist, and taught through discipleship and practices of stewardship.

“I Don’t Know and I Don’t Want to Know”: A Qualitative Examination of Older African American Women’s Knowledge and Experiences With HIV

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (7) ◽  
pp. 644-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faye Z. Belgrave ◽  
Sarah J. Javier ◽  
Deborah Butler ◽  
Chelsie Dunn ◽  
Joann Richardson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Black Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sociocultural Factors ◽  
Hiv Knowledge ◽  
Female Population ◽  
American Women ◽  
Heterosexual Women ◽  
Older African American Women

While older African American women (e.g., aged 50 years and older) comprise only 11% of the female population in the United States, they account for 50% of HIV diagnoses among women in this age group. Unique sociocultural factors, including a lack of HIV knowledge and stigma, contribute to HIV risk among older African American women. The goal of this qualitative study was to obtain a nuanced perspective from older African American women about HIV knowledge and experiences with HIV using the framework of intersectionality theory. Focus groups were conducted with 35 African American women who were 50 years and older, nonpartnered, and heterosexual. Women were asked what they knew about HIV and if they thought older women were at risk for HIV. A thematic analysis using NVivo 11 yielded two central themes and three subthemes: HIV knowledge, including experiential knowledge, superficial knowledge, and no knowledge, and stigma around HIV in the Black church. Implications for developing HIV prevention programs and testing messages are discussed.

scholarly journals Tragic Narratives in Popular Culture: Depictions of Homicide in Rap Music

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 611-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwen Hunnicutt ◽  
Kristy Humble Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Rap Music

scholarly journals The Relevance of the Social Control Theory in Explaining Crime among African American Families

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Ayodeji Daramola ◽  
Gbolahan S Osho
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Control Theory ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Justice System ◽  
African American Families ◽  
Social Control Theory ◽  
The Church

Today, criminologists, especially, Black criminologists, are thoroughly perplexed by the same problem of disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) most especially of Blacks in both the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Are African Americans more criminally minded than other races or ethnic groups? Do African Americans actually commit more crimes than others? These are the questions that the different deviant theories have tried to answer. The concept of social bonding arose from social control theory, which suggests that attachment to family and school, commitment to conventional pathways of achievements and beliefs in the legitimacy of social order are primary and important elements of establishing a social bond (Hirschi, 1969). In expounding his social control theory, Hirschi listed the elements of the bond as attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. Does it mean that African Americans commit more crimes than other racial and ethnic groups? Or are African Americans genetically wired to be criminogenic? Is the society or the environment to blame for the perceived higher rate of crime among African Americans? Or are the criminal justice system, the judicial system, and the juvenile justice system, all together racially biased against Blacks, especially, Black males? Even though Hirschi (1969) did not mention attachment to religious beliefs as part of social control, but for the African American families, the church could play a significant role in helping to cement the bond of adolescents to their families. Any study of the African American family is not complete without the church. According to Work (1900), in all social study of the Negro, the church must be considered, for it is one of the greatest factors in his social life.

scholarly journals Resensi Buku: Liquid Ecclesiology—The Gospel and The Church

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Haleluya Timbo Hutabarat
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Young People ◽  
Church Building ◽  
Interesting Discussion ◽  
The Church ◽  
Spiritual Attitude ◽  
Gospel Narratives

Abstrak Latar belakang masalah buku ini adalah fenomena gereja yang kaku. Menggunakan metode etnography, buku ini merupakan sebuah bahan diskusi yang menarik tentang gereja, anak muda dan budayanya. Penulis menghubungkan budaya (populer), anak muda, dengan narasi Injil untuk menghasilkan apa itu gereja. Ia menawarkan eklesiologi gereja yang lebih cair, adaptif dan responsif terhadap akar-akar budaya sehari-hari yang dihidupi. Bagian-bagian setelahnya berisi diskusi tentang bentuk-bentuk praktis yang sangat memungkinkan dari konsep gereja yang cair. Akhirnya, anjuran sikap mental dan spiritual agar sebuah gereja tetap cair dan freshbagi komunitas di dalam dan di sekitarnya adalah keterbukaan. Buku memperkaya diskusi di ranah eklesiologi, liturgi, pembangunan jemaat, pastoral, budaya populer, dan intergenerasional.   Abstract Rationale background of this book is the solid phenomenon of church. Using ethnography methods, this book is an interesting discussion about the church, young people and its culture. The author associate (popular) culture, young people, with gospel narratives to produce what the church is. He offers a more fluid, adaptive and responsive ecclesiology as the roots of everyday culture of church that is lived. This study also recommends the very practical forms of a liquid church. The final suggestion as a mental and spiritual attitude so that church remains liquid and fresh, is openness. This book shares a rich discourse in the field of ecclesiology, liturgy, church building, pastoral, popular culture, and intergenerational culture.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document