scholarly journals Reimagining Religious Education for Young, Black, Christian Women: Womanist Resistance in the Form of Hip-Hop

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 409
Author(s):  
Tamara Henry
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
Church Education ◽  
Religious Educators ◽  
Young Black Women

How might the black church and womanist scholarship begin to re-imagine religious education in ways that attends more deliberately to the unique concerns and interests of younger black, Christian women? Throughout the history of the black church, despite being marginalized or silenced within their varied denominations, black women have been key components for providing the religious education within their churches. However, today, in many church communities, we are seeing a new, emerging trend whereby young, black, Christian women are opting out of traditional approaches to religious education. They view contemporary church education as insufficient to address their contrasting range of real-life difficulties and obstacles. Instead, these young women have been turning to the work of contemporary black female hip-hop artists as a resource for religious and theological reflection. Drawing from focus groups conducted with young black female seminarians and explored through the lens of womanist theory, I argue this trend is forming a new, legitimate type of religious education where the work of artists such as Beyoncé and Solange are framing an unrecognized womanist, spirituality of resistance for young black women. Both religious educators and womanist scholars need to pay attention to this overlooked, emerging trend. Respectively, I suggest religious education and womanist scholarship would benefit by considering new resources for religious, theological, and pedagogical reflection, one that is emerging out of young black women’s engagement with the art and music of specific black female artists within hip-hop.

Choosing Life with Youth

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Almeda M. Wright
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Young People ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Youth Workers ◽  
Religious Educators ◽  
Prophetic Vision

Death, violence, oppression, and racism have become part of the narratives of all young African Americans. Parents and youth workers are challenged in navigating these realities alongside youth. This chapter asks, What type of vision calls young people out of the cycles of death and violence and into esteemed roles in co-creating lives of abundance? What might a practice of choosing life look like for young people? Considering the theological insights, public ministry, and prophetic vision of one young person, this chapter leads the reader through one example of listening and discernment with youth, highlighting the theological insights and practical strategies that emerge. The chapter then moves to outline the work of key religious educators and religious critics, and contemporary resources and limitations of religious education in the Black church. Finally, this chapter suggests goals, methods, and strategies of critical pedagogy for integrating spirituality and abundant life with Black youth.

scholarly journals We Are Our Sister’s Keeper: The Experience of Black Female Clergy Responding to Intimate Partner Violence

2020 ◽  
pp. 088626052091857
Author(s):  
Ashley R. Shaw ◽  
Maithe Enriquez ◽  
Tina Bloom ◽  
Jannette Berkley-Patton ◽  
Eric D. Vidoni
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
White Women ◽  
Intimate Partner ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Female Clergy

Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects all populations, regardless of race, education, or socioeconomic status, but Black women experience higher rates of IPV (43.7%) in comparison with White women (34.6%). Although evidence indicates that faith-based organizations and clergy play key roles in preventing and responding to IPV among Black women, limited research has been conducted in this area, and existing studies have focused on Black male clergy leaders’ response to IPV. Using transcendental phenomenology, we interviewed 12 Black female clergy regarding their role as responders to IPV among Black women in their congregation. Each clergy leader participated in a face-to-face interview. Data analysis followed the modified Van Kaam seven-step process. One overarching theme emerged— We Are Our Sister’s Keeper, as well as three primary themes: Support Advocate, Spiritual Advisor, and Roadblocked Leader. The themes indicated that Black female clergy respond to the emotional and spiritual needs of Black women despite barriers (e.g., few outside resources, limited support from the Black church). The themes also suggested that clergy lack knowledge and training for responding to IPV. However, Black female clergy are passionate about providing holistic, culturally centered care by bridging the gap between the church and the community to better serve Black women who have experienced IPV. Findings support the importance of incorporating spiritual and emotional healing among this population when providing care and services. Further research is needed to develop interventions, such as a faith-based toolkit that incorporates community resources and guidance to better support Black female clergy leaders’ ability to respond to IPV.

scholarly journals We are our sisters keeper : the experience of black female clergy responding to intimate partner violence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ashley R. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
White Women ◽  
Phenomenological Study ◽  
Intimate Partner ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Female Clergy

Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects all populations, regardless of race, education, or socioeconomic status, Black women are disproportionately affected (43.7 percent) compared to White women (34.6 percent). Although evidence indicates that faithbased organizations and clergy play key roles in preventing and responding to IPV among Black women, limited research has been conducted in this area, and most studies have focused on Black male clergy. Therefore, this transcendental phenomenological study explored the experiences and beliefs Black female clergy in various leadership positions and denominations (N=12) have regarding their role as responders to IPV among Black women. The study addressed two research questions: 1) "How do Black female church leaders perceive and describe their experience when responding to IPV against their Black female congregants? and 2) "What beliefs about IPV do Black female church leaders hold?" Each clergy leader participated in a face-to-face interview and afterward completed a demographic questionnaire. Data analysis followed the modified van. Kaam 7-step process. One overarching theme emerged, We Are Our Sister's Keeper, as well as three subthemes, Support Advocate, Spiritual Advisor, and Roadblocked Leader. The themes indicate that Black female clergy respond to the emotional and spiritual needs of Black women despite barriers from outside resources and limited support from the Black church. The themes also suggest that clergy lack knowledge and training for responding to IPV but that they are passionate about providing holistic, culturally centered care by bridging the gap between the church and the community to better serve Black women who have experienced IPV. Community-based interventions are needed to address barriers and disparities in access to services for women experiencing IPV. Findings suggest the importance of incorporating spiritual and emotional healing among this population when providing care and services. Research is needed to develop interventions, such as a faith-based toolkit, that enhance clergy leaders' ability to respond to IPV.

City Girls, hot girls and the re-imagining of Black women in hip hop and digital spaces

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyesha Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Gender Performance ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
Digital Spaces

Through a hip hop feminist lens, how are we to interpret black girls’ and women’s self-identification in digital spaces that visibly resonate with new/remixed images? And more importantly, what happens when black female rap artists and their fan base disrupt, subvert or challenge dominant gender scripts in hip hop in order to navigate broader discourses on black female sexuality? Drawing on the work of Joan Morgan and hip hop feminist scholarship in general, this essay aims to offer a critical reading of ‘hot girl summer’. Inspired by Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s lyrics on ‘Cash Shit’, where she raps about ‘real hot girl shit’, the phrase has morphed into a larger-than-life persona not only for Megan’s rap superstar profile, but also for a number of black girls. According to Megan, a hot girl summer is ‘about women and men being unapologetically them[selves] […] having a good-ass time, hyping up their friends, doing [them]’. What does ‘hot girl summer’ tell us about significant changes in the ways that black women cultivate community in digital spaces, how they construct their identities within systems of controlling images and grapple with respectability politics? In order to address these questions with a critical lens, using an interdisciplinary approach grounded in black feminism and hip hop feminism, this essay offers a theoretical approach to a digital hip hop feminist sensibility (DHHFS). Too little has been said about black women’s representation in digital spaces where they imagine alternative gender performance, disrupt hegemonic tropes and engage in participatory culture.

Voicing "Phono-Indexicals": On the Politics of Vocalic Variation in Metasemiosis

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2-3) ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Chris Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Radio Station ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Public Radio ◽  
Constructed Dialogue ◽  
Sociophonetic Variation ◽  
Phonetic Features ◽  
Young Black Women

Research on reflexivity in communication has shown that speakers leverage a range of semiotic strategies to segment and characterize linguistic variability. My work explores how entextualization and intertextuality play key roles in dialogically managing interpretations of sociophonetic variability (cf. Schilling-Estes 1998). I examine how speakers “voice” and comment on vocalic variation by employing interrelated modes of metapragmatic typification, including eye-dialect spelling, (explicit) metapragmatic discourse, constructed dialogue (Tannen 1989), and parodic double-voicing (Bakhtin 1981; Sclafani 2009). These strategies prove indispensable to the metapragmatic framing of phono-indexicals because most phonetic features in speech become objects of metasemiotic activity by virtue of their realization in specific words and salient texts, which in turn serve as sign vehicles for vocalic variables and other “semiotic hitchhikers” (Mendoza-Denton 2011). Accordingly, our capacity to reflexively model the pragmatics of sociophonotic variables derives in large part from our ability to segment and evaluate the more metalinguistically-available structures in which these phono-indexicals occur. The case of /aw/ monophthongization in the speech of many young black women and men in Houston, Texas supports this position. Drawing on five years of ethnographic research at a public radio station in Houston, I consider how this pronunciation feature becomes tethered indexically to contested formulations of authenticity and indigineity by virtue of its occurrence in a locally-salient idiom, COMIN’ DINE ([kʌmn dãːn] “coming down”). This idiom has become an enregistered emblem of a street-savvy “gangsta” persona in the popular music of Houston-based hip hop cultures. In this music, recontextualized across globally-circulating media, the expression of COMIN’ DINE puts sociophonetic variation on display, rendering it available for metasemiotic negotiation through “Bakhtinian voicing” (Jaffe 2009).

A Survey of Christian Religious Education in the United States

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jerald F. Dirks
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Youth Groups ◽  
Religious Educators ◽  
Contemporary Status ◽  
Children's Sermons ◽  
Private Christian Schools

Prior to the landmark Supreme Court decision of June 1963, which banned public prayer from the public schools, Christian religious education was often a routine part of the overt instruction provided by the American public school system. However, in the wake of that legal milestone, even though instruction in the Judeo-Christian interpretation of religious history continued to be taught covertly, American churches began relying more heavily on providing Christian religious education. This article briefly presents Christianity’s contemporary status in the United States and reviews such religious education methods as Sunday school, vacation Bible school, Christian youth groups, catechism, private Christian schools, Youth Sunday, and children’s sermons. The survey concludes with a look at the growing interface between such education and the lessons of psychology as well as training and certifying Christian religious educators.

scholarly journals POS0173 METABOLOMIC PROFILING AND SYMPTOM BURDEN IN BLACK WOMEN WITH SYSTEMIC LUPUS ERYTHEMATOSUS

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. 299-300
Author(s):  
L. P. Kimble ◽  
A. Khosroshahi ◽  
R. C. Eldridge ◽  
G. S. Brewster ◽  
N. S. Carlson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Lupus Erythematosus ◽  
Energy Production ◽  
Symptom Burden ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Multiple Chronic Conditions ◽  
Systemic Lupus ◽  
Metabolomics Data ◽  
Metabolomics Analysis

Background:Black individuals with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), who are predominantly women, have disproportionately poorer health outcomes across the trajectory of their disease including increased mortality, higher symptom burden, and poor quality of life than non-Hispanic Whites. The heterogeneity of immunopathology and biochemical complexity of SLE create major knowledge gaps around the mechanisms of disease and differences in SLE symptom expression. Metabolomics may reveal biochemical dysregulation that underlies SLE symptoms and provide novel metabolic targets for precision symptom interventions.Objectives:We conducted untargeted metabolomic plasma profiling of Black females with SLE and Black female non-SLE controls to gain insight into metabolic disturbances associated with SLE.Methods:We analyzed blood specimens collected from 23 Black female patients with diagnosis of SLE during a routine outpatient rheumatology visit and from 21 Black female non-SLE controls whose data were collected as part of another study of obese caregivers. Data collection for both cases and controls was completed with harmonized protocols. Clinical data for cases were obtained via chart review and both cases and controls completed identical, reliable and valid measures of fatigue, depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbance. A commercial metabolomics analysis company within the US conducted untargeted metabolomics on the 44 plasma samples using ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry along with metabolite identification and quantification to examine differences between SLE/non-SLE groups.Results:All SLE subjects met 2019 EULAR/ACR criteria (Aringer et al., 2019). SLE subjects were significantly (p < .05) younger (42.5 ± 12.2 vs. 63.2 ± 6.4), had a lower BMI (30.3 ± 9.4 vs. 34.9 ± 4.1), and greater co-morbidities (2.3 ± 1.3 vs. 1.1 ± 1.3) than non-SLE controls. SLE subjects reported higher symptoms than controls across all measures, but differences were not statistically significant. Metabolomics analysis revealed 290 biochemicals that were statistically significant (p ≤ .05) between SLE and non-SLE groups. Random Forest analysis had a predictive accuracy of 91% in differing between the two groups using out-of-bag sampling. Significant metabolic differences between groups were noted in biochemicals associated with glycolysis, the TCA cycle (see Table 1), fatty acid metabolism, branched chain amino acids, sterol levels, heme catabolism, and potential markers of renal impairment. Overall, the differences would suggest reduced energy production among SLE patients compared to controls.Conclusion:Black women with SLE had biochemical profiles consistent with reduced energy production which has implications for the high burden of fatigue and other symptoms in this population. Future work with larger sample sizes should involve integrating symptom and metabolomics data to identify potential biomarkers of symptom burden.References:Aringer, M., Costenbader, K., Daikh, D. et al. (2019). 2019 European League Against Rheumatism/American College of Rheumatology classification criteria for systemic lupus erythematosus. Ann Rheum Dis, 78,1151-1159.Acknowledgements:This work was supported by a research re-entry supplement to L. Kimble under the parent award 1P30NR018090-02S1 Center for the Study of Symptom Science, Metabolomics, and Multiple Chronic Conditions (Song, PI) funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research, National Institutes of Health, USA.Disclosure of Interests:Laura P. Kimble: None declared, Arezou Khosroshahi Consultant of: Have received honorarium for advisory board but has no relationship with this work., Grant/research support from: Have received a research grant from Pfizer; but has no relationship with this work., Ronald C. Eldridge: None declared, Glenna S. Brewster: None declared, Nicole S. Carlson: None declared, Elizabeth J. Corwin: None declared

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