Introduction

The University of California’s African American studies and drama professor Frank Wilkerson III has contended, in his most recent book Afropessimism, that reading the history of Black America as a linear narrative of ancestral motherland bountifulness, present servitudes (from slavery to police state), and redemptive futures, is not only a reductionistic reading of such history, but a myth intended to prevent any form of constructive imagination. Simplifying the complex experiences of racial and ethnic groups in America for the sake of public consumption and social control had been common practice, and this is the trend that articles like those published in this edition of Insights are encouraging us to redress.

Like Wilkerson, the articles you are about to read challenge the notion of a unified narrative of African American religious experience and reflect the intricacies of trying to paint an instructive picture of Black spiritualities. Austin Seminary’s ethics professor Asante Todd shows how those spiritualities have been fostered, not only within the congregational settings of the Black church, but by creative responses of care, cultivation, and contestation in relation to nature and land. Melanie Harris roots African American ecological spirituality in the intersectional analysis of race, class, and gender, while Stephen Ray reminds us, that stories of African American religious experience are never singular nor fixed and that they may require multiple narrations. Peter Paris underscores the multiple forms of Christianity that have emerged from the mixed influences of diverse African linguistic and religious traditions. Even practitioners Denise Pierce, Philip Morgan, and Jioni Palmer interpret Black spirituality within the church from a multifaceted perspective that reflects the importance of personal conceptions of identity and meaning.

However, unlike Wilkerson, the authors of this volume do not succumb to the pessimist claim that a racist society is without redemption. They believe that steps to overcome the threats of that society can't be disengaged from theological claims for the necessity of God’s grace. While acknowledging the tough road of endurance toward a more inclusive society, the authors remain open to the possibilities of the inherited faith and embodied spiritualities of Black people to drive the vision for a shared humanity. Only fractured and false spiritualities can engender religious discourse where the humanity of some is systematically denied. As Dean Margaret Aymer challenges us in her essay, we miss the mark if, in trying to eradicate the ills of a racially biased society, “we recreate the very dehumanization at the core of so many evils that surround us.” If some greater lesson is to be learned from the spiritual strength of the African American Christian tradition, it is that at those moments of imposed hardships, when our minds cannot make logical sense of the world, we can still close our eyes and hum quietly as we hold on to life, for “deep in our hearts, we do believe, that we shall overcome someday.”

José R. Irizarry President, Austin Seminary