Full Description
Bitter the Chastening Rod follows in the footsteps of the first collection of African American biblical interpretation, Stony the Road We Trod (1991). Nineteen Africana biblical scholars contribute cutting-edge essays reading Jesus, criminalization, the enslaved, and whitened interpretations of the enslaved. They present pedagogical strategies for teaching, hermeneutics, and bible translation that center Black Lives Matter and black culture. Biblical narratives, news media, and personal stories intertwine in critical discussions of black rage, protest, anti-blackness, and mothering in the context of black precarity.
Contents
Part I. Remembering the Past, Laboring in the Present, and Shaping a Hopeful Future
1."The Hill We Climb": Introduction ‒‒ Mitzi J. Smith, Angela N. Parker and Ericka Dunbar Hill
2.A Eulogy for Cain Hope Felder ‒‒ Brian K. Blount
3.Zoom-ing in on a Watershed Moment in Biblical Interpretation ‒‒ William H. Myers
Part II. God's Black(ened) People in the World—Thugs, Slaves and Criminals
4.God's Only Begotten Thug ‒‒ Allen Dwight Callahan
5.Abolitionist Messiah: A Man Named Jesus Born of a Doulē ‒‒ Mitzi J. Smith
6.Reading with the Enslaved: Placing Human Bondage at the Center of the Early Christian Story ‒‒ Emerson B. Powery
7."I am a Human": Racializing Assemblages and Criminalized Egyptianness in Acts 21:31-39 ‒‒ Jeremy L. Williams
8.The Terror of White Hermeneutics: Black and Enslaved Bodies Interpreted in the Context of Whiteness ‒‒ Marcus W. Shields
Part III. Africana Hermeneutical Strategies, Pedagogy, Translation, and #BLM
9.Hoodoo Blues and the Formulation of Hermeneutical Strategies for Contemporary Africana Biblical Engagement ‒‒ Hugh R. Page, Jr.
10.Reflections on Teaching Biblical Interpretation through a Black Lives Matter Hermeneutic ‒‒ Wil Gafney
11.Revisiting the Caananites and Contemporary Ites: Pedagogical Insights into Cheering for the Wrong Team ‒‒ Theodore W. Burgh
12.Reading Romans in Greek: Translating and Commenting on it in Haitian Creole ‒‒ Ronald Charles
Part IV. Black Rage and Protest in Times of #Black Lives Matter and #MeToo
13.Rage, Riots, and Rhetoric: Psalm 137 and African American Responses to Violence ‒‒ Stacy Davis
14.Rethinking "God-breathed" in the Age of #Black Lives Matter: A Womanist Reading of 2 Tim 3:10-17 ‒‒ Angela N. Parker
15.Leah and Dinah in the Face of Abuse: What Do I Tell My Daughter? ‒‒ Kamilah Hall Sharp
16.Antichrist and Anti-Black: 1 John and "Black Lives Matter" ‒‒ Dennis R. Edwards
Part V. Responses
17.John's Apocalypse and African American Interpretation ‒‒ Thomas B. Slater
18.Race Still Matters: Mapping the Afterlives of Stony the Road We Trod ‒‒ Clarice J. Martin
19."To Think Better Than We Have Been Trained": Thirty Years Later ‒‒ Renita J. Weems
