Understanding and Transforming the Black Church

Book excerpt: What is the nature and purpose of the Black Church? What is the relationship of the scholar of religion to the Black Church? While black churches have been a major component of the religious landscape of African American communities for centuries, little critical attention has been given to these questions outside an apologetic stance. This book seeks to correct this trend by examining some of the major issues facing black churches in the twenty-first century. From a challenge to traditional ways of addressing sexism within black churches to African American Christianity's relationship to popular culture, this set of reflections seeks to offer new perspectives on what it might mean to be Black and Christian in the United States. "Anthony Pinn's volume seeks to critically understand and sympathetically transform the Black Church. Carrying on in the tradition of William R. Jones, Pinn's perspective on the Black Church is suspicious, loving, critical, committed, exasperating, and exhilarating. One may not always agree with his conclusions, but one cannot ignore his penchant for ferreting out the truth. This book is a passionate yet balanced argument which must be heard by anyone who is interested in the future of the black church."---James H. Evans JR. Robert K. Davies Professor of Systematic Theology, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School "Pinn is required reading in every Black Church Studies department and theological curriculum that seeks self-understanding, transformation, and healing; and an indispensable interlocutor in the broader public conversation about the American dilemma and its democratic possibilities."---Walter Earl Fluker Coca-Cola Professor of Leadership Studies Morehouse College