Pillars of cloud and fire : the politics of exodus in African American biblical interpretation / Herbert Robinson Marbury.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marbury, Herbert Robinson, author.

Series:

Religion and social transformation

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Black theology.

Bible--Black interpretations.

Bible.

Black interpretations of sacred works.

Exodus, The--Typology.

Exodus, The.

Physical Description:

xix, 249 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2015]

Summary:

At the birth of the United States. African Americans were excluded from the newly formed Republic and its churches, which saw them as savage rather than citizen and as heathen rather than Christian. Denied civil access to the basic rights granted to others, African Americans have developed their own sacred traditions and their own civil discourses. As part of this effort, African American intellectuals offered interpretations of the Bible which were radically different from and often fundamentally oppositional to those of many of their white counterparts. By imagining a freedom unconstrained, their work charted a broader and, perhaps, a more genuinely American identity. In Pillars of Cloud and Fire, Herbert Robinson Marbury offers a comprehensive survey of African American biblical interpretation. Moving chronologically from the antebellum period through the Obama era, this compelling volume offers a historical context for black biblical interpretation and analyzes its effect in transforming black social reality. For African American thinkers, the exodus story became the language-world through which freedom both in its sacred resonance and its civil formation found expression. This tradition, Marbury argues, has much to teach us in a world where fundamentalisms have become synonymous with "authentic" religious expression and American identity. For African American biblical interpreters, to be American and to be Christian was always to be open and oriented toward freedom. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Exodus: Israelite Deliverance and Antebellum Hope 13

2 Exodus in the Wilderness: Making Bitter Water Sweet 49

3 Exodus and Hurston: Toward a Humanist Critique of Black Religion in the Harlem Renaissance 107

4 Exodus in the Civil Rights Era: Returning the Struggle to the Black Church 133

5 Exodus at the Intersection of the Black Power Movement and the Black Church 170.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781479835966

147983596X

9781479812509

1479812501

OCLC:

893452390