Moved by the Spirit

This volume examines the complex ways religion is present in Black Lives Matter Movement and the way the movement is changing religion. The book argues that Movement for Black Lives is changing and challenging our understanding of religious experience and communities.

Moved by the Spirit: Religion and the Movement for Black Lives explores the religious and theological significance of the Black Lives Matter Movement. The volume argues for engaging the complex ways religion is present in the movement as well as how the movement is changing religion. The contributors analyze this relationship from a variety of religious and theological perspectives on public protest, the meaning of freedom, Black humanity, the arts and practices of Black religious culture, and the transformation of Black religious communities. The volume reveals that the Movement for Black Lives is changing our understanding of religious experience and communities.

Foreword, Emilie Townes

Acknowledgments

Introduction, Teresa L. Smallwood and Christophe D. Ringer

Part One: Black Public Theology

Chapter One: “Today is Not My Day to Die”: Public Theology, Precarious Lives, and the Politics of the Streets, Michael Brandon McCormack and Stachelle Bussey

Chapter Two: Black Lives Matter: A Black Theological Hauntology, Charlene Sinclair

Chapter Three: Their Words Became Flesh, Teresa L. Smallwood

Chapter Four: We Gon’ Be Alright: Public Theology, Subjectivity and Experiencing the Sacred in the Movement for Black Lives, Christophe D. Ringer

Part Two: Black Humanity

Chapter Five: Self-Amending Blackness and The Movement for Black Lives: Justice and Leadership in Liberatory Spaces, Forrest E. Harris

Chapter Six: On In(Visibilities), José Francisco Morales Torres

Chapter Seven: The Emergence of the Black Buddhist Radical Tradition, Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Rima Vesely-Flad

Part Three: Black Churches

Chapter Eight: The Black Church Movement Profile is Dead: The Audacious Absurdity of Transgressive Imagination Between “The American Dream” and the Nightmare, Tamura Lomax

Chapter Nine: Walk Together Children: Lessons in Unity, Leah D. Daughtry

Chapter Ten: Slain…in the Spirit: A Black Womanist Pneumatological Aesthetic of the Movement for Black Lives, Eboni Marshall Turman

Part Four: Black Religious Culture

Chapter Eleven: Preaching Wholeness for Black Lives, Debra Mumford

Chapter Twelve: Envisioning Justice Beyond Resistance: Black Lives Matter & Aretha Franklin’s “Mary Don’t You Weep”, Herbert R. Marbury

Chapter Thirteen: Keeping the Waters Troubled for a Better Day: A Dialectic of Resistance and Restoration in the Movement for Black Lives, Scott C. Williamson

Part Five: Bearing Witness for Black Lives

Chapter Fourteen: “My God is Black, My God is Female”: Rhetoric, Race and the Spirituality of Black Lives Matter, Andre E. Johnson

Chapter Fifteen: An Epistle on Ferguson, Osagyefo Sekou

Chapter Sixteen: Reading the Fine Print: Evaluating our Commitment to All Black Lives, Leslie Callahan

Chapter Seventeen: A Call to Heal, Traci Blackmon

Afterword, Victor Anderson

Index

About the Contributors