The basic premise of my recent book, The Violence of Scripture, is quite simple: the Bible should never be used to harm others. One might imagine such a “profound” truth to be self-evident and hardly worthy of a book length treatment. But the sad reality is that the “good book” has been bad news for far too many people. The Bible has been used to inflict enormous pain upon others and to endorse all kinds of evil. It has been used to... Read more

*Update:  We will live tweet the lectures using as our hashtag #MTSTodd. Follow Memphis Theological Seminary on Twitter @memphisseminaryMemphis Theological Seminary is pleased to announce in celebration of Women’s History month that Dr. Wil Gafney will serve as our Todd lecturer. She serves as an Associate Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. Her course offerings include: Heroines, Harlots and Handmaids: the Women of the Hebrew Scriptures with sections on “Cosmic Herstory,” “Carnal Knowledge” and “Postcolonial Musings,”... Read more

by KimberlyPeeler-RingerR3 Contributor Have you ever been watching a newscast, learned some awful crime has happened and images flash across the screen of news photographers rushing to line up and catch those first shots of the perpetrator? News producers call that the “perp walk.” I’ve seen probably hundreds of perp walks. Now raise your hand if you’ve ever prayed the silent prayer, “please don’t let the perp be a Black person.” This speaks to some real feelings of shame we... Read more

From its place in schools, to the public square, to people’s individual lives, the current and future role of the Bible in U.S. society is an often-debated topic. A new release from Barna Group shows how this debate plays out regionally and takes a look at how 96 of the largest cities in the nation view the Bible. The report ranks the most and least “Bible-minded” cities by looking at how people in those cities view the Bible. The study... Read more

What do evangelicals want? Marcia Pally attempts to answer that question for at least some evangelicals in a recent essay at The Immanent Frame titled “Evangelicals who have left the right.” As with many previous pronouncements that something new—less judgmental, more generous—was afoot in evangelical-land, the little ripple of excitement around Pally’s essay gives me a distinct sense of deja vu. “The Beginning of the End of Christianism?” asked Andrew Sullivan; “The End of the Religious Right?” pondered Walter Russell Mead. I’ve heard that ripple before—I watched Richard... Read more

The Black Theology and Leadership Institute is a week long intensive continuing education event for the training, worship, and fellowship of clergy and laity. The institute is designed for clergy and lay leaders who may not have formal theological training, as well for those who do have theological training but would like to deepen their thinking and preaching by learning from preeminent scholars of theology and religion. Priority will be given to non-seminary trained clergy/church leaders; however, all are urged to apply. Fellows... Read more

Back in 2003, when the US went to war with Iraq, I was working in youth ministry at a primarily white church in the working-class city of Tacoma, WA. I have a vivid memory of sitting in a worship service during that time in which the preacher delivered a sermon in which he declared that John the Baptist was a patriot and, therefore, we should be patriots as well and support the war effort. More specifically, we were told that... Read more

Abstract: Objective: This study examined spiritual coping (beliefs and practices) of depressed African American cancer patients through a comparison with depressed White cancer patients and non-depressed African American cancer patients. Methods: Using mixed methods, 74 breast (n=41) and prostate (n=33) cancer survivors including 34 depressed and 23 nondepressed African Americans and 17 depressed Whites were interviewed. The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. Qualitative data analysis identified themes that were coded. The codes were entered into SPSS software. The Fisher’s exact... Read more

In a richly insightful reflection on the public contributions and prospects of black religion scholarship, Gayraud Wilmore’s 1999 essay on “Black Theology at the Turn of the Century” (published in Dwight Hopkins’ Black Faith and Public Talk) outlines several “unmet needs” pertaining to “the future of African American religious thought and praxis.” One of the unmet needs identified by Wilmore is “a renewed contact and bonding with African, Caribbean, and black Latin American churches, mosques, intellectuals and religious leaders” and with the... Read more

In the days following President Obama’s inauguration address,commentators across the political spectrum have made much about how it overtly expressed a progressive agenda. It was not only a politically progressive speech, however, it was a masterwork of progressive theology: a public sermon on the meaning of America, a creedal statement and a call to practice that faith in the world. It was an expression of a genuinely pluralistic America, the first inaugural address of a new sort of American civil spirituality.... Read more