What do you think?
Rate this book
The Bible and African Americans: A Brief History
The unique encounter of African Americans with the Bible has shaped centuries of the spirituality and social engagement of a whole continent. Highly respected biblical scholar Vincent Wimbush here outlines five phases of African American biblical reading and shows how the language of the Bible enabled African Americans to negotiate the strange world into which they were thrust.
- GenresBiblical StudiesReligion
72 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2002
5 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 4, 2024
A FINE HISTORICAL WORK BY A PROMINENT BIBLICAL THEOLOGIAN
Vincent L. Wimbush is past president of the Society of Biblical Literature, has held faculty appointments at Claremont Graduate University, Union Seminary, and Columbia University, and has been a visiting professor at the Graduate Theological Union and Harvard Divinity School.
He said in the Acknowledgements section of this 2003 book, “In this small volume, I have returned to the question of how African American engagement with the Bible can best be understood over its many centuries and radically diverse circumstances. I do so by revising my earlier work in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation.”
He wrote in the first chapter, “There can be no simple explanation for the long, intense, complex phenomenon of African American engagement with the Bible. In the setting that was understood to be the partly biblically inspired, violently secured ‘New World’---the ‘New Israel’ that would become the United States---the Bible was the single most important centering object for social identity and orientation among European dominants. So it should not occasion surprise that the Bible would come to be seen by enslaved and otherwise dominated Africans in this setting as an important object. It quickly came to function as a language-world, the storehouse of rhetorics, images, and stories that, through a complex history of engagements, helped establish African Americans as a circle of the biblical imaginary. It helped a people imagine themselves as something other, in another world, different from what their immediate situation reflected or demanded.” (Pg. 4)
He suggests, “The reading of the Bible in evidence here can be characterized as prophetic nationalism that could range from apologetics to radicalism. By this I mean that African Americans used the Bible to make self-assertive claims against a racist America that claimed to be a biblical nation. African Americans were clamoring for realization of the principles of inclusion, equality, and kinship that they understood the Bible to mandate. Beginning in the nineteenth century and extending into the twentieth, African Americans consistently and systematically attempted to make use of the Bible to force ‘biblical’ America to honor biblical principles. The very fact that the Bible was read in this way revealed African Americans’ orientation and collective self-understanding---they desired to be integrated into American society. Their critical, polemical, and race- and culture-conscious reading of the Bible reflected their desire to enter the mainstream of American society. For many perhaps most, the Bible itself came to represent American society itself. A critical reading of the Bible was thought to be a critical reading of American society. That the Bible---and the whole of the tradition of which it was a signal part---was engaged at all signified relative acceptance of American society.” (Pg. 40-41)
He observes, “As they have engaged the Bible, African American women have generally assumed that it privileges women’s interests insofar as women’s presence and participation in different social and cultural settings, including religious writings, are seen as the dramatic index of the inclusion, acceptance, and dignity of all. Understood as RADICAL inclusion, acceptance, and empowerment, women’s presence and participation in the world are seen as having been ordained by God and modeled in biblical stories. That such presence and participation have historically been controversial only helps bolster the claim about its biblical origins and divine mandate.” (Pg. 78-79)
He concludes, “Many questions and issues remain. It is clear that not all African Americans have embraced the Bible. It is also clear that not all of those who have embraced it have been able to realize and sustain the empowerment it has promised. Clearer still is that the meaning of the text … is not itself the issue. It is not the meaning OF the text but meaning AND text that are at issue. It is the more complex phenomenon of ENGAGEMENT---the collective consciousness being threaded through, changing, and being changed by the Bible over time---that has been decisive and should therefore be the focus of serious and sensitive study. The history of African Americans’ engagements with the Bible is compelling because it is the history of those whose experiences in the West represent and force a dramatic lag, an interruption that can open wide a window onto a deeper understanding of what, in the great range of possibilities and problems, it has meant and may still mean to engage Scriptures.” (Pg. 84-85)
This is an excellent historical work, that will be of great interest to anyone studying these matters.
Vincent L. Wimbush is past president of the Society of Biblical Literature, has held faculty appointments at Claremont Graduate University, Union Seminary, and Columbia University, and has been a visiting professor at the Graduate Theological Union and Harvard Divinity School.
He said in the Acknowledgements section of this 2003 book, “In this small volume, I have returned to the question of how African American engagement with the Bible can best be understood over its many centuries and radically diverse circumstances. I do so by revising my earlier work in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation.”
He wrote in the first chapter, “There can be no simple explanation for the long, intense, complex phenomenon of African American engagement with the Bible. In the setting that was understood to be the partly biblically inspired, violently secured ‘New World’---the ‘New Israel’ that would become the United States---the Bible was the single most important centering object for social identity and orientation among European dominants. So it should not occasion surprise that the Bible would come to be seen by enslaved and otherwise dominated Africans in this setting as an important object. It quickly came to function as a language-world, the storehouse of rhetorics, images, and stories that, through a complex history of engagements, helped establish African Americans as a circle of the biblical imaginary. It helped a people imagine themselves as something other, in another world, different from what their immediate situation reflected or demanded.” (Pg. 4)
He suggests, “The reading of the Bible in evidence here can be characterized as prophetic nationalism that could range from apologetics to radicalism. By this I mean that African Americans used the Bible to make self-assertive claims against a racist America that claimed to be a biblical nation. African Americans were clamoring for realization of the principles of inclusion, equality, and kinship that they understood the Bible to mandate. Beginning in the nineteenth century and extending into the twentieth, African Americans consistently and systematically attempted to make use of the Bible to force ‘biblical’ America to honor biblical principles. The very fact that the Bible was read in this way revealed African Americans’ orientation and collective self-understanding---they desired to be integrated into American society. Their critical, polemical, and race- and culture-conscious reading of the Bible reflected their desire to enter the mainstream of American society. For many perhaps most, the Bible itself came to represent American society itself. A critical reading of the Bible was thought to be a critical reading of American society. That the Bible---and the whole of the tradition of which it was a signal part---was engaged at all signified relative acceptance of American society.” (Pg. 40-41)
He observes, “As they have engaged the Bible, African American women have generally assumed that it privileges women’s interests insofar as women’s presence and participation in different social and cultural settings, including religious writings, are seen as the dramatic index of the inclusion, acceptance, and dignity of all. Understood as RADICAL inclusion, acceptance, and empowerment, women’s presence and participation in the world are seen as having been ordained by God and modeled in biblical stories. That such presence and participation have historically been controversial only helps bolster the claim about its biblical origins and divine mandate.” (Pg. 78-79)
He concludes, “Many questions and issues remain. It is clear that not all African Americans have embraced the Bible. It is also clear that not all of those who have embraced it have been able to realize and sustain the empowerment it has promised. Clearer still is that the meaning of the text … is not itself the issue. It is not the meaning OF the text but meaning AND text that are at issue. It is the more complex phenomenon of ENGAGEMENT---the collective consciousness being threaded through, changing, and being changed by the Bible over time---that has been decisive and should therefore be the focus of serious and sensitive study. The history of African Americans’ engagements with the Bible is compelling because it is the history of those whose experiences in the West represent and force a dramatic lag, an interruption that can open wide a window onto a deeper understanding of what, in the great range of possibilities and problems, it has meant and may still mean to engage Scriptures.” (Pg. 84-85)
This is an excellent historical work, that will be of great interest to anyone studying these matters.
March 29, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed this one. There's a lot of information that is white-washed in history with the sole intent of making one particular party looking pretty good. Wimbush through several short essays writes about the Bible's relationship to African American, as it was. Some saw it as supranatural, others as a tool of oppression, still others as a source of peace and comfort. It is important to realize as well, Wimbush notes, that African Americans had an almost unbreakable view that tied the Bible to White men and to see or to listen one was to see or listen others. Many White people used this to their advantage, enslaving Blacks and justifying it through shoddy and evil practices - often tearing out certain scripture that spoke of freedom and brotherhood.
July 15, 2019
2.5 stars
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews