Publication:
Unholy Ghosts in the Age of Spirit: Identity, Intersectionality, and the Theological Horizons of Black Progress

No Thumbnail Available

Date

2017-05-12

Published Version

Published Version

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you.

Research Projects

Organizational Units

Journal Issue

Citation

Research Data

Abstract

The dissertation offers, at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class, a constructive theological account of spirit in black Christianity. Although spirit is a pervasive trope in African-American religion, pneumatology is missing as theological method in black religious discourse in this “Age of Spirit.” In fact, spirit-talk has been used to pathologize some for the advancement of others, especially in the respectability politics of black racial uplift and the cis-heteronormativity of black charismatic Christianity. I am interested, therefore, in the discursive production of deviancy and the “demonic,” which is antithetical to spirit-talk. Through consideration of the “rational spirit” of W.E.B. Du Bois, the “sanctified spirit” of Zora Neale Hurston, and the “mystical spirit” of Howard Thurman, I develop a pneumatology that establishes the empowerment of the marginalized as the sine qua non, the essential condition and consequence, of spirit-talk. In the dissertation, I trace the legacies of these public intellectuals on African-American Christianity, particularly on black and womanist theologies: the thesis rethinks the concepts of hope, courage, and vitality, using Du Bois, Hurston, and Thurman, respectively, as interlocutors. In the end, I construct a theology of Spirit in black radical religion that resists, disturbs, and disrupts dispositifs of deviancy. By interpreting Jesus, the Spirit of God, as chief deviant and liberating power, I demonstrate that a progressive, queer pneumatology is possible.

Description

Other Available Sources

Keywords

Theology, Black Studies, Religion, General

Terms of Use

This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material (LAA), as set forth at Terms of Service

Endorsement

Review

Supplemented By

Referenced By

Related Stories