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Abstract
This article explores the relationship of Afrofuturism and the liberation and transformative form of African American preaching, as well as the intersections of religious styling and performance, particularly “call and response.” I explore that, as the concept of Afrofuturism continues to take shape, it expands to encompass African religiosity, mythology and cosmology, including also African religious thought, myths and rituals. Even more so, it in turn inspires religious language, discourse and stylings of African and African American peoples through the African American sermon and preacher. As such, this article explores scholar James H. Harris's liberation and transformative theology with the work of James Baldwin and his essay, “Letter to My Nephew.” In addition, I establish Baldwin as a futuristic prophet calling for radical change, liberation and the transformation of Black life from the margins of oppression, and into the center of power and enlightenment.
Notes
1 “The Chicago Tribune has been tracking shootings involving injury across the city since 2012, using data from both police and street reporters. Since then, this is the earliest in the year 1000 people have been shot … Through June 7 of 2014, there were 933 people shot. In 2013 the number was 817 through June 7, and in 2012, a particularly bloody year that saw a spike of shootings and homicides, it was 974 through that date … Through the end of May, 510 people had been shot in New York City – a city more than three times the size of Chicago – compared with 467 during the year-earlier period, a 9 percent increase, according to New York Police Department statistics. In L.A., a city with over a million more people than Chicago, 438 people had been shot as of May 30, a 21 percent increase during the year-earlier period when there were 362, Los Angeles Police Department statistics show.” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicago-one-thousand-shootings-met-20150608-story.html (accessed November 9, 2015).
2 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 106.
3 Ytasha Womack, Afofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture (Chicago: Lawrence Hills Books, 2013), 9.
4 Ibid., 16.
5 James H. Harris, Preaching Liberation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 76.
6 Ibid., 76.
7 Pedtrito U. Maynard-Reid, Diverse Worship: African-American Caribbean & Hispanic Perspectives (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 87.
8 Harris, Preaching Liberation, 62–63.
9 David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste, and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 238.
10 Ibid., 238.
11 Barbara J. Fields, “Whiteness, Racism, and Identity,” International Labor and Working-Class History 60 (2001): 48.
12 Ibid., 48.
13 Ibid., 53.
14 Maynard-Reid, Diverse Worship, 96.
15 Harris, Preaching Liberation, 65.
16 Victor Anderson, Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (New York: Continuum, 1995), 30.
17 Ibid., 52.
18 Ibid., 16.
19 Ibid., 52.
20 Ibid., 16.
21 For further exploration of “strivings,” see W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, unabridged edn (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1994).
22 Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 10.
23 Harris, Preaching Liberation, 13.
24 Ibid., 13.
25 Ibid., 61.
26 Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 7.
27 Harris, Preaching Liberation, 62.
28 Barbara Holmes, Race and the Cosmos: An Invitation to View the World Differently (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002), 102–103.
29 Ibid., 103.
30 Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 9.
31 Harris, Preaching Liberation, 14.
32 Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 7.
33 Ibid., 5.
34 Ibid., 8.
35 Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism: A Poetics of Anticolonialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), 31.
36 Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 6.
37 Ibid., 3.
38 Ibid., 9.
39 Ibid., 10.
40 Ibid., 10.
41 Ibid., 8.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Terrance Dean
Terrance Dean is a PhD student in Homiletics and Liturgics in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University. His research interests include Afrofuturism, Black cultural production, gender and queer studies and the intersections of the philosophy of language in the Black religious experience. He is interested in exploring how religious discourse informs, shapes, aides and abets Black identity, particularlyBlack queer identity in the Black religious experience post Civil Rights era. Dean has written several publications on Black culture, sex and sexuality, including Hiding in Hip Hop (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2008), and Mogul: A Novel (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2010). Dean facilitated the 2014 Vanderbilt Symposium, Afrofuturism in Black Theology: Race, Gender, Sexuality and the State of Black Religion in the Black Metropolis.