Wesleyan Theological Society
45th Annual Meeting at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California
March 4-6, 2010
“The Future of Scripture”
Keynote speaker: Richard Hays, author of The Faith of Jesus Christ and The Moral Vision of the New Testament
(Rumor has it that I will be presenting Friday, March 5th, 2010)
Session: Ethnic Studies Session
PRESENTER’S FULL NAME: Rodney A. Thomas Jr.
PRESENTER’S TITLE: Student, Master of Theology, concentrating in History, Theology, and Women’s Studies, at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas.
PRESENTATION TITLE: Empire Studies and Ezekiel: An African-American postcolonial approach to the Ezekielian narrative
Currently in biblical and theological studies, there is a tendency for scholars to study the New Testament in light of the authors’ context within the Roman Empire.[1] However, the prevalence of empire has been largely ignored in the Hebrew Bible. In this paper, I will examine Ezekiel within his Babylonian imperial context using the lens of Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth in order to provide a Black postcolonial interpretation of Ezekiel for a neo-colonial society in the twenty-first century. Given that the Ezekielian tradition is one of exile, judgment, and hope, I propose that the most suitable way to appreciate Ezekiel is through the eyes of an exile since the authors wrote from a position of marginalization.
During the 19th century, enslaved Africans appropriated the story of Ezekiel the priest-prophet into their resistance in the form of their spirituals. With sorrow songs such as “Ezekiel Saw De Wheel” and “Even Me” that were drawn from the biblical text, the enslaved Africans were able to subvert the wills of the Southern oligarchs during the time of American Manifest destiny. The entire book of Ezekiel thus serves as an early sixth-century B.C.E. sorrow song in which Ezekiel records the exile experience from YHWH’s point of view. Viewing Ezekiel in this manner offers the African American faith community a powerful precedent for negotiating existence in a modern imperial context.
[1] For example, see the works of Warren Carter, Nicolas Thomas Wright, Stephen Moore, Musa Dube, Fernando S. Segovia, Francisco Lozada, and Tom Thatcher.
Southwest Commission on Religious Studies
2010 Annual Meeting
March 13th-14th
Dallas, Texas
(Sunday 8:30-10:30)
AAR: HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY
Theme: Issues in Evangelicalism
9:30 Rodney A. Thomas, Jr., Brite Divinity School
Conversion and Decolonization: A Comparative History of Evangelical Christian Responses to Nationalist Movements in the Black Christian Community of Harlem and the Protestant Churches of Korea
Proposal synopsis-
The twentieth-century rise of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianities in the United States has been well documented.[1] There is a growing trend in scholarship that where there is a lot of attention given to the rapid growth of evangelical Christianity in the South American, African, and Asian continents.[2] In works such as William Martin’s With God On Our Side and Greg Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Nation, scholars and historians note the complicity of evangelicals in propagating nationalism and empire because of a dependence on the political power. Very little research, however, exists where evangelical Christianity has been examined as a resource of resistance against racism and imperial domination.
In this paper, I propose to compare the histories of 20th century evangelical Christianity in the Harlem, New York and in Korea from 1910 to 1970. By examining figures such as the leaders of the New Negro movement headed by Hubert Harrison and Marcus Garvey alongside their Christian contemporaries such as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in the early 20th century Harlem, I will offer an understanding of this movement that aims look at the practices and doctrines of the Negro church as a response to Negro American radicalism. In addition, I also wish to evaluate the evangelical Protestant churches located in Korea during the Japanese occupation from 1910-1945 and the role that evangelical religion played in forming a discourse of anti-colonial resistance. Lastly, I will consider evangelicalism’s function as a source of decolonization for Korean and black Harlem Christians after World War II. While evangelical Protestant churches in Korea opposed Soviet expansion and communism, Tom Skinner and the Harlem Evangelistic Association stood firm against racism and segregation in the United States. I conclude that Korean Protestantism and black Christianity in Harlem are distinct forms of evangelicalism that are models in response to oppression as well as radical nationalist movements.
[1] For more on this, see George Marsden’s work, Fundamentalism and American Culture. (Oxford University Press, 1980)
[2] For example, see Soong Chan-Rah’s The Next Evangelicalism, Mark Noll’s The New Shape of World Christianity, and Philip Jenkin’s The Next Christendom.
Keep up the good work! I’ll pray for a successfull presentation.
Thanks CJ for the encouraging words!