What does religion have to do with fomenting or transcending violence? In this fascinating work, Kirk-Duggan documents and analyzes religion's involvement in violence, for good and ill, in the Bible, slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and the youth scene of today.
Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan is Director of the Center for Women and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, and Assistant Professor of Theology and Womanist Studies. She is author of Refiner's Fire: A Religious Engagement with Violence (Fortress Press, 2000), Exorcizing Evil: A Womanist Perspective on the Spirituals (1997), and African American Special Days: 15 Complete Worship Services (1996). She is ordained in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
Acknowledgments Preface 1. Eyes on the Prize: Womanist Reflections What Is a "Womanist"? Womanist Vision: Thinking and Seeing Emancipatory Womanist Theology A Life of Stewardship Components of Womanist Engagement bell hooks and Killing Rage Womanist Theory: A Refiner's Fire 2. Take No Prisoners: Biblical Women Engaged in Violence Women Warriors and Coconspirators Assets of Power and the Place of Sex Violence against Women and Children Mimetic Desire and the Scapegoat Mechanism Women Who Kill: Biblical Women in Modern Perspective 3. Lay My Burden Down: Spirituality Transcends Antebellum Violence The Refining Fire of African American Spirituals Myth, Ritual, and Oral and Written History Rhetorical-Musical Analysis of the Spirituals A Quest for Justice amid Life and Power Synthesis: Creative Spirituality Signified Analyzing Individual Spirituals The Spirituals as Creative Change 4. Sojourner's Sisters: 1960s Women Freedom Fighters Right Civil Wrongs African American Women Activists of the Nineteenth Century and the 1960s This Little Light of Mine: Those Who Accomplished in Spite of 5. Ballads, Not Bullets: The Nonviolent Protest Ministry of Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Songs: African America's Spirituals Redacted Wade in the Water: The Turbulent 1960s America's Civil Religion The Ethics and Theology of Martin Luther King Jr. The Movement Since 1955 How Music Moved the Movement King and the Role of Women 6. Soul Sisters: Girls in Gangs and Sororities African American Sororities Gangs Defined: Then and Now Gangs and Sororities: Catalysts of Culture Sororities and Sistah Gangs: A Socio-Historical Review Black Women in Sistah Gangs Imitative Activity of Sororities, Gangs, and Crews Internal and External Onus: Society's Response and Expectations Gang Summits The Value of Girls and Women 7. Build Up, Break Down: Language as Empowerment and Annihilation Language: An Accessible Life-Giving and Death-Causing Mechanism Culture Provides Answers to Human Questions The Scapegoating Mechanism The Control of Violence Language Connects Body, Mind, and Soul Transformation 8. Daughters of Zelophehad: A Constructive Analysis of Violence The Story of the Daughters of Zelophehad Genesis 12:1-3 and the Priestly, Everlasting Covenant Divine and Human Violence Violence and Patriarchy Violence and Imago Dei Violence in Society: A Necessity? Refiner's Fire: A Constructive Theology and Ethics of Violence The Spiritual Life as Confessional Existence Ethics: The Value Factors Theory and Praxis and the Escalation of Violence Womanist Theory Embodies God's Powerful Grace 9. Death as Worship: Celebrating Dying as Part of Life Death: A Turnstile to the Unknown Death: A Transition of Time-Ordered Life Liturgical Seasons: Life Processes Liturgical Moments: Death as Process Womanist Liturgics: Hurting, Pain, and Grief Notes Index
