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Black
Religious Experience
Conversations
on Double Consciousness
and the Work of Grant Shockley
By Charles R. Foster & Fred Smith
In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois coined the term
"double consciousness" to refer to the fact that
African Americans always view the world through two lenses.
first, they see it from their own perspectives as members of an
oppressed community, living out the consequences of a particular
history. Second, they perceive life from the point of view of a
dominant culture that seeks to impose on African Americans its
own false understanding of their status and worth.
Christian education working in the African
American community have often drawn on this idea as they seek to
apply the gospel to the spiritual formation of members of that
community. The heart of the work of Grant Shockley, the
preeminent African American religious educator of the twentieth
century, was combating the negative attitudes and perspectives
that the larger society would dictate to African Americans,
while providing positive and powerful images of their self worth
drawn from the Christian story.
No one has made a
greater contribution to Christian education in the black
religious experience than Grant Shockley. This book is an
important interpretation of his intellectual legacy. As one of
my teachers at Garrett Theological Seminary, Grant Shockley
challenged me to do theology out of the black religious
experience. Without his challenge and encouragement, I do not
know whether I would have developed the intellectual courage and
self-confidence to articulate my perspective in black theology.
I strongly recommend this book as an introduction to Grant
Shockley's life and thought. The black church and black theology
are in his debt.--James H. Cone, Brigg Distinguished
Professor of Theology, Union Theological Seminary
This book is a
treasure. At long last, we now have access to one of the
church's greatest practical theologians of Christian education
in the African American community. This will be an invaluable
resource for educators, seminarians, pastors, and all who wish
to nurture faithful and healthy children and youth. Foster and
Smith are to be commended for this labor of love and genius.--Robert Michael Franklin, Presidential
Distinguished professor of Social Ethics, Emory University
This is an
extraordinarily important book for the future of Christian
religious education and for true partnership among churches. The
book faithfully recovers and represents the work of one of the
most important Christian educators of the twentieth century,
Grant Shockley. Grant Shockley embodied faithfulness and hope as
he challenged the church to create the "beloved
community." he was a leader in grounding Christian
education in context while, at the same time, proclaiming that
God is indeed a God of hope, justice, and community.
Furthermore, Fred smith and Chuck Foster have extended the
discussion of these seminal pieces of scholarship into the
present. They offer us concrete directions for a prophetic and
engaged pedagogy leading God's liberating church.--Jack L. Seymour, Academic Dean at
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
Charles R. Foster
and Fred Smith have given us a valuable gift in their
interpretation of the life and writings of Grant Shockley. An
inspiring teacher, accomplished writer, and consummate scholar,
Grant was prevented from sharing his work only by his untimely
death in 1996. It is important that this collected work be
preserved, especially for his former students and other scholars
in religious education. And here, informed as it is by the
incisive lens of double consciousness, it reflects a rich and
layered texture that makes for provocative thought and reading.--Bishop James S. Thomas, Retired
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Grant S. Shockley's Curriculum
Vita Education
A.B.
degree, 1942, Lincoln University, Lincoln University, PA
M.Div
degree, 1945, Drew University, Madison, NJ
M.A.
degree, 1946, Columbia University, New York, NY
Ed.D. degree 1952, Columbia
University/Union Theological Seminary, new York, NY
Professional Experience
Ministerial
Assistant
Minister, St. Mark's United Methodist Church, New York, NY,
1942-46
Minister,
Whatcoat Memorial United Methodist Church, Dover, DE, 1951-53
Minster, Janes Memorial United
Methodist Church, Brooklyn, NY, 1953-59
Teaching
Instructor, Bible, Religion, and Philosophy, Clark College,
Atlanta, GA, 1946-49
Professor, Religious Education, Gammon Theological Seminary,
Atlanta, GA, 1949-51
Lecturer,
Religious Education, New York University, new York, NY, 1957-59
Professor, Religious Education, Garrett Theological Seminary,
Evanston, IL, 1959-60
Lecturer,
Religion, College of Liberal Arts, Northwestern University,
Evanston, IL, 1960-63
Professor
of Christian Education, Candler School of Theology, Emory
University Atlanta, GA,
1970-75
Lecturer,
Religion, College of Liberal Arts, Emory University, Atlanta,
GA, 1970-75
Professor, Christian Education, The
divinity School, Duke University, Durham, NC 1983-89
Visiting Professorships
Centro
Evangelico Unido, Mexico, D.F., Fall 1966
Union
Theological Seminary, New York, NY, Summer 1967
Drew
Theological Seminary, Madison, NJ, Spring 1968
Perkins
School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX,
Summer 1970
Iliff
School of theology, Denver, CO, Summer 1971
University of Zimbawe, Harare, Zimbawe, Summer 1985
Candler
School of Theology, Emory University, 1989-91
Clark Atlanta University, 1991-95
Administration
Executive Secretary, Interboard Committee on Christian
Education, World division, Board of Global Ministries, The
United Methodist Church, New York, NY (educational consultation
in countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America) 1966-70
President, The Interdenominational Theological Center,
Atlanta, GA 1975-79
President, Philander Smith College, Little Rock, AR, 1979-83
Charles R. Foster is Emeritus
Professor of Religion and Education, Candler School of Theology,
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, and Senior Scholar at The
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in Palo
Alto, California. He has authored Educating Congregations,
Embracing Diversity, Ministry of the Volunteer Teacher,
co-edited Working with Black Youth, and co-authored
The Church in the Education of the Public.
Fred Douglas Smith Jr. is Associate
Professor of Urban Ministry and Associate Director of Practice
Ministry and Mission, Wesley Theological Seminary; Senior
Scholar Interfaith Health program of Rollins School of Public
health, Emory University; Senior Pastor of Fellowship United
Methodist Church, Ambridge, Pennsylvania; and Consultant to The
United Methodist Council of Bishops' Task Force on Children and
Poverty. Source:
Black
Religious Experience Conversations
on Double Consciousness and the Work of Grant Shockley by
Charles R. Foster & Fred Smith. Abingdon Press, 2004.
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 |
Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected
Poems
By
Robert Hass
The Apple Trees at Olema includes
work from Robert Hass's first five books—Field
Guide,
Praise,
Human Wishes,
Sun Under Wood, and
Time and Materials—as well as a
substantial gathering of new poems,
including a suite of elegies, a series of
poems in the form of notebook musings on the
nature of storytelling, a suite of summer
lyrics, and two experiments in pure
narrative that meditate on personal
relations in a violent world and read like
small, luminous novellas. From the
beginning, his poems have seemed entirely
his own: a complex hybrid of the lyric line,
with an unwavering fidelity to human and
nonhuman nature, and formal variety and
surprise, and a syntax capable of thinking
through difficult things in ways that are
both perfectly ordinary and really unusual.
Over the years, he has added to these
qualities a range and a formal restlessness
that seem to come from a skeptical turn of
mind, an acute sense of the artifice of the
poem and of the complexity of the world of
lived experience that a poem tries to
apprehend. Hass's work is grounded in the
beauty of the physical world. His familiar
landscapes—San Francisco, the northern
California coast, the Sierra high
country—are vividly alive in his work. His
themes include art, the natural world,
desire, family life, the life between
lovers, the violence of history, and the
power and inherent limitations of language.
He is a poet who is trying to say, as fully
as he can, what it is like to be alive in
his place and time. |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 14 December 2011
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