Lynched chronicles the history andaftermath of lynching in America. By rooting her work in oral histories, Angela D. Sims gives voice tothe memories of African American elders who remember lynching not only as individual acts but as a culture of violence, domination, and fear. Lynched preserves memory even while it provides an analysis of the meaning of those memories.Simsexamines the relationship between lynching and the interconnected realities of race, gender, class,and other social fragmentations that ultimately shape a person'saand a community'sareligiousself-understanding. Through this understanding,she explores how the narrators reconcile their personal and communalmemory of lynching with their livedChristian experience. Moreover, Simsunearths the community'struth that this is sometimes a story of words and at other times a story of silence. Revealing the bond between memory and moral formation, Simsdiscovers the courage and hope inherent in the power of recall.By tending to the words of these witnesses, Lynched exposes not only a culture of fear and violence but the practice of story and memory, as well as thenarrative ofhope within a renewed possibility for justice.

Writing across theological disciplines, nine African American women scholars reflect on what it means to live as responsible doers of justice. With some classic essays and some contributions published here for the first time, each chapter in this new volume in the Library of Theological Ethics series presents analytical strategies for understanding the story of womanist scholarship in the service of the black community.

The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field.