This book continues the conversations begun in Emilie Townes's path-breaking A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering. Once again, Townes brings together essays by leading womanist theologians, interweaving a concern for matters of race, gender, and class, as these bear on the survival and well-being of the African-American community. In Embracing the Spirit the emphasis is not on evil and suffering, but on "hope, salvation, and transformation" for individuals and their communities.

'Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil' provides an analytical tool to understand how and why evil works in the world as it does. Deconstructing memory, history, and myth as received wisdom, this book critically examines racism, sexism, poverty, and stereotypes.

Moved by the Spirit: Religion and the Movement for Black Lives explores the religious and theological significance of the Black Lives Matter Movement. The volume argues for engaging the complex ways religion is present in the movement as well as how the movement is changing religion. The contributors analyze this relationship from a variety of religious and theological perspectives on public protest, the meaning of freedom, Black humanity, the arts and practices of Black religious culture, and the transformation of Black religious communities. The volume reveals that the Movement for Black Lives is changing our understanding of religious experience and communities.

In A Troubling in My Soul, well-known womanist theologians explore the persistent question of evil and suffering in compelling new ways. Committed to an integrated analysis of race, gender, and class, they also address the shortcomings of traditional, feminist, and Black theologies in dealing with evil. Taking Alice Walker's definition of "womanist" as a framework, in Part I, "Responsible, in Charge", Clarice J. Martin explores "If God exists, why is there evil?"; Frances E. Wood shows how Christianity's idealization of suffering has harmed African-American women; and Jamie T. Phelps recounts the historic exclusion of African-American women - and men - in the Roman Catholic church. Part II, "It Wouldn't Be the First Time", includes Marcia Y. Riggs on the 19th century Black club women's response to moral evil; Emilie M. Townes on a womanist ethic based on the example of Ida B. Wells-Barrett; and Rosita deAnn Mathews on the role of chaplain-clergyperson as priest, prophet, and employee. Part III, "Love's the Spirit", includes M. Shawn Copeland on the narratives of enslaved and/or emancipated women of African descent; Delores S. Williams on sin and suffering in Black Christian theology; Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan on the spirituals as an Afrocentric Christian response to evil; and Karen Baker-Fletcher on the life of Dr. Anna Julia Cooper and the vitality of voice in womanist experience. In Part IV, "As Purple Is to Lavender", Patricia L. Hunter exposes the cosmetics industry's impact on Black women's self-understanding as creations of God. There is also Jacquelyn Grant on how a theology of servanthood degenerates into an apologetics for exploitation; Katie Geneva Cannon on the African-Americanfolk sermon as genre; and, finally, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes on how Alice Walker's observations that one "loves food", "loves roundness", and "loves oneself" stand in opposition to the dominant culture's dictum that one can never be too rich or too thin. Vigorous and forthright, A Troubling in My Soul is must-reading for students, scholars, and everyone interested in African-American, women's, and contemporary religious studies.

This book offers an important contribution to the recovery and articulation of African-American womanist experience. Ida Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) was an activist, social reformer, and churchwoman. Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope recovers her life and historical context and examines the extent to which her perspective can be a resource for a contemporary womanist Christian social ethic. Beginning with a brief biographical sketch of Wells-Barnett, Emilie Townes examines the religious and social world in which she worked as well as her many speeches and publciations. Townes focuses especially on Wells-Barnett's participation in the anti-lynching campaigns of the late nineteenth century. She argues that Wells-Barnett's life and work can provide important lessons in leadership and social activism for contemporary Black churchwomen. nature of leadership for Black women,

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.