Wisdom, health, honor, hope-these revered ideals are now jeopardized, James Evans claims, by the towering social problems of North American society, nowhere more achingly and emblematically than in African American life. Evans here creates a practical theology by working at the intersection of religious understandings in the African American community and its most pressing social problems. He skillfully probes to their deepest cultural and religious roots. There the moral distortions of racism, poverty, shame, disease, dysfunctional families, and even problematic elements in religious life can be excised so that new, more helpful ideas of grace, salvation, and community can flourish. Evans's fresh and fruitful work is an affirmation of the transformative power of religious engagement and its ultimate source in the religious community that is God's own self.

Seeking to overcome the chasm between church practice and theological reflection, James H. Evans Jr., a major and distinctive voice in American religion, situates theology squarely in the nexus of faith with freedom. There, with a sure touch, he uplifts revelatory aspects of black religious experience that reanimate classical areas of theology, and he creates a theology with a heart, soul, and voice that speak directly to our condition. Edited and introduced by Stephen G. Ray Jr., the second edition, published on the twentieth anniversary of the first, includes three new essays that identify the value of the book for womanist, evangelical, and black church audiences. The new edition concludes with an Afterword by the author himself.