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Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter
How do we really know that God cares when Black people are still getting killed? How long do we have to wait for the justice of God? I get it, that Christ is Black, but that doesn’t seem to be helping us right now. These questions from her son prompted theologian Kelly Brown Douglas to undertake this soul-searching reflection. The killing of George Floyd and the ongoing litany of Black victims raised questions about the persistence of white supremacy in this nation, leading her to reflect on how a “white way of knowing” has come to dominate American identity and even to shape the consciousness of Christians. In exploring the message of Confederate monuments and the “Make America Great Again” slogan, she examines the failures of even “good white Christians” and struggles with the hope that “Black Lives Matter,” before reaching deep into her own experience and the faith of Black folks to find her way back to Resurrection Hope.
224 pages, Paperback
Published November 17, 2021
41 people are currently reading
214 people want to read
About the author
Kelly Brown Douglas
33 books68 followersKelly Delaine Brown Douglas is an African-American Episcopal priest, womanist theologian, and the inaugural Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary. She is also the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral.
In 1995 Kelly was awarded Denison’s Grace Lyon Alumnae Award, presented to distinguished female graduates by the Department of Women’s Studies and the Office of Women’s Programs. She was also the recipient of a number of awards and scholarships during her student years. Kelly is an active participant in the Ecumenical Associate of Third World Theologians, the Society for the Study of Black Religion, and the American Academy of Religion.
In 1995 Kelly was awarded Denison’s Grace Lyon Alumnae Award, presented to distinguished female graduates by the Department of Women’s Studies and the Office of Women’s Programs. She was also the recipient of a number of awards and scholarships during her student years. Kelly is an active participant in the Ecumenical Associate of Third World Theologians, the Society for the Study of Black Religion, and the American Academy of Religion.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 27, 2023
Another book I read for AAS-325 Black Love with Dr. Stewart.
Don't let the three stars dissuade you. This book contains excellent analysis about race dynamics in America as well as the history and current pervasiveness of white supremacy. It dives deep into racial symbolism like Confederate monuments and religious iconography. It also presents some compelling ideas about dismantling the anti-Black narrative through reparations (focused on the past but also the future), racial proximity, establishing a new moral imaginary, prioritizing underrepresented voices, and ensuring that positive Black experiences are showcased while negative representations are taken down.
However, in class we heavily critiqued Douglas's notion of America's "soul" as something separate and uncorrupt from current society's ideology. Our class largely agreed that America's soul has always been corrupt because it was founded on principles of stolen land and enslaved people. At best, America's "soul" is amoral, and even if it can be saved, it isn't pure in this present moment.
Personally, I also struggled with her more faith-based arguments. I think a lot of her ideas are applicable to a wider audience, but she pushes her suggestions for faith leaders. I think white people as a whole, or any white community leader, should attempt to integrate her solutions into everyday life. I also don't think enough people attend Church nowadays for communities of faith to be the groups that can dismantle white supremacy/anti-Blackness. They will definitely play a role in the struggle, but I believe it will require many more community organizations.
Overall, an incredibly enlightening read, and a book that touches on very contemporary issues of racial justice while including the history that informs where we are today.
Don't let the three stars dissuade you. This book contains excellent analysis about race dynamics in America as well as the history and current pervasiveness of white supremacy. It dives deep into racial symbolism like Confederate monuments and religious iconography. It also presents some compelling ideas about dismantling the anti-Black narrative through reparations (focused on the past but also the future), racial proximity, establishing a new moral imaginary, prioritizing underrepresented voices, and ensuring that positive Black experiences are showcased while negative representations are taken down.
However, in class we heavily critiqued Douglas's notion of America's "soul" as something separate and uncorrupt from current society's ideology. Our class largely agreed that America's soul has always been corrupt because it was founded on principles of stolen land and enslaved people. At best, America's "soul" is amoral, and even if it can be saved, it isn't pure in this present moment.
Personally, I also struggled with her more faith-based arguments. I think a lot of her ideas are applicable to a wider audience, but she pushes her suggestions for faith leaders. I think white people as a whole, or any white community leader, should attempt to integrate her solutions into everyday life. I also don't think enough people attend Church nowadays for communities of faith to be the groups that can dismantle white supremacy/anti-Blackness. They will definitely play a role in the struggle, but I believe it will require many more community organizations.
Overall, an incredibly enlightening read, and a book that touches on very contemporary issues of racial justice while including the history that informs where we are today.
July 30, 2023
Well researched book. Being relatively young (39) and growing up in Texas I found the first portion of the book to by eye opening! It’s amazing how much history is not taught in our schools. The author did an amazing job at giving voice and providing space for this perspective and I am grateful for that gift. The author does seem to repeat herself a lot which can become rather repetitive. The second portion of the book provides faith leaders with things to think about to enhance their preaching and design spaces of study in their communities to tackle this difficult and painful imaginary we find ourselves in. Her vulnerability to sharing her testimony at the end and all throughout the book really, motivates me to want to create change in my own faith community. The book got my wheels turning.
January 17, 2022
Kelly Brown Douglas invites us into her personal journey of wrestling with the white supremacist/anti-Black narrative that continues to haunt and terrorize black life in the ongoing experiment of American democracy. As a theologian, she leans in to interrogate her faith to find that beyond what she calls the crucifying realities of black life, there is a resurrection hope in Christ that reminds us that indeed, Black Lives DO matter AND will matter and we have reason to live our lives in anticipation of God’s just future.
July 12, 2024
Kelly Brown Douglas gives us a personal gem.
Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas has given is a book from the passion and pains of being black in America. As usual, her insights and abilities are full display as she interrogates and explains Whiteness fabric of the USA. Yet, she offers hope, both theologically and practically. I believe what she has recommended as concrete steps to ressurect hope make this worth the read.
Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas has given is a book from the passion and pains of being black in America. As usual, her insights and abilities are full display as she interrogates and explains Whiteness fabric of the USA. Yet, she offers hope, both theologically and practically. I believe what she has recommended as concrete steps to ressurect hope make this worth the read.
January 7, 2023
Religious hope truly is wild...
Another academic book with no real suggestion to help fix the problem. Douglass does a great job outlining the crazy amount of violence towards Black people. However, it seems that the way to keep hope is just a matter of religious madness in every sense of the word.
Another academic book with no real suggestion to help fix the problem. Douglass does a great job outlining the crazy amount of violence towards Black people. However, it seems that the way to keep hope is just a matter of religious madness in every sense of the word.
June 14, 2023
Kelly Brown Douglas is always challenging, especially to people of faith. In this case, she is ultimately hopeful,but it seems to me, cautiously so. So much of the book can be depressing, as it seems nothing will ever change, but the conclusion gives me just the slightest bit of optimism that my, and so many others' work for social justice, may be a positive force for change.
May 8, 2024
Real talk about the crucifying death that continues to be perpetrated by dominant white American culture against Black Americans. And an appeal to all peoples, and especially white Christians to have faith in resurrection through opposing ongoing crucifixion, telling the truth about the past, and reshaping a life-giving future for us all.
July 20, 2022
It’s a great book and I loved that it was a quick read. We need these types of books to complement the very dense ones. This is another great book that pulls together lots of ideas and theology into one volume.
June 5, 2023
Brilliant, clear, and providing a way into undoing the miasma of anti-Black culture that supports anti-Black action. This has been missing in much that I've read which is reasonably action-focused.
Read
June 7, 2022Kelly Brown Douglas explains well how white supremacy is still the framework of society and center of knowing. She connects well Christianity’s complicity and theological undergirding of white supremacy as well. She does an excellent job of critiquing white silence, especially religious leaders, and gives a way forward for such people. I do wish she had dug more into Scripture and expounded on resurrection hope. I think she did an excellent job on deconstruction, but reconstruction was on the weak side. still, a worthwhile read and a tough read for the thin skinned. That’s why I think it’s worth wrestling over.
April 29, 2022
KBD pulls back the curtain of her text exchanges with her son during a summer of Black death and protest.
Walks with her son through his own James Baldwin moment, the struggle to pledge allegiance to a country that has not pledged allegiance to Black people.
A theodicy set off by her son’s questions and stirred by her own curiosities about white silence in the face of black suffering.
Author of The Black Christ (1994), KBD is known for reimagining James H. Cone’s Black Jesus in solidarity not only with Black people but with all oppressed people. When this identification with Blackness does not bring peace to her son who as a Black man is two and a half times more likely to be shot by police, KBD realizes she has been “stuck in” a Christology that affirms death more than life.
Equally disconcerting is uncovering anti-Black narratives and white supremacy that “fosters death of Black bodies,” in the very architecture of Christian theology.
A quest to address her son’s questions, to affirm in the face of crucifying realities of Black death that Black lives do matter.
While KBD does not claim this to be a historical work, she traces a “corrupt moral imaginary” from Greek and European philosophies to American Puritans and politicians who imported the invented hierarchy of race that justified chattel slavery. Quotes white supremacist thought in Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Donald Trump, Draws many comparisons of Trump and Wilson, but I wanted to know more about how presidents between perpetuated white supremacy as well.
Since this corrupt moral imaginary, the “white gaze” that wants to dominate, own, and consume everything it surveys, has never been dealt with, anti-Black narratives and white supremacy persist in ever adapting ways organizing white cheating and Black death.
In the midst of George Floyd’s murder, protests, KBD finds ways to keep moving toward life instead of giving in to Afropessimism or despair of the crucifying realities of Black death.
Discovers in the silence of white people a “social cultural epistomological privilege” that is unable to envision a nation where lives are equally valued, a “white gaze” that can’t see and critique itself but demonizes and others those it must be opposed to because it views white as good and black as evil.
Calls clergy, white in particular, to do their own first works over and lead the way in changing the corrupt moral imaginary. For example, lovingly explains to white colleagues the difference between white concepts of forgiveness as palliative to anger. She said white clergy often point to exemplary forgiveness like Botham Jean’s brother or the members of Charleston AME Church. Black anger, she says, is first a sign that God will prevail, power over racism. Black forgiveness is an act of liberation for the victim of violence from the cycle of hate.
Finally, Black forgiveness holds a prophetic rage like Amos and Jesus in the temple. “It is a love that rages.” Forgive them for they know not what they do is a call for God to release crucifiers from the cycle of crucifying sin and oppression.
Walks with her son through his own James Baldwin moment, the struggle to pledge allegiance to a country that has not pledged allegiance to Black people.
A theodicy set off by her son’s questions and stirred by her own curiosities about white silence in the face of black suffering.
Author of The Black Christ (1994), KBD is known for reimagining James H. Cone’s Black Jesus in solidarity not only with Black people but with all oppressed people. When this identification with Blackness does not bring peace to her son who as a Black man is two and a half times more likely to be shot by police, KBD realizes she has been “stuck in” a Christology that affirms death more than life.
Equally disconcerting is uncovering anti-Black narratives and white supremacy that “fosters death of Black bodies,” in the very architecture of Christian theology.
A quest to address her son’s questions, to affirm in the face of crucifying realities of Black death that Black lives do matter.
While KBD does not claim this to be a historical work, she traces a “corrupt moral imaginary” from Greek and European philosophies to American Puritans and politicians who imported the invented hierarchy of race that justified chattel slavery. Quotes white supremacist thought in Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Donald Trump, Draws many comparisons of Trump and Wilson, but I wanted to know more about how presidents between perpetuated white supremacy as well.
Since this corrupt moral imaginary, the “white gaze” that wants to dominate, own, and consume everything it surveys, has never been dealt with, anti-Black narratives and white supremacy persist in ever adapting ways organizing white cheating and Black death.
In the midst of George Floyd’s murder, protests, KBD finds ways to keep moving toward life instead of giving in to Afropessimism or despair of the crucifying realities of Black death.
Discovers in the silence of white people a “social cultural epistomological privilege” that is unable to envision a nation where lives are equally valued, a “white gaze” that can’t see and critique itself but demonizes and others those it must be opposed to because it views white as good and black as evil.
Calls clergy, white in particular, to do their own first works over and lead the way in changing the corrupt moral imaginary. For example, lovingly explains to white colleagues the difference between white concepts of forgiveness as palliative to anger. She said white clergy often point to exemplary forgiveness like Botham Jean’s brother or the members of Charleston AME Church. Black anger, she says, is first a sign that God will prevail, power over racism. Black forgiveness is an act of liberation for the victim of violence from the cycle of hate.
Finally, Black forgiveness holds a prophetic rage like Amos and Jesus in the temple. “It is a love that rages.” Forgive them for they know not what they do is a call for God to release crucifiers from the cycle of crucifying sin and oppression.
June 7, 2023
An excellent, accessible, one-stop-shop introduction to the entanglements of Christianity and race in the U.S.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews