Dogged Strength within the Veil

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Using the writings of W.E.B. DuBois, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and others, Young seeks insights from the African American experience to break through the oppressiveness of a Christianity corrupted by white notions of power, suggesting a return to the gospel. He cites personal experiences from two study trips to Africa and the writings of Africans to uncover parallels in that continent s spiritual traditions to a Christianity based on the mysterious love of God. In particular, he sees true interpretations of the Gospel in the work of African Christians like Engelbert Mveng, a Jesuit who was murdered in his native Cameroon for advocating human rights, but whose writings invested Christian symbols with their original energy. Josiah Ulysses Young III is Professor of Systematic Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. and is the author of No Difference in the Fare: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Problem of Racism, A Pan-African Theology Providence and the Legacies of the Ancestors, and other books.

Reviews

"Confronting the Hegelian mythos of master-slave dialectic, Young weaves a tapestry form the likes of Baldwin, Du Bois, and Morrison in conversation with Levinas, Moltmann, and Pannenberg to embrace an Africana spirituality steeped in the mysterious love of God that resists injustice. With this confrontation, Young shouts "No!" to the shackles of enslavement, challenging the standards set by Western Christianity of privileged whiteness as oppposed to the really real message of the Jew named Jesus. In this his jazz oeuvre, Young waxes poetically, with riffs and solos that engage an implied theodicy and delivers a third person hope." Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Ph.D., Director, Center for Women and Religion, Graduate Theological Union--Sanford Lakoff
"Josiah Ulysses Young's, Dogged Strength Within the Veil, utilizes the methodology and approach of the Historian of Religion Charles H. Long to brilliantly explicate the religious nature of the Black Experience through an insightful application and interrogation of descriptive categories signifying that experience found in anthropological studies of African Religion as well as the literary works of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and most particularly, W. E. B. Du Bois. Young also does a masterful job in bringing significant works of such European thinkers as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jurgen Moltmann to bear on the way he reflects on the Black Experience." James Noel, San Francisco Theological Seminary--Sanford Lakoff

Author Bio

Josiah Ulysses Young III is Professor of Systematic Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. and is the author of No Difference in the Fare: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Problem of Racism, A Pan-African Theology: Providence and the Legacies of the Ancestors, and other books.