Kenyatta R. Gilbert

Becoming Human

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Pentecost is pedagogy for the human race. Turning toward the Spirit, Powery makes clear, implies a turning toward an incarnational God who sees difference differently and invites human beings to embrace their creatureliness as gift of the Spirit. Homiletics and cultural studies scholars will find here an academically robust, first-rate discussion on preaching and race, and religious practitioners will no doubt recognize that the wind of the Spirit has breathed on Powery’s pen.”

Deep Calls to Deep

History & Biography

“As the dean of a Historically Black divinity school, I read Deep Calls to Deep with deep gratitude and sober recognition. Yvette Blair-Lavallais asks us to imagine African American churches and communities--and American society more generally--without Historically Black Theological Institutions and, in doing so, names what is too often taken for granted. Centering a vanguard of innovative Black women academics and clergy leaders, she offers an insightful narrative of the remarkable founding and promising futures of the Big Six HBTIs, attending carefully to their vulnerabilities to market pressures, their strategies of resilience, and their resistance to the logics of empire and historical erasure. Read and be inspired by this timely and necessary work.”

King’s Speech

Preaching & Worship

“In King’s Speech Sunggu Yang ably gets behind the mystique of America’s twentieth-century prophet of social conscience and renders a careful appraisal of the social and spiritual environment that made King’s arresting preaching come alive. In a period fraught with violence and political polarization, Yang calls us to attune our ears once again to the timeless wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Learning from a Legend

Preaching & Worship

“It is the elder's voice that is little consulted by young preachers in our times; as a result, the signs of African American preaching's sacred historical and cultural legacy are increasingly disappearing. But there's hope for today's journeying preacher. In his timely work, homiletician border crosser Jared Alcantara proves why the sagely life of Gardner C. Taylor--the unequaled pulpit sage of the modern age--still speaks from the grave. Not only is it evident that Alcantara sat at Taylor's bedside, but this work also reveals that he has placed flowers at his grave. Taylor's life and work epitomized faithful globe-trotting on the blessed but uneven homiletical road. For pastor and teacher alike, this boundary-crossing book offers readers an updated roadmap for preaching the timely and timeless gospel of Jesus Christ authentically, biblically, imaginatively, and contextually, in partnership with the community. How shall we preach? With the Holy Bible in one hand and this travel companion in the other.”

Let the Church Say Amen

Preaching & Worship

“In Let the Church Say Amen!, Timothy Adkins-Jones gathers the cultural wisdom of a people who have historically co-labored with the preacher in the African-originated practice of call-and-response. Expanding the canon of Black homiletical scholarship as one of the most skilled postmodern theorist-practitioners in the discipline, Adkins-Jones reminds readers of the co-creative, co-revelationary revelationary power of Black Church worship, and why Black preaching, as a central element of it, is not reducible to one-off or one-act performances. Through careful examination of antiphonal practices that remain vibrant today, Adkins-Jones provides readers—irrespective of their cultural tribe—with a Black communal homiletic that honors the preached word as a liberative, radically inclusive, and embodied theological practice, incarnated in the preacher’s creative imagination and the congregation’s co-facilitation. Any serious student of the Black preaching traditions would be wise to secure this important work.”

Preaching and Music

Preaching & Worship

“Catherine Williams takes the global church into the practice rooms of spoken and sung word with a first of its kind homiletics textbook and demonstrates how ‘singing can preach and preaching can sing.’ With glossary and index, she introduces her integrative musico-homiletical method and also invites readers into the fascinating soundscape of African American preaching. Without romanticized intent, she shows how Africana music and homiletical practices transcend the theoretical codes and categories developed by Europeans, underscoring how cultural experiences involving music and proclamation reflect the Holy Spirit’s indifference to binaries which suggest that life is divisible in God’s world. Preaching and Music strikes the right chord and hits the right note!”

Theologies of the Gospel in Context

Preaching & Worship

“With yet another installment in The Promise of Homiletical Theology series, David Schnasa Jacobsen has established himself as the leading homiletical sage of contemporary homiletics. Conferring wisdom and pulling together a diverse cohort of emerging and veteran guild scholars, Jacobsen weaves together a revealing tapestry of essays that attend to the effects of colonialism, modernity, race, and capitalism on preaching.”

True to Our Native Land, Second Edition

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“The Black community's relationship with the Bible is complex. Historically, paradigms of interpretive practice have moved on a continuum of radical biblical criticism and textual inerrancy on one end and strategies for reading against problematic passages with suspicion and criticism on the other. The contributors to this second edition of True to Our Native Land collectively and compellingly profess that the Bible has an Africana story and that this truth-bearing communal declaration cannot be ignored. For inquisitive readers who are burdened by the call to speak truthfully in unsettling times on a planet we all hope will survive us, something of searching significance is captured in each commentary essay in this work. Here is an excellent biblical resource that bestows upon its readers, irrespective of their cultural creed or tribal commitment, the invaluable gift of encountering the Bible's timeless and timely witness anew with both head and heart.”