The text of this article is only available as a PDF.
Footnotes
1 Juliet Eliperin,
“Critics Pounce after Obama Talks Crusades, Slavery at Prayer Breakfast,”
Washington Post
, 5 February 2015
, http://wapo.st/1ugu8JG.2 The Companion Anas ibn Malik is said to have heard this according to Sahih al-Bukhari, vol.
1
, book 2, Hadith 15, https://sunnah.com/bukhari/2.3 Barack Obama,
“Remarks by the President at the National Prayer Breakfast”
(Washington Hilton, Washington, DC
, 5 February 2015
), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/05/remarks-president-national-prayer-breakfast.4 The name for this approach comes from Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s study of Scripture as a “human activity … human propensity, and potentiality” (
What Is Scripture: A Comparative Approach
[Minneapolis
: Fortress
, 1993
], 237
).5 My thesis regarding critical examination of Scripture is heavily informed by the work of two scholarly circles, the Institute for Signifying Scriptures and the Society for Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts.
6 Shannel T. Smith’s “hermeneutics of ambiveilence,” suggests that scriptural engagement can simultaneously “signify victimization by, and … participation in” dominance (The Woman Babylon and the Marks of Empire: Reading Revelation with a Postcolonial Womanist Hermeneutics of Ambiveilence, Emerging Scholars [
Minneapolis
: Fortress
, 2014
], 12
).7 Christopher Shea,
“The Nature-Nurture Debate, Redux,”
Chronicle Review: A Weekly Magazine of Ideas
55
, no. 18
(2009
): B6–B9.8 DC Talk,
“Colored People,”
lyrics by Toby McKeehan and George Cocchini, on Jesus Freak, Gotee Records, 1995
.9 Emerson B. Powery and Rodney S. Sadler Jr.,
The Genesis of Liberation: Biblical Interpretation in the Antebellum Narratives of the Enslaved
(Louisville
: Westminster John Knox
, 2016
), 83
–111
.10 James Madison,
“Letter to Marquis de Lafayette, November 25 1820,”
in The Writings of James Madison
, vol. 9
, 1819–1836
(New York
: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
, 1910
), 37
, https://books.google.com/books?id=e5M5AQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA35&ots=D90wmyclE9&dq=james%20madison%20to%20lafayette%20november%2025%201820&pg=PA37#v=onepage&q=original%20sin&f=false.12 Abraham Lincoln,
“Gettysburg Address,”
19 November 1863
, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/gettyb.asp.13 Dennis Lewis,
“The White House Was, in Fact, Built by Slaves,”
Smithsonian.com, 26 July 2016
, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/white-house-was-fact-built-slaves180959916/.14 Frederick Douglass,
“The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”
(Rochester, NY
, 5 July 1852
), http://masshumanities.org/files/programs/douglass/speech_complete.pdf.15
Ibid.
(emphasis added).16 Negro Spiritual,
“Go Down Moses,”
in The African American Experience: Black History and Culture through Speeches, Letters, Editorials, Poems, Songs, and Stories
, ed. Kai Wright (New York
: Black Dog & Leventhal
, 2001
), 106
.17 Lincoln,
“Gettysburg Address.”
18 Martin Luther King Jr., Address before the National Press Club, 19 July
1962
, in Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.
, ed. James Melvin Washington (San Francisco
: HarperOne
, 1986
), 101
.19 Martin Luther King Jr.,
“I Have a Dream,”
28 August 1963
, in Wright, African American Experience
, 531
–33
.20 Glenn Beck, Twitter Post, 16 March
2013
, 9:52 PM, https://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/313120671297306624?lang=en.21 Josh Sanburn,
“All the Ways Darren Wilson Described Being Afraid of Michael Brown,”
Time
, 25 November 2014
, http://time.com/3605346/darren-wilson-michael-brown-demon/.22 Bree Newsome,
“This Flag Comes Down Today”
(Columbia, SC), 27 June 2015
. Video recording by The Tribe, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr-mt1P94cQ.23 Assata Shakur,
“To My People,”
4 July 1973
, http://www.assatashakur.org/mypeople.htm (emphasis added).24 Michel de Certeau,
“The Scriptural Economy,”
in The Practice of Everyday Life
(Berkeley
: University of California Press
, 1984
), 131
–53
.25 I am thinking here of Christopher Driscoll’s reflection on The Last Poets’
1971
song “The White Man’s Got a God Complex” in his essay “On the Journey to White Shame,” Marginalia
, 8 December 2014
, http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/mrblog-journey-white-shame-christopher-driscoll/.26 Harriot Stanton Blatch,
Challenging Years: The Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch
(New York
: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
, 1940
), 17
.© 2017 Society of Biblical Literature
2017
This content is made freely available by the publisher. It may not be redistributed or altered. All rights reserved.
Issue Section:
JBL Forum