I will be presenting a paper at the SBL Southwestern Region conference which will be held in  March 12-14, 2010 in  North Dallas, Texas. If you live or  are in the Dallas/Fort Worth area drop me an email so we can have coffee.  My paper proposal is noted below:

Theologizing The Black Atlantic, Black Liberation Theology In  A Cosmpolitan

Context : From Dutty Boukman to James Cone

By Celucien L. Joseph (University of Texas at Dallas)

In this paper I point out the confluences and connections in four texts written by four individuals of African descent. These include my analysis of three poems, one text, and one religions prayer which articulate and represent a common black religious consciousness. I consider particularly the common themes of liberty, freedom, resistance, and vindication embedded in those passages, in the tradition of Black Liberation Theology.  I begin with Dutty Boukman’s prayer of liberty. In the night of August 22, 1791, which initiated the Haitian Revolution, Dutty Bookman, an ex-slave and a religious leader,  gattered former slaves and uttered the most important prayer in the Slave religious tradition: “Coute la liberte li pale nan coeur nous tous…” (“Listen to the voice of liberty which speaks in the hearts of all of us…”). Libète pwoklame (liberty proclaimed),  libète chante (liberty sung) have then become a myth of the African Diasporic religious experiences. The phrase informs us about the historical tyranny of oppression and suffering, and the collective cry of people of African descent  in the pursuit of freedom, universal emancipation,  and human dignity.

Consequently, I situate the prayer of Boukman in the tradition of Black Religious practice and Africana constructive theological heritage. I then read the four following pieces: Countee Cullen’s “Heritage,” Langston Hughes’ “Goodbye Christ,” and James Cone’s “God of the Oppressed” in the light of Boukamn’s historical prayer. My objective is to demonstrate the parallels between Boukman and Cullen, Hughes and James Cone, and [inter-] connections, respectively. I argue that Boukman’s prayer is probably the earliest attempt to articulate a Black Liberation Theology of freedom and therefore is perhaps the seedbed of Africana Liberation Theology. I insist that the prayer of Boukman envisioned a new theological conversation in forms of vindication and collective solidarity across the Black Atlantic.

The Schedule

Sunday, 8:30a – 10:30a

Theme: Applied Theology

Presider: Celucien L. Joseph, University of Texas at Dallas

Sunday, 11:00 – 12:30p

Theme: Freedom, Resistance, and Vindication

Presider: Ashley Squires, University of Texas at Austin

11:00 – 11:30 Richard Brumback, Baylor University

Everything is Permissible: Ivan Karamazov and Genocide

11:30 – 12:00 Celucien L. Joseph, University of Texas at Dallas

Theologizing the Black Atlantic, Black Liberation Theology in a Cosmopolitan Context: From Dutty Boukman to James Cone

12:00 – 12:30 Jenny Caplan, Syracuse University

Images of Native Americans in Comic Books

You can find further details about the conference below.

Southwestern Region

The Southwestern region includes Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri.

2010 Southwestern Regional Meeting:
March 12-14, 2010
Marriott Hotel DFW North, Dallas, Texas

Answer:

1. “That question is illogica If someone created God, then clearly God could not have created everybody or anyone.”
2. “God doesn’t exist in the universe.
   He existed before creation.
   Therefore he is not part of that which is created.”
3. “Well, if God has existed for an infinite amount of time, then he would have always existed, which means that he/she/it would never have been created in the first place.”

Source: Yahoo answers

A Review of The Gospel of Christ in Romans: Righteousness and Life From Grace. Thanks to Abigail Davidson  of WinePress Group for the review copy.

The author of this book, Jerry Seright, was a missionary in Northeast Brazil. Seright currently serves as  the preaching pastor of South MacArthur Church of Christ located in Irving Texas. The book was originally published in Portuguese for a Brazilian audience and was later translated into English. Righteousness and Life from Grace, as the author states, is the result of  a newspaper study  and the author’s personal encounter with the Text.

Righteousness and Life from Grace is a succinct exposition of the Epistle of Romans. It includes no more than eighty pages of authorial interaction and  experience (s) with the text. Five brief chapters are given to the treatment of the first six chapters of Romans.  The title of the chapters below reveal authorial understanding of the letter and its structure:

The Life Within Our Reach (1:17)

From Where We Came: The World of Sin (1:18-3:20)

Righteousness and Life From Grace (5:1-21)

That Grace Might Continue (6:1-23)

Seright treats the book of Romans rather the first six chapters as a dramatic scene and experience, yet with a theological content. Hence he gives a performative function to the characters (i.e. God, man, Jesus Christ, Jews, Gentiles) and elements (i.e. sin, man’s condition, grace of God, righteousness of God, the law, salvation, etc) of the book, which of course, collaboratively direct and determine the course of the Epistle.

Seright connects God’s righteousness with the preaching of the Gospel (8), an insight  of paramount importance. He writes, “God’s righteousness! The very possibility of it was sufficient to dominate [Paul’s] his thinking (8).  Further, the author argues that the goal of the “whole epistle to the Romans is a declaration of how, through Christ, God funneled His grace to man” (3). If this is correct, as I concur, Romans does not present us with a “system, but with a man,” Jesus Christ himself (ibid).

The author is convinced that in the letter of Romans one will find “the proclamation of the Gospel and enough of the story of justification of Christ to have the beginning and end” (XIV). Nonetheless, Seright deals only in passing with “the meaning of the Gospel” and the doctrine of “justification by faith” which for many dominate the letter. The righteousness of God, the Gospel of Grace, faith, grace, law, or “the law” received little treatment.  Romans 3:21-26, a central section of the book and equally chapters four and five were poorly treated.  Nonetheless, what I found very helpful in  Righteousness and Life from Grace is the author’s friendly language, the insertion of chapter’s glossary which explains important and theologically-loaded terms and concepts in Romans.

Righteousness and Life from Grace lacks serious and rigorous theological interaction with the text; but will be practically helpful to serve as a [Bible] study guide to the Epistle of Romans.  I hope the author will complete the study to chapter 16.

About the Book

The Pentateuch is the foundation for understanding the Old Testament and the Bible as a whole. Yet through the centuries it has been probed and dissected, weighed and examined, its text peeled back for its underlying history, its discourse analyzed and its words weighed. Could there be any stone in Sinai yet unturned?

Surprisingly, there is. From a career of study, John Sailhamer sums up his perspective on the Pentateuch by first settling the hermeneutical question of where we should set our attention. Rather than focus on the history behind the text, Sailhamer is convinced that it is the text itself that should be our primary focus. Along the way he demonstrates that this was in fact the focus of many interpreters in the precritical era.

Persuaded of the singular vision of the Pentateuch, Sailhamer searches out clues left by the author and the later editor of the Pentateuch that will disclose the meaning of this great work. By paying particular attention to the poetic seams in the text, he rediscovers a message that surprisingly brings us to the threshold of the New Testament gospel.

Book Excerpts

Click here to view.

Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction

Part One: Approaching the Text as Revelation
1 Understanding the Nature and Goal of Old Testament Theology
2 Finding the Author’s Verbal Meaning
3 What Is the “Historical Meaning” of Biblical Texts?
4 Finding the Big Idea in the Final Composition of the Text

Part Two: Rediscovering the Composition of the Pentateuch Within the Tanak
5 Textual Strategies Within the Tanak
6 The Composition of the Pentateuch
7 Exploring the Composition of Legal Material in the Pentateuch

Part Three: Interpreting the Theology of the Pentateuch
8 The Nature of Covenant and Blessing in the Pentateuch
9 Is There a “Biblical Jesus” of the Pentateuch?
10 The Purpose of Mosaic Law in the Pentateuch
11 The Theme of Salvation in the Pentateuch

Conclusion
Author Index
Subject Index
Scripture Index

I also received a review copy of The Historical Jesus: Five Views by James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy (eds).

Table of Contents

The Historical Jesus: An Introduction
Paul Rhodes Eddy and James K. Beilby

1. Jesus at the Vanishing Point
Robert M. Price
Responses:
John Dominic Crossan
Luke Timothy Johnson
James D. G. Dunn
Darrell L. Bock

2. Jesus and the Challenge of Collaborative Eschatology
John Dominic Crossan
Responses:
Robert M. Price
Luke Timothy Johnson
James D. G. Dunn
Darrell L. Bock

3. Learning the Human Jesus: Historical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Luke Timothy Johnson
Responses:
Robert M. Price
John Dominic Crossan
James D. G. Dunn
Darrell L. Bock

4. Remembering Jesus: How the Quest of the Historical Jesus Lost Its Way
James D. G. Dunn
Responses:
Robert M. Price
John Dominic Crossan
Luke Timothy Johnson
Darrell L. Bock

5. The Historical Jesus: An Evangelical View
Darrell L. Bock
Responses:
Robert M. Price
John Dominic Crossan
Luke Timothy Johnson
James D. G. Dunn

About the Book

The scholarly quest for the historical Jesus has a distinguished pedigree in modern Western religious and historical scholarship, with names such as Strauss, Schweitzer and Bultmann highlighting the story. Since the early 1990s, when the Jesus quest was reawakened for a third run, numerous significant books have emerged. And the public’s attention has been regularly arrested by media coverage, with the Jesus Seminar or the James ossuary headlining the marquee.

The Historical Jesus: Five Views provides a venue for readers to sit in on a virtual seminar on the historical Jesus. Beginning with a scene-setting historical introduction by the editors, prominent figures in the Jesus quest set forth their views and respond to their fellow scholars.

On the one end Robert M. Price lucidly maintains that the probability of Jesus’ existence has reached the “vanishing point,” and on the other Darrell Bock ably argues that while critical method yields only a “gist” of Jesus, it takes us in the direction of the Gospel portraits. In between there are numerous avenues to explore, questions to be asked and “assured results” to be weighed. And John Dominic Crossan, Luke Timothy Johnson and James D. G. Dunn probe these issues with formidable knowledge and honed insight, filling out a further range of options.

The Historical Jesus: Five Views offers a unique entry into the Jesus quest. For both the classroom and personal study, this is a book that fascinates, probes and engages.

“Were I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be adoption through propitiation, and I do not expect ever to meet a richer or more pregnant summary of the gospel than that.” —J.I. Packer

Source: Of Firt Importance

Source: Time

The Best Inventions

1. The Best Invention of the Year: NASA’s Ares Rockets
2. The Tank-Bred Tuna
3. The $10 Million Lightbulb
4. The Smart Thermostat
5. Controller-Free Gaming
6. Teleportation
7. The Telescope for Invisible Stars
8. The AIDS Vaccine
9. Tweeting by Thinking
10. The Electric Eye
11. The Mercury Probe
12. The Personal Carbon Footprint
13. The Solar Shingle
14. The Handheld Ultrasound
15. The YikeBike
16. Vertical Farming
17. The Planetary Skin
18. The $20 Knee
19. A Watchdog for Financial Products
20. The Electric Microbe
21. The Bladeless Fan
22. The Custom Puppy
23. The Cyborg Beetle
24. The Biotech Stradivarius
25. The Nissan Leaf
26. The Robo-Penguin
27. The Universal Unicycle
28. YouTube Funk
29. Dandelion Rubber
30. Wooden Bones
31. The Living Wall
32. The School of One
33. The No-Punt Offense
34. The Human-Powered Vending Machine
35. The Handyman’s X-Ray Vision
36. Meat Farms
37. Packing, Improved
38. The Foldable Speaker
39. The Levitating Mouse
40. The Edible Race Car
41. The High-Speed Helicopter
42. The Supersuit
43. The Eyeborg
44. Spiderweb Silk
45. The Sky King
46. The Smart Bullet
47. The Fashion Robot
48. The 3-D Camera
49. The Newest Cloud
50. The World’s Fastest (Steam-Powered) Car

Lamentations do not belong only to biblical prophets and writers. Modern poets, too, lament. Many poets of African descent could be just called ”mourning poets.” They lament over social injustice, poverty, racism, discrimination, lyching, suffering, in particular mourn over a pre-colonial African culture and heritage which they never knew and experienced, before the tragic imposition of the systems of  colonialism and the historical violence of slavery and the slave trade. For example, in Ps. 137 we read:

By the rivers of Babylon,

There we sat down and wept,

When we remembered Zion

Upon the willows in the midst

of it

We hung our harps.

For there our captors demanded

of us songs,

and our tormentors mirth,

sayings,

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion”

(Ps. 137)

Exile is marked by a profound sense of despair, displacement and alienation and subsequently turns into an incessant quest for return and (self and collective) emancipation. The parallels between the ancient Israelites and modern African Diaspora are striking.  Just as the Jews were subjected to slavery and colonial rule, Black African Diaspora were enslaved and suffered under colonialism. Just as the ancient Israelites were captured and expelled from their homeland, the Black African Diaspora were forcibly removed from continental Africa.  As the Jews in Babylon anticipated a return to Zion, the Black Atlantic community continued to long for their promise land.   And finally in the exilic state the ancient Israelites were wondering: “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land”?  Black Africans in the Diaspora, however, did not sing or seek to chant a divine musical, rather they wept and mourned. Their song was/is a poetic of absence and homelessness, lament and alienation, forgetfulness and remembrance, nativistic and diasporic. “Their heritage was translated into feelings and hymns of sorrow caused not only by the severance from one’s land and clan but also from the human race and consequently from the center” (Delgado-Tall, The New Negro Movement 307).  For example the Haitian renowned poet and activist, Jacques Roumain remembers Africa in a nostalgic, existential, wistful, and melancholic tone,

Africa, I have preserved your memory, Africa

You are in me

Like the splinter in a wound

Like a totem in the heart of a village

(Jacques Roumain, Bois d’ebene 5)

In a poem rightly entitled “Enslaved,” Claude McKay sings the lament song of the Black Atlantic:

Oh, when I think of my long suffering race,

For weary centuries despised, oppressed

Enslaved are lynched, denied a human place

in the general life of the Christian West

and in the Black Land disinherited

Robbed in the ancient country of its birth

My heart grows sick with hate, becomes leads,

For this my race has no home on earth…

Langston Hughes, the Poet Laureate of the Harlem Renaissance, furthermore chants the inevitable American melody:

I am the American heartbreak–

Rock on which Freedom

Stumps its toe–

The great mistake

that Jamestown

Made long ago

In closing, many poets of African descent function as the conscience of the Black Diaspora of the Atlantic Triangular communities and play a similar role to biblical prophets. They warn their people of their condition, write about their lives, comfort them, exhort them, provide spiritual guidance, invoke collective consciousness, and stand in solidarity with them. In other words, just like biblical prophets black poets of the Africana intellectual tradition wear many hats. They  exhort, condemn, contest, revolt,  encourage, unify, and guide. Aime Cesaire of Martinique had a unique way of articulating black solidarity and ethnic transcendence:

“… I would come to this country of mine and say to it:” Embrace me without fear…And if all I know how to do is speak,

it is for you that I shall speak.” And I would say more:

“My lips shall speak for miseries that no mouth, my voice shall be the liberty of those who languish in the dungeon of

despair….”

(Aime Cesaire, “Cahier d’un retour au pays natal,” in The Negritude Poets: An Anthology of Translations from the French, 70)

Renown historian Marcus Rediker gave an informative lecture at Cornell University on the subject of  the Slave Trip: A Human History. Click on the link below to listen:

The Slave Trip: A Human History Lecture

Rediker is the author of the influential work, The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, and  The Slave Ship: A Human History.

“The sea is history” (Derek Walcott)

Source:  The Washington Times (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/19/conservative-lutherans-to-leave-synod/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_headlines)

By Julia Duin

Conservative members of America’s largest Lutheran denomination announced that they are splitting from the Chicago-based Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, making it the second mainline Protestant church to undergo a major schism over the issue of homosexuality and related matters of biblical authority.

The U.S. Episcopal Church has experienced a similar split, with whole dioceses attempting to leave, new Anglican churches formed and a series of property fights in the years since the 2003 consecration of Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

On Wednesday, an 11-member steering committee of Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal), meeting in New Brighton, Minn., said it cannot remain inside the 4.7-million-member ELCA after the denomination agreed at its August churchwide assembly in Minneapolis to ordain partnered gay clergy.

That decision, CORE said in a statement, created “a biblical and theological crisis throughout the ELCA and conflict in local congregations.” Click on the link below to finish reading

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/19/conservative-lutherans-to-leave-synod/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_headlines

“…The Kingdom of God needs a home to equal them – a spiritual oasis in the middle of downtown”  Dallas, pastor Robert Jeffress states.

Really? What Does God  desire, people of God? I did not know if the kingdom of God was about building projects, competing with other big kingdoms such as “spectacular temples of commerce.” ( http://ascendio.com/fbd/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4QRcaqxFC8)

“That’s the plan at First Baptist Church of Dallas… build a $130 million church complex in the Downtown Dallas arts district.

According to the Associated Baptist Press, First Baptist Church in Dallas has launched what leaders say will be the largest church-building campaign in modern history — a $130 million project that includes the congregation’s first entirely new sanctuary since the 1890s.

Once considered the largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention, First Baptist Church has declined from 25,000 members under its legendary pastor of 50 years, W.A. Criswell, to about 11,000 today.

Under leadership of Robert Jeffress, who took over as pastor in 2007, leaders say the church is growing again, but present facilities are inadequate for innovative ministries needed to reach today’s generation.

The plans for the church campus include a high-tech, 3,000-seat worship center, which will double the church’s current worship capacity. There will also be an education center and 500-space parking garage.

Several of seven major buildings currently in the church’s sprawling complex on six city blocks will be demolished to make way for construction. The current historic sanctuary will remain, with a steeple restored to its original height. It will continue to be used for weddings, funerals and special events.

New landmark features include a towering stone waterfall topped with a luminescent cross. A shallow pool surrounded by green space will provide both a common area for downtown residents and guests and a place for open-air baptism services.

“We’re creating what I like to call a spiritual oasis in the middle of downtown Dallas,” Jeffress said Oct. 3 on Dallas radio station KBCI. “It is going to be the most beautiful facility in downtown Dallas.”

What do you think?  A great plan or a total waste of money?  $130 million well spent or wasted?”

Source: Monday Morning Insight

http://mondaymorninginsight.com/blog/post/what_would_you_do_with_130_million_lets_build_a_church/