Pragmatic Spirituality by Gayraud S. Wilmore

Glaude concludes his provocative pronouncement with what Jonathan Walton refers to below as “a prophetic challenge.” What has finally died, Glaude explains, is the idea of the black church as a singular idea what remains are black churches, in the plural.

And while it is a brief article, short on the conventions of mourning, in it Glaude details the long, lingering illness of the venerable institution, and cites multiple causes of death. published an obituary for the black church in the Huffington Post-the Digital-Age equivalent of nailing a set of theses to a church door. This illuminating volume displays Wilmore's influence on the development of black theology for over fifty years, and introduces his work to a new generation of scholars.A few weeks ago, Princeton’s Eddie Glaude Jr. This book transcends a narrow Africentrism to call for a broad acquaintance with a historic motif in black faith that has to do with compassion, justice, equality, and the liberation of all people. Pragmatic Spirituality incorporates some of the most engaging of Wilmore's voluminous writings to reinstate a persistent that black or Africentric faith transposes itself from basically numinous and ecstatic elements in African and African diasporic religions to the immediate and practical work of healing and empowering the poor and marginalized. This book presents a view of the Christian faith and life at variance with the quest for personal sanctity by emphasizing communal empowerment for humanization and justice.

Each chapter has been thoroughly reviewed and where appropriate reworked for this volume in order to create a coherent work which reveals a consistent 'pragmatic spirituality' in African and African American religious practice. The volume makes available for the first time several of Wilmore's previously unpublished essays, including a new chapter on womanist theology written for this book. Pragmatic Spirituality brings together some of his most compelling writings to speak to continuing issues in African American Christianity and black theology. Wilmore, an internationally renowned scholar of the history of the African American church, is one of the founders of black theology and author of Black Religion and Black Radicalism.

Pragmatic Spirituality by Gayraud S. Wilmore