25 Years On… African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures

On April 11-13, 2024, the Institute for Signifying Scriptures will be hosting a special annual meeting to commemorate two momentous occasions: The 20th Anniversary of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures and the 25th Anniversary of the African Americans and the Bible Project. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be highlighting some media to help you get excited about the meeting. I hope you’ll join us in Atlanta. I believe there will be a virtual element, but be there with us live and in technicolor if you can.

The African American and the Bible project was a landmark symposium investigating the myraid intersections of Black people and the Bible in the United States. Transgressing disciplines and media forms, scholars met at Union Theological Seminary to raise questions about the meanings trafficked at this intersection. It wasn’t a quest to find Black people within the canon or a liberative hermeneutic for Black people. African Americans and the Bible laid out an agenda for critically studying, as the accompanying anthology’s subtitle states, “sacred texts and social textures.”

Catch a glimpse of the conference below.

The podcast below has voices from some of the participants. It’s a powerhouse lineup with Profs. Tat-siong Benny Liew, Velma Love, and Grey Gundaker.

Reading Darkness: Reflecting on the African Americans and the Bible Conference after 25 Years

The African Americans and the Bible conference and volume didn’t come on to my radar until the early years of my doctoral education at Claremont Graduate Unviersity and the ISS. That said, the anthology’s Table of Contents is filled with scholars like Prof. Abraham Smith, who shaped my own intellectual formation. I think what stands out to me about this is that this event gave license to a kind of scholarhip on the Bible that wasn’t easily housed in a seminary, biblical studies guild meeting, hermenutical commentary, or graduate program. The questions being raised and the risks being taken were seemingly too out there to fit into these traditional categories. In an era, when biblical scholars are just beginning to embrace Stony the Road We Trod, I wonder if African Americans and the Bible will have a resurgence in the schoarly discourse.

I know that without that volume, conducting my own research agenda would have been (and would be, today) far more difficult.