From Lament to Advocacy: Black Religious Education and Public Ministry is an edited volume by Anne E. Streaty Wimberly, Annie Lockhart-Gilroy, and Nathaniel D. West, and it includes eight contributions covering a wide array of topics concerning Black religious education and public ministry. The volume's purpose is to provide a viable, timely resource for a variety of Black educators, community leaders, and all like-minded people working for the empowerment of Black people in today's hostile environments. In doing so, the contributors touch on two fronts of the urgent issues concurrently: religious education and public ministry, which are often separated from each other. As the editors note, what this volume attempts to do is to bridge the gap between these two fronts and find a way to do effective, holistic education and ministry both within and outside the Black churches and communities. This is a marvelous attempt that does not separate what is happening to the community or church from what is happening in society.
In chapter 1, “Religious Education and Lament: Inviting Cries from the Heart, Guiding the Way Forward,” Anne Wimberly articulates the importance of expressing grief and lament as part of a grieving process and argues that lament or grieving should lead to meaning-making ultimately so that the grieving may be empowered to survive and envision a God-given future. In chapter 2, “Religious Educators Public Ministry Leaders,” Nathaniel West focuses on the role of the religious educator as public theologian, who must engage with the community and society at the same time to advocate for the downtrodden and the marginalized in the community and society. He argues that public theologians must be equipped well with Afrocentric practices and justice-seeking spirits. In chapter 3, “Religious Education and Communities of Learning and Practice: Inspiring Advocacy in Public Ministry,” Mary Young zeroes in on the role of religious education and the importance of the faith community, which must be the catalyst for the lives of Black people who need empowerment. In chapter 4, “Religious Education in Response to Black Lives Matter: A Case for Critical Pedagogy,” Joseph Crockett analyzes The Black Lives Matter movement and proposes that religious education along with critical pedagogy is needed to strengthen such a social movement. In chapter 5, “Religious Education and Womanist Formation: Mothering and the Reinterpretation of Body Politics,” Nancy Westfield discusses the importance of a womanist approach to religious education and emphasizes the role of African American Christian mothers who care for their children through caring spirit. In chapter 6, “Religious Education and Prison Ministry: Where Public Theology and Public Pedagogy Meet,” Sarah Farmer proposes a way of religious education that may help to improve criminal justice for the Black community. In chapter 7, “Religious Education and the Public Role of the Sister’s Keeper: A Historical Correlational Method,” Richelle White introduces two Christian educators from the early-twentieth-century: Nannie Helen Burroughs and Mary McLeod Bethune, who had exemplary works on fostering the education of Black girls. Finally, in chapter 8, “Religious Education for Making It Out of ‘Da Hood’: Spiritual Retreat Encounters for Youth and Young Adult Resilience and Spiritual Formation,” Cynthia Stewart discusses her experience with youth in the inner city of Chicago and emphasizes the importance of youth advocacy.
This book is worth reading each chapter like a book since it conveys volumes of insights about religious education and public ministry, and it can be studied on its own since there are tons of issues that need further discussion and reflection. Overall, this book attempts to bridge a gap between local church and society, between religious education and public ministry, between sacred and secular, and between academia and church. The point is that the lives of the Black do not stay in one place; they got stuck everywhere, so to speak. Therefore, what is needed is a holistic, comprehensive, new approach to matters of education and advocacy in church and society. I highly recommend this book not only to those who work for justice and transformation of the Black people but also to those who wish to understand the issues of religious education and public ministry in the African American context. As an Asian American biblical scholar, I am interested in cross-cultural transformative religious education, if any, and for this purpose, scholars of color can gather together to explore ways in which we can improve our understanding of religious education and public ministry in a global context.