Benjamin Mays's The Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature outlined a tradition of African American God-talk from the eighteenth century. Mays identified a black social Christianity, what he called "the ethical approach," that recognized why oppressed people "emphasize the justice of God." In doing so, he hoped the book would motivate a new kind of politically informed black religious leadership. In the midst of writing The Negro's God, Mays traveled to India. This essay examines how the Indian independence movement (...) and meeting Gandhi motivated and gave meaning to Mays's work. (shrink)

Postcolonial theory ought to inform how we do Christian social ethics in North America. This essay engages postcolonial critiques of the "impossibility" that intellectuals can address the needs of unrepresented groups. It also examines postcolonial theorists' move to localize European thinking and, in so doing, to recognize European thinking as both "indispensable and inadequate" to justice-oriented work. The essay engages contemporary post-colonial theory with the writing and work of Howard Thurman, William Stuart Nelson, and Bayard Rustin, midcentury black American Christian (...) intellectuals, in order to show how postcolonial theory may be useful for contemporary Christian social ethics. (shrink)