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This groundbreaking collection presents early work by African American and Asian biblical scholars whose influence on biblical hermeneutics pushed the academy beyond historical critical methods toward readings that engaged struggles for justice, self-determination, and freedom. Katie Geneva Cannon, Kwok Pui Lan, and Vincent L. Wimbush explore theoretical frameworks for biblical interpretation. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Renita Weems, Clarice J. Martin, and Sheila Briggs’s readings of texts from Psalms, Hosea, Acts, and Philippians demonstrate liberating responses that challenge Euro-American interpretation and racial rhetoric.

Contents

Introduction

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

Slave Ideology and Biblical Interpretation

Katie Geneva Cannon

Discovering the Bible in the Non-Biblical World

Kwok Pui Lan

Historical/Cultural Criticism as Liberation: A Proposal for an African American Biblical Hermeneutic

Vincent L. Wimbush

“Mother to the Motherless, Father to the Fatherless”: Power, Gender, and Community in an Afrocentric Biblical Tradition

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes

Gomer: Victim of Violence or Victim of Metaphor?

Renita J. Weems

A Chamberlain’s Journey and the Challenge of Interpretation for Liberation

Clarice J. Martin

Can an Enslaved God Liberate? Hermeneutical Reflections on Philippians 2:6–11

Sheila Briggs

Katie Geneva Cannon (1950-2018) was Annie Scales Rogers Professor of Christian Social Ethics at

Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Virginia. She was a womanist theologian, ethicist, and the first African American woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Cannon was the author of Black Womanist Ethics (1988) and Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community (1995). She coedited The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology (2014) and Womanist Theological Reader (2011).