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If God Still Breathes, Why Can't I?

Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

A challenge to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy that calls into question how Christians are taught more about the way of Whiteness than the way of Jesus
Angela Parker wasn’t just trained to be a biblical scholar; she was trained to be a White male biblical scholar. 

She is neither White nor male. 

Dr. Parker’s experience of being taught to forsake her embodied identity in order to contort herself into the stifling construct of Whiteness is common among American Christians, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. This book calls the power structure behind this experience what it is: White supremacist authoritarianism. 

Drawing from her perspective as a Womanist New Testament scholar, Dr. Parker describes how she learned to deconstruct one of White Christianity’s most pernicious lies: the conflation of biblical authority with the doctrines of inerrancy and infallibility. As Dr. Parker shows, these doctrines are less about the text of the Bible itself and more about the arbiters of its interpretation—historically, White males in positions of power who have used Scripture to justify control over marginalized groups. 

This oppressive use of the Bible has been suffocating. To learn to breathe again, Dr. Parker says, we must “let God breathe in us.” We must read the Bible as authoritative, but not authoritarian. We must become conscious of the particularity of our identities, as we also become conscious of the particular identities of the biblical authors from whom we draw inspiration. And we must trust and remember that as long as God still breathes, we can too.

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    • Booklist

      September 7, 2021
      Parker, assistant professor of New Testament and Greek at Mercer University School of Theology, questions Biblical interpretation through the white supremacist lens. In her classes, Parker challenges the norm of learning to be a white male Biblical scholar. She instead asks her students to consider their own relationships with the Bible and encourages critical thinking by applying specific chapters and verses to their arguments instead of simply using the Bible itself as the authority. She also discusses the use of microaggressions and gaslighting to stifle any challenge to the way white supremacists wield the Bible like a weapon, and how damaging they are to scholars who don't fit the white, male, eurocentric mold. As she concludes, moving from ""stifled breath to full throated faith"", she interprets Galatians 2:16 as ""making it home,"" and asserts that we as humans have a call to ensure we all make it home, no matter what our race. While this is mostly a scholarly work, Parker includes anecdotes from her life experiences, including as the target of racism, to personalize and illustrate her points.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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