Reviews for Prophesy Deliverance!: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity

The average rating for Prophesy Deliverance!: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-01-18 00:00:00 Joshua Rogers Those who have had Cornel West as their teacher never forget him. For the rest of us, this book is as close as we get to the West of the classroom. We watch him posing questions, opening up problems by typologies, bringing his students immense intellectual distances in a short time, and making it all look easy. The core argument here is about the roots of White supremacy; the core narrative, about African-Americans' political response to that ideology. West is an independent leftist, beholden to no party or theory: He draws on Foucault, various Marxisms, and most of all (though not always overtly) on the prophetic insight of Black Christians into their spiritual situation. The book makes a terrific conversation-starter. As a scholar, I want something meatier, more complete; but as a teacher, I can't ask for a more inspiring model. Much of what's in here was West's half of a course, co-taught at Union Theological Seminary with James Cone, on Black theology and Marxism. I mention that, not simply to toot my school's horn, but to explain this book's striking aporias. West is presupposing that you know a particular telling of Black theology and history, represented by Cone's essays of the late '70s and early '80s (if you need something in book form, try God of the Oppressed or For My People) and Gayraud Wilmore's Black Religion and Black Radicalism.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-09 00:00:00 Dani Marcushevic Thisseminal work is a completely unique look at the history of modernity, racism, religion, & marxism through the Afro-American experience. While the book covers a lot of ground, a few of the ideas he develop really stand out. - West presents a unique genealogy of American racism tying it's develop directly to historical contingencies in the history of the Enlightment. He builds his case for a revolutionary black Christianity by establishing the roots of Modern European modernity, inherited into hegemonic American culture, as inextricably linked to white supremacy and racism (Chapter 2) - He also does an excellent job of presenting the various strands of marxist thought to mainstream using American mainstream religions as analogies. Falwell's mega churches are to Leninism / Stalism as liberation theology is to Socialist Councilism. Worth reading the last chapter to familiarize this framework (Chapter 5) - Impressively, West calls his shot 40 years ago by anticipating the rise of an intersectional people's movement towards socialism comprised of different marginalized elements, including ecologists, black marxists, feminists, anti-imperialists / indigenous movements, labor, etc. This argument seems more descriptive than speculative today.