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"In its comparative and dialogical approach, "Creating Ourselves" provides a model for the kind of scholarly work in which we might engage across the humanities. It also makes an important contribution to the popular culture studies, a field that is rarely in conversation with scholars of religion and theology."--Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of "If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday"

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CREATING OURSELVES

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments.........................................................................................................................................................ixIntroduction............................................................................................................................................................1Cultural Production and New Terrain: Theology, Popular Culture, and the Cartography of Religion, Anthony B. Pinn........................................................13Benjamn Valentn's Response............................................................................................................................................34Tracings: Sketching the Cultural Geographies of Latino/a Theology, Benjamn Valentn....................................................................................38Anthony B. Pinn's Response..............................................................................................................................................62Memory of the Flesh: Theological Reflections on Word and Flesh, Mayra Rivera............................................................................................69Traci C. West's Response................................................................................................................................................90Using Women: Racist Representations and Cross-Racial Ethics, Traci C. West..............................................................................................95Mayra Rivera's Response.................................................................................................................................................114This Day in Paradise: The Search for Human Fulfillment in Toni Morrison's Paradise, James H. Evans Jr...................................................................119Teresa Delgado's Response...............................................................................................................................................133Freedom Is Our Own: Toward a Puerto Rican Emancipation Theology, Teresa Delgado.........................................................................................138James H. Evans Jr.'s Response...........................................................................................................................................173The Browning of Theological Thought in the Hip-Hop Generation, Alex Nava................................................................................................181Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan's Response........................................................................................................................................199The Theo-poetic Theological Ethics of Lauryn Hill and Tupac Shakur, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan...............................................................................204Alex Nava's Response....................................................................................................................................................224TV "Profits": The Electronic Church Phenomenon and Its Impact on Intellectual Activity within African American Religious Practices, Jonathan Walton.....................231Joseph De Len's Response...............................................................................................................................................249Telenovelas and Transcendence: Social Dramas as Theological Theater, Joseph De Len.....................................................................................253Jonathan Walton's Response..............................................................................................................................................271Theology as Imaginative Construction: An Analysis of the Work of Three Latina Artists, Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia....................................................277Sheila F. Winborne's Response...........................................................................................................................................302The Theological Significance of Normative Preferences in Visual Art Creation and Interpretation, Sheila F. Winborne.....................................................306Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia's Response................................................................................................................................331She Put Her Foot in the Pot: Table Fellowship as a Practice of Political Activism, Lynne Westfield......................................................................339Angel F. Mndez Montoya's Response......................................................................................................................................356The Making of Mexican Mole and Alimentary Theology in the Making, Angel F. Mndez Montoya...............................................................................360Lynne Westfield's Response..............................................................................................................................................384Bibliography............................................................................................................................................................387Contributors............................................................................................................................................................405Index...................................................................................................................................................................409

Chapter One

CULTURAL PRODUCTION AND NEW TERRAIN: THEOLOGY, POPULAR CULTURE, AND THE CARTOGRAPHY OF RELIGION

This essay, drawing from and building on earlier work, involves an effort to correct what I consider the troubled relationship to popular culture (i.e., signs, symbols, behaviors, postures, and frameworks recognized by and used to express meaning and place) that shapes black religious studies in general and theological discourse in particular. The corrective I propose involves a change in the conceptual posture revolving around the significance of religious "cartography" as a plausible theoretical framing of the study of black religion. In addition, I will also give some attention to thinking through this proposed reframing in light of the purposes of this book-namely, the dialogical possibilities between African American and Latino/a scholars of religion. As a context for this constructive work, I begin with a few descriptive thoughts on the purposes of African American cultural production.

The Changing Purpose of Popular Culture

Classic works by African Americans during the early formation of the United States are marked by an effort to address existential and ontological discomfort through apologetics in the form of expressive culture. One might explain in this manner the eighteenth-century sermonic-like prose of Jupiter Hammon, an early literary figure who sought to understand the presence of Africans in North America but did so in ways that did little damage to the religio-political and white supremacist paradigm used to structure the new nation. Cultural production in this case sought to make sense of a rather absurd situation through the tools available. This eighteenth-century literary apologetic,...