Jonathan L. Walton is assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He teaches courses in African American Religion; Religion, Media & Culture and Religion & Political Discourse. His new book is: Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Religious Broadcasting (New York University Press).
Anthea Butler, Jonathan L. Walton, Ronald B. Neal, William D. Hart, Josef Sorett, Edward J. Blum, and Eddie S. Glaude Jr..
What is the black church and what does it mean to say that the black church is dead? A provocative assertion and prophetic challenge by a prominent interpreter of African-American religion occasions a lively and varied set of responses. Updated with a response to those responses by Eddie Glaude, Jr., whose article sparked the discussion.
The president reminds Glenn Beck, and those who identify with his neo-white nationalism, of the lie of their own professed superiority. The pride with which this segment of society has rallied the troops around its shared sense of whiteness reveals that their skin color is the one true object of pledged allegiance and determinant of professed patriotism.
The charismatic preacher, Rev. Ike, famous for saying “the best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them,” broke ground for televangelists of all races.
What does it mean that Rhodes Scholar and Progressive Evangelical Brad Braxton resigned as senior pastor of the influential Riverside Church? In this discussion over the implications, a reverend and a scholar ask whether multiracial churches require making white people comfortable, why God needs liberal protestants to get out of the bubble, and what the future holds for the mainline church as a whole.
Due to the widespread acceptance of black civil rights, some members and friends of the LGBTQ community have hitched their conceptual wagons to the black freedom struggle of the 20th century. While gay rights are no trifling matter, those eager to make comparisons may want to hold their horses.
Televangelism is not the sole domain of the white religious right. In his new book, Jonathan Walton looks at the cultural creativity and impact of black religious broadcasting.
In a series of short essays, special to Religion Dispatches, religious historians, philosophers, and ethicists celebrate Obama’s place in American history while heeding Dr. King’s continued prophetic challenge for our nation.
It has become common to blame the black community for the passage of California's same-sex marriage ban. A look at the statistics and logic put the lie to this seductive and simplistic narrative.
Is President Obama destined to disappoint progressives? Our columnist channels theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, reminding us of the human potential for both good and evil, and offering a pragmatic approach...
A colleague suggests, in response to Andre Wills' recent RD article, that being evangelical is no more antithetical to the prophetic strand of the black church than R&B is to gospel music...
Obama supporters should “chill out” in the face of this swiftboating via the conflation of Obama and Wright into an undifferentiated brown blob of black radicalism broadcast together in a twenty-four hour news cycle.
