Lexington Books / Fortress Academic
Pages: 492
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-9787-0174-8 • Hardback • May 2020 • $163.00 • (£127.00)
978-1-9787-0176-2 • Paperback • December 2021 • $52.99 • (£41.00)
Valerie A. Miles-Tribble is associate professor of ministerial leadership and practical theology at the Graduate Theological Union /Berkeley School of Theology in Berkeley, California.
Introduction: Where’s the Church?
Part 1: Societal Perspectives
1. Black Lives Matter Times: Why the Church as Change Agent?
2. Toxic Silence: Rogue Practices, Double Standards, and Lemming Behavior
3. Can Dry Bones Live? Societal Challenges to Solidarity and Survival
Part 2: Theoethical Perspectives
4. Weary Hope: Restorative Ethics in the Praxis of Social Reform Activism
5. God Sees: Engaging a Womanist Theoethical Hermeneutic
Part 3: Contextual Perspectives
6. Doing the Work: Adaptive Methods for Contextual Praxis
7. On the Road to Oz: Urgency for Prophetic Social Change
With her book, Change Agent Church in Black Lives Matter Times, Valerie A. Miles-Tribble has gifted people of faith and religious institutions a much-needed resource to assist us in becoming an active, unrelenting prophetic presence in this era of Black Lives Matter. Motivated by and grounded in womanist wisdom, theo-ethical reflection, and praxis, this book offers a place to start—critical discourses and strategies—and ways to move beyond the false notions that “praise is all we need” and that acts of charity and social justice activism are the same. Miles-Tribble’s book will raise readers’ consciousness and motivate them toward individual and collective dynamic embodiment of the justice God, toward becoming public activist-witnesses engaged in dismantling systemic oppressions wherever they are found. — Mitzi J. Smith, Columbia Theological Seminary
This is a book we’ve been waiting for! Valerie A. Miles-Tribble, a self-described pastoral activist-organizer, adeptly whets the theoretical appetites of those of us struggling to be faithful to both the church and the academy. Her womanist socio-critical theo-ethical methodology deftly informs her interdisciplinary, contextual analysis of these Black Lives Matter times. Her urgent rallying cry to the church - MOBILIZE!— Marsha Foster Boyd, president emerita of Ecumenical Theological Seminary and chief catalyst of Catalyst Connections Global LLC
With the blues/jazz riffs and haunting voices of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, and the fierce veracious justice commitment of Harriet Tubman and Fannie Lou Hamer, Change Agent Church in Black Lives Matter Times: Urgency for Action merges the prophetic, pastoral, poetic, and political voices like a symphony rendering Tchaikowsky's 1812 Overture, offering an urgent womanist, clarion call for a faith-informed commitment and public witness towards embodied justice. This engaging, exciting book compels churches and interfaith institutions to wake up from their Rip Van Winkle hibernation as the world self-destructs amidst one heinous crisis after another, where certain bodies don't matter. This book is a must-read for anyone engaged in ministry, particularly those who lead congregations and have committed to come out of the closets of hypocrisy and shed the clothes of an anemic, impotent Jesus.— Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Seminary of the Southwest
Where is the church? That question has been raised by African American scholars and activists for the past sixty years. The call for the church to serve as a change agent in the midst of an unjust society is more urgent now than ever before. Not only does this book raise the question, but Valerie A. Miles-Tribble points to the answers. Here is a book that will challenge millennial leaders to "integrate public witness into their vocational roles of justice leadership." Lead on!— Marvin A. McMickle, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School
This book offers a brilliant, impassioned call for Christian believers and their churches to stand against and transform “the intensified breaches in public civility, the unveiled self-centered stances of privilege, and the racialized intolerance that exposes the worst behavioral practices” that bedevil our nation. Miles-Tribble offers skillful analyses and prescriptions for effectuating the desperately needed structural changes that our nation needs and the justice of the Gospel demands. Change Agent Church in Black Lives Matter Times is a must-read for everyone who believes that the Church can and should do more to build a better world. — Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Columbia University
Valerie Miles-Tribble’s landmark Change Agent Church in Black Lives Matter Times: Urgency for Action brings a womanist voice to intersectionality, examining complex overlapping oppressions that the church and its leaders ignore, discount, and minimize. It will be a definitive resource for leaders to help the church evolve from collusion with structural evil (thereby maintaining and normalizing injustice) toward an adaptive, reforming, kariotic space – creating a world where diversity, equity, and inclusion are normative. This one-of-a-kind book sets a new criterion by which moral leadership will be measured. — Linda E. Thomas, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
Miles-Tribble’s The Church as Change Agent in Black Lives Matter Times contests the assumption that justice work is necessarily a secular issue. Arguing that piety and praxis should not be understood as opposed choices in the life of religious communities, but must be integrated in religious conviction and social action. Miles-Tribble’s experience in organizational leadership gives her perspective on the importance of overcoming institutional lethargy in the face of complex and overlapping oppressions. Her tools are adaptive change theory, public justice theory and social reform activism as public discipleship in order to achieve restorative justice in churches.
— Margaret R. Miles, The Graduate Theological Union
Professor Miles-Tribble's book is a powerful call for Christian churches — black churches, but also all progressive churches — to find more effective ways to embody their gospel values of social justice in the world.
— Judith A. Berling, The Graduate Theological Union, emerita
• Commended, Borsch-Rast Book Prize
(GTU, 2021)