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Abstract Using post-colonial studies, this article considers the ways that Black Christian faith traditions enacted within The Black Church can be seen as a site of anti-colonial resistance. Further, the author argues that by framing the Christian religion (in all contexts) as fundamentally a tool of oppression, academicians are effectively missing the multiple and profound ways the Christian faith has been deployed for decolonizing and liberatory agendas, particularly in racialized spaces. In addition, these spaces that are rendered invisible not allowed and unrecognizable—can delegitimize the work and theorizing of religio-spiritual Black Christian scholars, serving as another method of raced marginalization. Keywords: anti-colonial resistanceBlack liberation theologyhigher educationpost-colonial studiesthe Black churchwomanist theology Notes Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature Gayraud S. Wilmore, Pragmatic Spirituality: The Christian Faith through an Africentric Lens (New York and London: New York University Press, 2004). Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics; Julie Laible, "A Loving Epistemology: What I Hold Critical in My Life, Faith and Profession," Qualitative Studies in Education 13 (2000). Eric C. Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990). Marimba Ani, Yurugu: An Afrikan-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior (Washington, DC: Nkonimfo Publications),; Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana; Mbembe, On the Postcolony; John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992/1998). James Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (Minneapolis: The Seabury Press, 1969); Emilie Townes, "Roundtable Discussion: Christian Ethics and Theology in Womanist Perspective," in The Womanist Reader, ed. Layli Phillips (New York Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. M. Shawn Copeland, "Roundtable Discussion: Christian Ethics and Theology in Womanist Perspective," in The Womanist Reader, ed. Layli Phillips (New York James Cone, Black Theology and Black Power. J. Lorand Matory, Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). J. Lorand Matory, "Free to Be a Slave: Slavery as Metaphor in the Afro-Atlantic Religions," Journal of Religion in Africa 37 (2007). Edward L. Cox, "Book Review: Africa in America: Slave acculturation and resistance in the American South and the Caribbean," The American Historical Review 99 (1994), 1656. Vincent Wimbush, White Men's Magic: Scripturalization as Slavery (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Diana L. Hayes, Hagar's Daughters: Womanist Ways of Being in the World (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1995). Gayraud S. Wilmore, Pragmatic Spirituality: The Christian Faith through an Africentric Lens (New York and London: New York University Press, 2004). Wilmore, Pragmatic Spirituality, 3. Ani, Yurugu. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York Cone, Black Theology and Black Power; Cone and Wilmore, Black Theology a Documentary History Volume One; Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1990). Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 2. Wilmore, Pragmatic Spirituality 5. Ibid. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800. Wilmore, Pragmatic Spirituality. Ibid. Cone and Wilmore, Black Theology a Documentary History Volume One; Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Wilmore, Pragmatic Spirituality, 201. Ibid. Michelle Fine, "Working the Hyphens: Reinventing Self and Other in Qualitative Research," in Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), 70. Patricia Hill-Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Conciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston, London, Sydney, bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981); Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984). bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1991). Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, xi. Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies," in The Feminist Philosophy Reader, ed. Alison Bailey and Chris Cuomo (New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2008); James J. Scheurich and Michelle D. Young, "Coloring Epistemology: Are Our Research Epistemologies Racially Biased?," in Anti-Racist Scholarship: An Advocacy, ed. James Joseph Scheurich (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?," in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossbeg (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988). Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010/2012); Linda M. Perkins, "The Impact of the Cult of True Womanhood on the Education of Black Women," Journal of Social Issues 39 (1983).
Kirsten T. Edwards (Tue,) studied this question.