Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited

“In the desert of theological ideas, this book is a seed bank, carrying seeds of life, liberation, and transformation. Come and travel in the fields of God, of the Gods. Get some of these seeds and take them home. Plant there and see how, in the correlations of your own soil, you can create new seeds of liberation and transformation.”
— Cláudio Carvalhaes, Union Theological Seminary, from the foreword   

“This should be the first book readers turn to on the subject of theopoetics. The range of approaches interwoven in this beautifully edited collection demonstrates and explicates how theology might come closer to touching on divinity. The   authors evoke divine poesis in futuring; resistance; telling and listening to the truth/s of real lives, harms, and loves; and memories in adage, image, ritual, story, and food. A vital guide for anyone interested in better understanding and revivifying the work of theology.”
—Laurel Schneider, Vanderbilt University

“Theopoetics is not merely poeticizing a received theology. It instead invites the democratization of humanity and divinity. As such, it is both inclusive and expansive. This wonderful collection of visions and voices in Theopoetics in Color will become an important core text in our MA program in theopoetics and writing ”
—Scott Holland, Bethany Theological Seminary and the Earlham School of Religion

“To understand this collection as (only) a scholarly contribution would miss its bolder ambition: to demonstrate that a theopoetics worthy of the name must change not only what counts as revelation but what counts as scholarship. Here, a Filipino potluck is a communion that implies a creed, and the haunting story of a Black father and son illuminates ‘the awful grace of God.’ Here, too, are essays that cite philosophers, but also dreams, poems, and stories that refuse to be reduced to something else. It’s one thing to call for a bigger understanding of what counts as ‘scholarship,’ as many writers have properly done. But it’s another, more daring, thing to live into that call—to risk actually doing scholarship differently. The contributors to Theopoetics in Color take that risk, and the result is a collection that not only shows the full spectrum of theopoetics scholarship but also reveals its enormous potential to transform how we talk about God in the academy and beyond.”
—Ben Brazil, Earlham School of Religion
 
“This book is a blessing and a gift. It is a groundbreaking expansion of the theological work that explicitly engages theopoetics. It unfolds in ways that often soothe, sometimes provoke, and always invite readers into what more might be possible. As Oredein and Lockhart-Rusch note in their conclusion, this text is the result of a community’s exploration of what it means to reimagine what religious studies and theology can be. It is the product of an experiment in creating a beloved community. That is evident from reading it. I know most of the authors in this volume. That they all are in one place is an incredible feat of nurture and vision. I affirm Carvalhaes’s claim in his introduction: this is the most important text on theopoetics in the English language. I will be using this book every time I teach my theopoetics courses.”
—L. Callid Keefe-Perry, Boston College’s Clough School of Theology and Ministry
 
“Oredein and Lockhart-Rusch’s book Theopoetics in Color pulls theopoetics out of its irrelevancy to those people using various art forms to engage in the quotidian struggles against injustice in all its forms. This book gives witness to the art of the faith and faith working in art where it matters—where God’s redeeming love matters and that is everywhere.”
—Willie James Jennings, Yale Divinity School

Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein is a Nigerian American creative and scholastic writer who teaches constructive theology and ethics as well as Black religious traditions at Brite Divinity School.

Lakisha R. Lockhart-Rusch is a womanist play facilitator and educator who teaches Christian education at Union Presbyterian Seminary.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Cláudio Carvalhaes 
Acknowledgments 
Introduction: Why Theopoetics, Why in Color? by Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein 
Part 1: Performance and Voice 
          1. Cyborgs and Future Wars: A Revolutionary’s Guide to Living in Liberation by Patrick B. Reyes 
          2. Fleshly Theopoetics: Performance as Resistance in the Theological Academy by Lis Valle-Ruiz 
          3. Toward a Theopoetic Wholeness: A Womanist Reflection in the Theological Academy by Lakisha R. Lockhart-Rusch 
Part 2: Methods and Inquiries 
          4. Listening Theopoetically: Methods and Approaches for Researching with a Theopoetic Ear by Tiffany U. Trent 
          5. A Theopoetic Method: Four Movements by Tamisha A. Tyler 
          6. Theoespíritu as Pedagogy: Un Jale Bruto by Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros 
Part 3: Interlocutors 
          7. Imaging Loss and Longing: Doris Salcedo’s Art and the Power of Collective Testimony by Yohana Agra Junker 
          8. Somethin’ Like Sanctified: Theopoetics, Black Music, and the Strangeness of Estrangement by James Howard Hill Jr. 
          9. “In the Dark We Can All Be Free”: The Sacralizing Vision of Alvin Baltrop by Peace Pyunghwa Lee 
          10. God-Talk and Lorde-Speak: Audre Lorde and Inappropriate Theopoetics by Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein 
Part 4: Hermeneutics, Proclamation, and Claim 
          11. Potluck Theology: A Theopoetic of Fullness by Joyce del Rosario 
          12. “Mi Abuela Decía . . .”: Inheriting Life and Faith through Popular Refrains by Yara González-Justiniano 
          13. We with God: An (A)Systematic Theology in Five Parts by Brian Bantum 
Conclusion: Now Theopoetics, in Living Color by Lakisha R. Lockhart-Rusch 
Contributors 
Index