The Black Church and the Blues Body
The Third Annual John E. Boswell Lecture
The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas
The John E. Boswell Lecture, an endowed lectureship established at CLGS
in 2006, brings leading scholars in religion and gender/sexuality to
the PSR campus each spring. (Read more here about the Boswell Lectureship.)
CLGS is pleased to co-sponsor this year's lecture with the Women's Studies in Religion Program at the Graduate Theological Union (read more here about the WSR program), the GTU Black Seminarians, and the Dismantling Racism Committee at PSR.
Join us at 5:30 for a reception and 6:30 for the lecture in the Bade Museum at Pacific School of Religion. This event is free and open to the public.
The Black Church and the Blues Body
Black churches continue to garner headlines for their reluctance to support LGBT communities and their refusal to consider issues of LGBT equality as a civil rights matter. The Black Church’s attitude toward the LGBT body reflects a broader discomfort with matters of sexuality more generally. Even more, the Black Church is uncomfortable with not just the LGBT body, but with blues bodies in general. Examining the “trouble” of the blues body for the Black Church includes a consideration of: how the blues body contests white/patriarchal/heterosexual/middle-class standards of propriety; the Black Church’s relationship to the blues as indicative of its troubled relationship to the “blues body”; and how the blues points to a solution which reflects the meaning of the Black Church itself insofar as the Black Church rejects the blues body it betrays its very identity as black church. Using sexuality as the prism through which to examine the relationship between the Black Church and the blues body can help to untangle the web of historical, cultural, and religious narratives that frustrate the Black Church’s acceptance of blues bodies. In the end, we will consider a way for the Black Church to be both black and blue.
The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas
Kelly Brown Douglas is the Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Religion at Goucher College where she holds the Elizabeth Conolly Todd Distinguished Professorship. A leading voice in the development of a womanist theology, Professor Douglas explores the complexities of Christian faith in African-American contexts. Essence magazine counts Douglas “among this country’s most distinguished religious thinkers, teachers, ministers, and counselors.” In addition to numerous articles, her published books included: The Black Christ, Sexuality and the Black Church, and more recently, What’s Faith Got to Do with It?