Defense Date

3-21-2024

Graduation Date

Spring 5-10-2024

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

Theology

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

William M. Wright IV

Committee Member

Elochukwu Uzukwu

Committee Member

Radu Bordeianu

Keywords

Revelation, Apocalypse, African American Hermeneutics, Empire, Ethnicity, Diversity in Universality, Glory and honor of the Nations, New Jerusalem, cultural incarnational ecclesiology

Abstract

This study will attempt to facilitate a more helpful reading of the text of John’s Apocalypse by placing it in an appropriate literary and historical context, deploying an African American hermeneutic, informed by the work of African American commentators such as Brian Blount, Allen Dwight Callahan, Clarice Martin, and Shanell T. Smith to develop from the text of the Apocalypse its ecclesiological content for a contemporary audience. As the church writ large (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and indigenous expressions) wrestles with its increasing global presence and the cultural and linguistic diversity which that expanded presence creates, this study will attempt to discern from the text of Revelation an eschatological perspective on that reality. What does Revelation have to say to us about economic and militaristic imperialism, and the culture-appropriating, culture-erasing, hegemonic dynamics which empires continue to perpetuate even in our day? My thesis is that the book of Revelation presents a vision of a church which does not exploitatively assimilate various cultures, as empires have done for centuries, but presents a vision of the kingdom of God encompassing and celebrating cultural diversity as an intended and necessary means by which the full glory of the incarnate Son of God will be revealed and embraced by the nations of the world.

I write as a fifth-generation inheritor of the Black Baptist tradition. I intend to draw on what Esau McCaulley terms the Black Ecclesial Tradition,[1] and modern biblical scholars who represent it, in order to derive how John’s Apocalypse should inform our view of and engagement with the ethnic and cultural diversity manifesting in both the global and North American churches. This exploration includes interdisciplinary dimensions, in that the matters at stake touch not only on ecclesiology, but on missiology, theological anthropology, political theology, and Christology, as well as the eschatological emphasis which is appropriately and traditionally understood to be the heart of John’s Apocalypse.

[1] Esau McCaulley. Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2020), 183.

Language

English

Download

Share

COinS