Race/Racial Issues | Harvard Divinity Bulletin

Nurturing Black Maternal Health

There’s plenty of data on Black maternal mental health and obstetric racism but we are not providing the culturally responsive care that is needed. By Sevonna Brown

Converging Crises

In New York City, homelessness, immigration, and racism are converging to the point of a crisis. By Henry Love

Why Rosa Parks Did Yoga

Inspiring stories of collective self-care are evident in the life writings of Black women, including Rosa Parks. By Stephanie Y. Evans

Black Religion as Barrier and Balm

Black religious communities should be places of spiritual liberation for those who live with mental health challenges. By Monica A. Coleman

The Racialization of Religious Excitement in American Psychiatry

Historically, white psychiatrists produced theories of religion that became constitutive elements of their racialized understandings of the normal and disordered mind. By Judith Weisenfeld

Dis/appearing

Instead of a theodicy of progress, we need to enact a “hauntodicy of blackness” by staying with the dead and not moving on. By Biko Mandela Gray

Memory, History, and the Ethics of Reparations

Henry Ossawa Tanner’s global pursuit of reconciliation is a cautionary tale if we are going to take corporate and civic responsibility for the crime of enslavement. By Terrence L. Johnson

Racial Liberalism and the Ethics of Law and Justice

A selected reading list from Terrence L. Johnson’s course “Racial Liberalism and the Ethics of Law and Justice.”

Cannon, Williams, and Womanist Survival

Womanism founders Katie Cannon and Delores Williams created groundbreaking work that has led to a wide range of scholarship focused on the thriving of Black women. By Gary Dorrien

Prison Theology

Austin Reed’s antebellum memoir The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict subverts notions of incarceration as spiritually regenerative. By Klaus C. Yoder

Building Trust through Truth-telling

A Q&A with Wendy Sanford and Mary Norman about These Walls between Us: A Memoir of Friendship across Race and Class. By Eva Seligman

Abolitionist Theology Can Help Us Reimagine Schooling

Schooling must be abolished so that education can begin, and abolitionist theology is a starting point. By Ashley Y. Lipscomb

Centering Black Evangelicals and Their Stories

A Q&A with Todne Thomas on her latest book, Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality. By Adam McNeil

The Dharma of Racial Justice

Mindfulness can help us lean into our subjective, embodied experiences of race, racism, and white supremacy so we might begin to disrupt these harmful legacies. By Rhonda V. Magee.

The Deliciousness of Truth

Black and Buddhist: In the face of white supremacy, Buddhism reteaches us how to relate to truth and to one another. By Pamela Ayo Yetunde

A Full-Bodied Dharma

Black and Buddhist: Contributors to this volume take refuge in embodied practice and in vibrant community. By Judith Simmer-Brown

Creating a World Beyond Lethal Force

Reducing our reliance on the military and police to keep us safe starts with having revolutionary conversations. By Sarah Nahar

Freedom Doesn’t Happen in a Day

Four voices celebrate the publication of Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us about Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom. Buddhism offers practical tools to work through intergenerational trauma. By Cheryl A. Giles