Spring/Summer 2019 (Vol. 47, Nos. 1&2)
Fully Fleshed Out: Religion, Womanhood, and Blackness in Contemporary Media
Positive, complex representations of black women’s religious experience in Queen Sugar and Being Serena. By LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant
Wakanda and Black Queer Moral Imaginaries
Black Panther serves as a moral imaginary pointing to freedom, fugitivity, and black queer ethical action. By Thelathia Nikki Young
‘Whiteness’ in the Mormon Archive
Race and the Making of the Mormon People, by Max Perry Mueller, examines the ideology of “white universalism” in the formation of Mormonism. By Seth Perry
The Death of The Buddha’s Mother
The lore around Maya, who died soon after giving birth to the Buddha, illuminates the untold, uncounted stories of women who die in childbirth today. By Kim Gutschow
#BlackLivesMatter and Living the Bodhisattva Vow
Convert sanghas in the United States need to be mindful of the potential for reducing Buddhism to a bourgeois “spirituality” that avoids addressing racial wounds. By Christopher Raiche
Giving the Ghost a Voice
Buddhist practice has enabled this Filipino/Asian American to grapple with painful experiences around race that include feeling unseen and silenced. By Bryan Mendiola
Mistaking a Stick for a Snake
The Buddha’s teachings about distortions of perception anticipated current research on “inherent bias.” By Bonnie Duran
‘Woman Hold My Hand’
Tara (the female Buddha), Sweet Honey and the Rock, and womanist theologians offer fiercely loving examples of what it means to be free and to free others. By Rod Owens
The Underside of Globalization
Growing up a “street kid” in Juarez, Mexico, was like being a lab rat in a socioeconomic experiment with terrible consequences, especially for vulnerable children. By Pedro Morales
Recovering the Black Social Gospel
Given the legacy of the black social gospel tradition, retrieving the leading figures and ideas of this important movement is long overdue. By Gary Dorrien