Saint Paul eNewsletter
Faculty Book Spotlight
Dr. Angela Sims' book Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror is
Faculty Book Spotlight
Dr. Angela Sims' book Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror is
a work in oral history that preserves the memory of elder African Americans, a generation who lived as witnesses to a traumatic and terrorizing culture of lynching in the United States.
Persons interviewed range from clergy to NASA mathematician Katherine Goble Johnson, for whose work is honored in the film
Hidden Figures. The book is a collaborative theological project evoked and interpreted by Dr. Sims in conversation with narratives from those who witnessed the culture and events associated with lynching.
In the eyewitness narratives, encounter with the divine is a constant, living,powerful, and sustaining experience of God. Matthew Thomas's detailed account of surviving a threatened lynching not only links lynching with crucifixion, but also expresses the deep conviction that the living God, Jesus, was present in the moment of deliverance. Thomas' worldview is not a naïve Christianity, but an experience-based faith affirming the reality of encounter with God (or Christ) in a this-worldly space (41).
Dr. Angela Sims describes many participants as adherents to belief in God as a source of protection and strength for those who are powerless (47). The God of African American elders who remember lynching is not the God of white Christians, not the God of the status quo, but the God who was fully present in the face of lynching and in the times of blessing (as in times when whites spoke to Blacks "like I was a human being," 130).
She affirms the unrelenting tenacity of the church as change agent and exemplar of moral living. She writes that "the church is aware that as an exemplar of moral living its responses to injustice are indicative of the church's relationship with the divine" (119).
Dr. Angela Sims' book promises to be a reference book for generations of scholars who will not be able to duplicate the witness and narratives of African American elders from this time. The significance of Sims' publication is already recognized by coverage of her oral history project in the New York Times, as well as the invitation to deliver the Nannie Helen Burroughs' Lecture at Howard University School of Divinity on March 6, 2017.
Dr. Nancy Howell, Vice President
Saint Paul School of Theology
Persons interviewed range from clergy to NASA mathematician Katherine Goble Johnson, for whose work is honored in the film
Hidden Figures. The book is a collaborative theological project evoked and interpreted by Dr. Sims in conversation with narratives from those who witnessed the culture and events associated with lynching.
In the eyewitness narratives, encounter with the divine is a constant, living,powerful, and sustaining experience of God. Matthew Thomas's detailed account of surviving a threatened lynching not only links lynching with crucifixion, but also expresses the deep conviction that the living God, Jesus, was present in the moment of deliverance. Thomas' worldview is not a naïve Christianity, but an experience-based faith affirming the reality of encounter with God (or Christ) in a this-worldly space (41).
Dr. Angela Sims describes many participants as adherents to belief in God as a source of protection and strength for those who are powerless (47). The God of African American elders who remember lynching is not the God of white Christians, not the God of the status quo, but the God who was fully present in the face of lynching and in the times of blessing (as in times when whites spoke to Blacks "like I was a human being," 130).
She affirms the unrelenting tenacity of the church as change agent and exemplar of moral living. She writes that "the church is aware that as an exemplar of moral living its responses to injustice are indicative of the church's relationship with the divine" (119).
Dr. Angela Sims' book promises to be a reference book for generations of scholars who will not be able to duplicate the witness and narratives of African American elders from this time. The significance of Sims' publication is already recognized by coverage of her oral history project in the New York Times, as well as the invitation to deliver the Nannie Helen Burroughs' Lecture at Howard University School of Divinity on March 6, 2017.
Dr. Nancy Howell, Vice President
Saint Paul School of Theology
"This work would not have been possible without the 70-plus voices of people I had not met before," explained Dr. Angela Sims. "I was extended the privilege of hearing just a small portion of their lives. There is power in first-hand narratives. They teach us about human nature, about relationships and about the divine."Dr. Angela D. Sims is Dean of Academic Programs, Robert B. and Kathleen Rogers Chair in Church and Society, and Associate Professor of Ethics and Black Church Studies at Saint Paul School of Theology.
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(913) 253-5000
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(405) 208-5757
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