Independent Scholar, Womanist Theologian, Educator, Lecturer, Performer, Ordained Clergy, and Visionary focusing on “Healing and Wholeness Through History.” Created the “Balcony Hermeneutic” as a research tool to trace United States history through the development of minstrelsy and opera as genres of cultural entertainment mirroring the birth of systemic racism within American culture and society.
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In this theological work, readers are seated in a metaphorical balcony as a counter melody is composed within America’s operatic tradition. By using imaginary opera glasses, readers are invited to critically view American society and history. The most popular folk songs of white Southerners, Western settlers, and Northern elites were composed from chords of colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, hegemony, and xenophobia—forms of anthropological poverty. These songs were, and remain, the most discordant melodies heard by indigenous and enslaved persons in America. Indicting the “church” for its complicity in these oppressions, this work offers the reader a historical glimpse at the philosophical and religious underpinnings of systemic racism. A new healing hermeneutic, the balcony hermeneutic, enables the reader to view, critique, assess, correct, and reverse the devastating consequences of anthropo-logical poverty. By taking a “reversed gaze” of traditional Western Eurocentric systems of knowledge production, through theomusicology, this work privileg-es the voices of indigenous scholars—philosophers, anthropologists, theolo-gians, and performers—to sing a new song as we correct negative narratives and lyrics through resistance operatic performances.
Stay Awake Sermon December 3, 2023 The Historic New Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Detroit, MI Advent is a time of expectation, looking for the
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