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.
Welcome To Akwabaa Ministries, Where Our Mission Is To Empower Individuals Through The Word Of God. We Believe Faith Should Inspire And Guide Our Daily Lives, And We Strive To Share This Message With Others. Our Services Include Powerful Worship, Engaging Teachings, And Vibrant Fellowship Opportunities. Join Us As We Grow Together In Our Faith And Strive To Impact The World Around Us Positively. All Are Welcome!
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.
“Perhaps no other word of the moment is so under attack as ‘woke,’ a word born as a simple yet powerful way of saying: ‘Be aware of and alert to how racism is systemic and pervasive and suffuses American life. Wake up from the slumber of ignorance and passive acceptance.”
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