Change Agent Church in Black Lives Matter Times: Urgency for Action

by Valerie A. Miles-Tribble

Overview

Volatile social dissonance in America’s urban landscape is the backdrop as Valerie A. Miles-Tribble examines tensions in ecclesiology and public theology, focusing on theoethical dilemmas that complicate churches’ public justice witness as prophetic change agents. She attributes churches’ reticence to confront unjust disparities to conflicting views, for example, of Black Lives Matter protests as “mere politics,” and disparities in leader and congregant preparation for public justice roles. As a practical theologian with experience in organizational leadership, Miles-Tribble applies adaptive change theory, public justice theory, and a womanist communitarian perspective, engaging Emilie Townes’s construct of cultural evil as she presents a model of social reform activism re-envisioned as public discipleship. She contends that urban churches are urgently needed to embrace active prophetic roles and thus increase public justice witness. “Black Lives Matter times” compel churches to connect faith with public roles as spiritual catalysts of change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978701762
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	12/21/2021
Pages:	492
Product dimensions:	6.07(w) x 8.62(h) x 1.17(d)

About the Author

Valerie A. Miles-Tribble is associate professor of ministerial leadership and practical theology at the Graduate Theological Union /Berkeley School of Theology in Berkeley, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Where’s the Church?



Part 1: Societal Perspectives



1. Black Lives Matter Times: Why the Church as Change Agent?

2. Toxic Silence: Rogue Practices, Double Standards, and Lemming Behavior

3. Can Dry Bones Live? Societal Challenges to Solidarity and Survival





Part 2: Theoethical Perspectives



4. Weary Hope: Restorative Ethics in the Praxis of Social Reform Activism

5. God Sees: Engaging a Womanist Theoethical Hermeneutic





Part 3: Contextual Perspectives



6. Doing the Work: Adaptive Methods for Contextual Praxis

7. On the Road to Oz: Urgency for Prophetic Social Change

Editorial Reviews

With her book, Change Agent Church in Black Lives Matter Times, Valerie A. Miles-Tribble has gifted people of faith and religious institutions a much-needed resource to assist us in becoming an active, unrelenting prophetic presence in this era of Black Lives Matter. Motivated by and grounded in womanist wisdom, theo-ethical reflection, and praxis, this book offers a place to start—critical discourses and strategies—and ways to move beyond the false notions that “praise is all we need” and that acts of charity and social justice activism are the same. Miles-Tribble’s book will raise readers’ consciousness and motivate them toward individual and collective dynamic embodiment of the justice God, toward becoming public activist-witnesses engaged in dismantling systemic oppressions wherever they are found.

Mitzi J. Smith

Where is the church? That question has been raised by African American scholars and activists for the past sixty years. The call for the church to serve as a change agent in the midst of an unjust society is more urgent now than ever before. Not only does this book raise the question, but Valerie A. Miles-Tribble points to the answers. Here is a book that will challenge millennial leaders to "integrate public witness into their vocational roles of justice leadership." Lead on!

Marvin A. McMickle

This book offers a brilliant, impassioned call for Christian believers and their churches to stand against and transform “the intensified breaches in public civility, the unveiled self-centered stances of privilege, and the racialized intolerance that exposes the worst behavioral practices” that bedevil our nation. Miles-Tribble offers skillful analyses and prescriptions for effectuating the desperately needed structural changes that our nation needs and the justice of the Gospel demands. Change Agent Church in Black Lives Matter Times is a must-read for everyone who believes that the Church can and should do more to build a better world.

Obery M. Hendricks Jr.

This is a book we’ve been waiting for! Valerie A. Miles-Tribble, a self-described pastoral activist-organizer, adeptly whets the theoretical appetites of those of us struggling to be faithful to both the church and the academy. Her womanist socio-critical theo-ethical methodology deftly informs her interdisciplinary, contextual analysis of these Black Lives Matter times. Her urgent rallying cry to the church - MOBILIZE!

Marsha Foster Boyd

With the blues/jazz riffs and haunting voices of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, and the fierce veracious justice commitment of Harriet Tubman and Fannie Lou Hamer, Change Agent Church in Black Lives Matter Times: Urgency for Action merges the prophetic, pastoral, poetic, and political voices like a symphony rendering Tchaikowsky's 1812 Overture, offering an urgent womanist, clarion call for a faith-informed commitment and public witness towards embodied justice. This engaging, exciting book compels churches and interfaith institutions to wake up from their Rip Van Winkle hibernation as the world self-destructs amidst one heinous crisis after another, where certain bodies don't matter. This book is a must-read for anyone engaged in ministry, particularly those who lead congregations and have committed to come out of the closets of hypocrisy and shed the clothes of an anemic, impotent Jesus.

Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan

Valerie Miles-Tribble’s landmark Change Agent Church in Black Lives Matter Times: Urgency for Action brings a womanist voice to intersectionality, examining complex overlapping oppressions that the church and its leaders ignore, discount, and minimize. It will be a definitive resource for leaders to help the church evolve from collusion with structural evil (thereby maintaining and normalizing injustice) toward an adaptive, reforming, kariotic space – creating a world where diversity, equity, and inclusion are normative. This one-of-a-kind book sets a new criterion by which moral leadership will be measured.

Linda E. Thomas

Miles-Tribble’s The Church as Change Agent in Black Lives Matter Times contests the assumption that justice work is necessarily a secular issue. Arguing that piety and praxis should not be understood as opposed choices in the life of religious communities, but must be integrated in religious conviction and social action. Miles-Tribble’s experience in organizational leadership gives her perspective on the importance of overcoming institutional lethargy in the face of complex and overlapping oppressions. Her tools are adaptive change theory, public justice theory and social reform activism as public discipleship in order to achieve restorative justice in churches.

Margaret R. Miles

Professor Miles-Tribble's book is a powerful call for Christian churches — black churches, but also all progressive churches — to find more effective ways to embody their gospel values of social justice in the world.

Judith A. Berling