As we near the end of the first Black History Month in age of the first black president, I want to quickly share with everyone the arrival of an important and timely book:  Watch This: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism, by Jonathan L. Walton.

In case you didn’t already know, President Obama’s road to the White House revealed most clearly that African American religion continues to occupy a most pivotal place in the American cultural imagination.  Moreover, his dramatic falling out with Jeremiah Wright (I know, this conversation is already exhausted) confirmed that the common assertion of the United States as a Christian nation is a claim in need of further clarification.  While African Americans have long inserted themselves into the Christian story, the Obama-Wright show served to illustrate that not all forms of American Christianity (really, protestantisms) achieve equally footing in the public culture of the U.S.

Jonathan Walton’s “Watch This” provides a compelling a critical account of the varieties of black Christianity that now dominate airwaves both in the U.S. and around the globe.  I’ve had the privilege of dialoging with the author as the project moved from dissertation to book, and I know him to wield one the sharpest and most insightful interpretations of African American religion, in particular, and religion and culture in America, more broadly.  While I’ve just started to get into the book myself, I am confident that anyone who picks it up will learn something new about religion and race in America.

Kudos, Congratulations, and Thank you, Jonathan!

What follows is the beginning of his discussion of the book on the website ReligionDispatches:

 Ten Questions for Jonathan Walton on Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism

What inspired you to write Watch This?

My interest in African American religious broadcasting came from what I perceived to be the gaps in the fields of African American religion and Religion, Media and Culture. For the most part, scholars of African American religion in general and black theology in particular theorize about Afro-Protestantism in America according to a particular historiography that privileges liberal Protestantism in general, and civil rights motifs in particular. But the prevailing narrative of the freedom fighting “black church” is in many ways inconsistent with a number of African American Christians whose view of the faith is informed by Trinity Broadcasting, the Word Network, and Streaming Faith.com. Just the same, for sociologists and communication theorists who have examined the world of evangelical religious broadcasting, it is predominantly framed as the domain of the white, Religious Right.

This book, then, is my attempt to illumine, unpack and interrogate the theological and social orientations of prominent black religious broadcasters in order to understand them as a source of attraction and ethically evaluate their dominant messages…

To continue reading go to ReligionDispatches.org.

To purchase book, go to www.nyupress.com

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In recent years, references to Creflo Dollar, arguably the most popular black prosperity preacher of the day, have become a visual and verbal fixture in Hip Hop music. Such instances include a cameo appearance in Ludacris and Jermaine Dupri’s “Welcome to Atlanta” video, an invocation in a song by Fifty Cent, a professed pastoral affiliation by Mase, and a shout-out from Lupe Fiasco in his underground re-mix of Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks.” This would seem to suggest, at least within the culture of the bling, that Christianity has become as much a signifier of wealth and power as it is evidence of any specific type of theological vision. Evidently Dollar – for whom wealth is a core spiritual value – seems to embody, for many Hip Hop artists, the essence of Hip Hop’s hustle doused in holy water. Interestingly, Pastor Dollar also has a rap video in the works, performed a by a group of rappers, the Ziklag Boyz, who belong to his church and record on his Arrow Records label. A surprise to no one, the song’s refrain is simply, “Money, money, coming down!” (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFyMEnXDG4g ). While the video draws much resemblance to Lil’ Wayne and Fat Joe’s tale of the strip club, “Make It Rain,” – with dollar bills floating across the screen – noticeably absent from the Ziklag Boyz’ video are the bodies of scantily clad black and brown women. For male rappers, it is the bodies of black females that often make their rap videos so profitably seductive, but Dollar insists that the power to get “bling” can just as easily be achieved dropping bible verses like they’re hot. The mutual resonance between much of rap music and Dollar’s prosperity ministry is but one instance where Christianity seems to function as an explicit form of social capital in popular culture . . .

For the entire article go to: http://faithinmotion.net/

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Hello Everyone!

Thanks once again for the generosity of feedback in the week leading up to the launch - the love is much appreciated.

By now perhaps you a have a theory; if not, hopefully you’ve at least asked yourself: “Why did this brother choose to launch his site on 07.07.07?” Well, since you ask, indulge me for a moment…

Whether it’s the poetic appeal – never mind if you’re a biblical literalist or Darwinian by design – of the earth being spoken into existence in six days followed by one of divine rest…

Or you’ve been out on those corners praying for that lucky roll of the die,

Whether you were listening to Minister Farrakhan move the crowd at the Mall in 1995 when he started laying down those numbers…

Or you’re a gospel music loyalist waxing nostalgic of Fred Hammond - before he
signaled the move of black churches to praise and worship music - on his second to last
album with Commissioned (circa 1991),

Whether you witnessed pre-break up Erykah Badu and Andre 3000 name their first born…

Or you’ve had to fight the itch of that long seventh inning stretch in your marriage,

There’s just something about that Number – a near universal appeal that appears to be attributed to the number seven.

Now, I’m no numerologist, but it was still all too difficult for me resist the resounding resonance with which the number seven seems to be celebrated. And just in case none of the examples in my above litany sold you, let me share, more personally, just a few reasons why I chose to launch my site on this the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the new millennium.

First of all, I am nearing the start of my seventh and hopefully final year (pray with me!) of what has been an extremely rewarding time of doctoral studies at Harvard University. They say seven years is average at Harvard… so call me average!

Second, seven is a number that many religious traditions treat as significant – just check out wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_(number) – so this choice also reflects the fact that religion and spirituality, in all their diverse manifestations, take a primary place in both my personal biography and intellectual journey.

And third, it has also been seven months since the passing of my mother, Patricia Ann Wallace, and amongst other things this site has afforded me the opportunity to memorialize her life on the web and to acknowledge the tremendous wealth of her spirit, to which I am an heir. Check out the page dedicated to her (www.josefsorett.com/patricia-ann-wallace-tribute/) on this site to learn more about this remarkable woman. We miss her dearly!

At the church I grew up attending, seven was believed to be the number of completion – and thus of new beginnings as well. In a year that promises us all a host of new beginnings – as well as important endings – I am excited to start this on-line dialogue.

Staying steady with the number seven, I’ve decided to define my launch into the blogosphere by an initial series of seven blog entries. Don’t worry, not all at once.

Here’s a glimpse of what you can expect from posts in the days and weeks to come:

Today: Reflections on Human Frailty: Life, Death and My HBO Addiction

Coming Soon:
Towards the (Post) Hip Hop Intellectual
Race, Religion and Politics in the City University of New York
“I Ain’t Here to Argue About His Facial Features…”
Left, Left, Left, Right, Left: Culture Politics, Policy and the Poles of Public Morality
The Art of My Eclectic (Personal) Fashion Sensibility
Muhammad Walks an Underground Freeway to the Club

Before I get to the first post, I want to quickly acknowledge one of my closest friends, who also happens to be my personal technology consultant: Joselin Mane. If you like what you see on this site, check out www.litbel.com for the best techie I know (website design, hosting services, etc.). While academic trends of late have highlighted the history of intersecting afro-latina/o diasporas (See: Future of Black Studies), this site has been an exercise in building black & Latina/o partnerships. In the process of learning to work this website, Joselin claims that he has been teaching me to fish… bacalao, I guess? If you can’t swing the cod fish, then try some Platanos and Collard Greens.   Either way, Mucho Amor a mi hermano dominicano de otra madre!

Okay, enough with the self-less plug. It’s now official, www.josefsorett.com has been launched. And while it’s surely anti-climactic at this point, check out my first blog entry, Reflections on Human Frailty: Life, Death and My HBO Addiction, which will post at 7am.

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