Episode #51 - African American Readings of Paul with Dr. Lisa Bowens

The Two Cities

In this episode Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, Grace Sangalang Ng, and Rev. Daniel Parham are joined by Dr. Lisa Bowens, associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the author of African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance, and Transformation, which was published by Eerdmans in 2020. In this episode Dr. Bowens talks to us about her research on the primary sources from the 18th century on through the Civil Rights movement, chronicling some key insights in the interpretation of Paul in slave petitions, essays, speeches, sermons, conversion narratives, etc. In particular, she describes the diversity of African-American pauline hermeneutics, the way that white slaveholders used Scripture to impose slavery, how African Americans read Scripture through the lens of liberty, how that liberative reading of Paul in regards to slavery led to additional liberation for women as well, and how reading Paul in a liberative manner led enslaved African Americans to reinterpret the significance and value of their own bodies.

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