Anthony B. Pinn
From Philosopedia
Pinn, Anthony B. (2 May 1964 - )
Pinn, who has taught religious studies at Macalester College in Minnesota, presently is Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
He earned his B.A. at Columbia (1986, Sociology with a minor in Religion); his Master of Divinity in Theology at Harvard Divinity School (1989); his M.A. at Harvard (1991, Study of Religion); and his Ph. D. at Harvard (1994, Study of Religion).)
His professional commitments also involve work as the Executive Director of the Society for the Study of Black Religion and co-chair of the American Academy of Religion's Black Theology Group.
At Rice, he has said that much of what has been written within the study of black religion avoids two fundamental questions: What is black about black religion? What is religious about black religion? In part this results from a reluctance, particularly on the part of black theologians, to address issues of theory and method. That is to say, little attention has been given to "how" one should study black religion and "what" is actually being studied. His recent work seeks to address this shortcoming through attention to the nature and meaning of black religion. Through an interdisciplinary and comparative analysis, his recent research projects have attempted to explore the "quest for complex subjectivity" as the fundamental nature of black religion.
His most substantive presentation of this research interest is Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Fortress Press, 2003). In addition to that text, Pinn is also the author/editor of fifteen other books, including Varieties of African American Religious Experience; The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era; African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (Palgrave Macmillan); and Why, Lord: Suffering and Evil in Black Theology. The latter book explores failed efforts by Christian apologists to reconcile the existence of Black suffering with the belief in an omnipotent, just, and loving God.
Pinn, who signed Humanist Manifesto 2000, offers “strong” humanism as an alternative to theistic religions.
Called by the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy "the nation's preeminent African American Humanist," Pinn on 4 December 2006 presented at Harvard the 13th Annual Alexander Lincoln Lecture, one known informally as the "Harvard Humanist of the Year Award".
Selected Books
Creating Ourselves: African Americans and Hispanic Americans on Popular Culture and Religious Expression, American Encounters/Global Interactions (Editor with Benjamin Valentin, Duke University Press, November 2009 ISBN-10: 0822345668 ISBN-13: 978-0822345664)
Publisher's Comment:
- Creating Ourselves is a unique effort to lay the cultural and theological groundwork for cross-cultural collaboration between the African and Latino/a American communities. In the introduction, the editors contend that given overlapping histories and interests of the two communities, they should work together to challenge social injustices. Acknowledging that dialogue is a necessary precursor to collaboration, they maintain that African and Latino/a Americans need to get into the habit of engaging "the other" in substantive conversation. Toward that end, they have brought together in this collection theologians and scholars of religion from both communities. The contributors offer broadly comparative exchanges about the religious and theological significance of various forms of African American and Latino/a popular culture, including representations of the body, literature, music, television, visual arts, and cooking.
- Corresponding to a particular form of popular culture, each section features two essays, one by an African American scholar and one by a Latino/a scholar, who each also provide short responses to the other's essays. The essays and responses are lively, varied, and often personal. One contributor puts forth a "brown" theology of hip hop that celebrates hybridity, contradiction, and cultural miscegenation. Another analyzes the content of the message transmitted by African American evangelical preachers who have become popular sensations through television broadcasts, video distribution, and Internet promotions. The other essays include a theological reading of the Latina body, a consideration of the "authenticity" of representations of Jesus as white, a theological account of the popularity of telenovelas, and a reading of African American ideas of paradise in one of Toni Morrison's novels. Creating Ourselves helps to make popular culture available as a resource for theology and religious studies and for facilitating meaningful discussions across racial and ethnic boundaries.
- Contributors. Teresa Delgado, James H. Evans Jr., Joseph De León, Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, Angel F. Méndez Montoya, Alexander Nava, Anthony B. Pinn, Mayra Rivera, Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia, Benjamin Valentin, Jonathan L. Walton, Traci C. West, Nancy Lynne Westfield, Sheila F. Winborne
Black Religion and Aesthetics: Religious Thought and Life in Africa and the African Diaspora (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 ISBN-10: 0230605508 ISBN-13: 978-0230605503)
- “This is a rare book in Africana studies. Its writers nicely demonstrate how African peoples sought both liberation and salvation through the development of new aesthetic and artistic forms that rendered black bodies beautiful in spite of the countless brutal attacks perpetrated on them. Undoubtedly, this book will spark many additional studies along similar lines.”--Peter J. Paris, Elmer G. Homrighausen Professor of Christian Social Ethics, Emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary
- "Pinn has once again challenged us to expand our understanding of the complexity of Black Religion. In these wide-ranging essays, we find a ground-breaking exploration of its aesthetic qualities, qualities that play an integral role in the power of Black Religion in the lives of individuals, and in its political and cultural impact...These essays invite scholars of religion to expand our frame of reference, just as they expose students to the complexity of religious life. This is a generative text, one likely to spark creative dialogue about religion across disciplines, as well as evoking new attention among scholars to the aesthetic dimensions of black religious thought and life. It is both timely and likely to have long-lasting impact." Sharon D. Welch, Provost and Professor of Theology, Meadville Lombard Theological School.
Becoming "America's Problem Child": An Outline of Pauli Murray's Religious Life and Theology (Eugene, Oregon, 2008 ISBN-10: 1556353022)
The African American Religious Experience in America, History of African-American Religions (University Press of Florida, 2007 ISBN-10: 0813031974)
Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice (Editor, with Dwight N. Hopkins, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 ISBN-10: 1403976384)
Pauli Murray: Selected Sermons And Writings Editor (Orbis Books, 2006 ISBN-10: 1570756465)
African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice Palgrave Macmillan, 2004 ISBN-10: 1403966249)
Terror and Triumph (Minneapolis, Augsburg Fortress Publishing, 2003 ISBN-10: 0800636015)
The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Maryknoll, NY, 2002 ISBN-10: 1570754233)
By These Hands (New York, NYU Press, 2001 ISBN-10: 0814766722)
Making the Gospel Plain: The Writings of Bishop Reverdy C. Ransom, African American Religious Thought and Life (with Reverdy C. Ransom, Trinity Press International, 1999 ISBN-10: 1563382644)
Why, Lord? (London, New York, Continuum International Publishing Group, 1999 ISBN-10: 0826412084)
Varieties of African American Religious Experience (Minneapolis, Augsburg Fortress Publishing, 1998 ISBN-10: 0800629949)
Podcast
Dr. Pinn spoke to an enthusiastic group at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on 16 August 2009. See and hear the lecture.
{International Humanist News, December 1997}
