Afro-Christian, Afro-Blue Land-Based Autonomy and the Making of Blues Identities at the Turn of the 20th Century

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Black Theology Papers Project Vol. 1
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Published Dec 14, 2018
DOI https://doi.org/10.7916/btpp.v1i1.477

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Rufus Burnett
Fordham University

Abstract

At the heart of the black American Struggle for life has always been the question of the land. Land, at the most basic level, situates all human relationships with flora and fauna. My focus on Afro-Christian and Afro-Blue identities is situated by the idea that life, at its most basic level, suggests relationship to the earth. 


I argue three points; 1. Land should be understood as a substantive component in how we understand black identities, 2. Certain Christian binaries, particularly the Spirit/Flesh binary, does violence to blues identities that point toward deep relationships with the land, 3. The Blues as a cultural production points toward a landed cosmology that has corrective implications for how we image life theologically. In short, each of these points express a type of Blues— A Blues for the Land, Spirit/Flesh Blues and the Blues of Blues People.

Author Biography

Rufus Burnett, Fordham University

Prof. Burnett is an Assistant Professor of Theology at Fordham University. A native of Gulfport, MS. Burnett earned his PhD in Systematic Theology with honors from Duquesne University, and his master’s degree in Religious Studies from Loyola University New Orleans. He previously taught within the Africana Department and Balfour Scholars Program at the University of Notre Dame. His area of study focuses on the sonic, spatial, and embodied realities of the Christian imagination. His latest text, Decolonizing Revelation: A Spatial Reading of the Blues, takes up these realities with regards to the American music genre known as the Blues. Burnett's text exposes the blues as an epistemic/cosmological framework that works to delink the Christian imagination of revelation, which is God’s self-disclosure in history, from oppressive foreclosures within nationalism, Christian denominations, race, class, sexuality, and ethnocentrism. Burnett's constructive theological approach to systematics looks to expose the theological insight of people groups that respond to domination through the creative use of cultural production. He has shared his insights on panels organized for the World Forum for Liberation Theology, the American Academy of Religion, and the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologies.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 1 No. 1 (2015): Black Theology Papers 2015
Section
Black Theology, The Arts, and Popular Culture
How to Cite
Burnett, R. (2018). Afro-Christian, Afro-Blue: Land-Based Autonomy and the Making of Blues Identities at the Turn of the 20th Century. Black Theology Papers Project, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.7916/btpp.v1i1.477