A Darkly Radiant Vision

The third and final volume in the first comprehensive history of Black social Christianity, by the “greatest theological ethicist of the twenty-first century” (Michael Eric Dyson)
 
The Black social gospel is a tradition of unsurpassed importance in American life, and it remains ongoing. So Gary Dorrien argues in his groundbreaking trilogy of books on the history of Black social Christianity. Following his Grawemeyer Award–winning book The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel (2015) and his Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel (2018), this third, concluding volume offers an interpretation of Black social Christianity since the early 1970s.
 
Beginning in the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr., it examines the past fifty years of this intellectual and activist tradition, interpreting its politics, theology, ethics, social criticism, and social justice organizing. Considering the intersection of Black social Christianity with liberation theology, womanist theology, the LGBTQ+ movement, critical theory, antiracism efforts, progressive religion, broad-based interfaith organizing, global solidarity politics, and more, Dorrien shows how those who carried on the struggle in King’s name were often lifted by King’s moral example.
 
A Darkly Radiant Vision features in-depth discussions of Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Samuel DeWitt Proctor, James Cone, Katie Geneva Cannon, Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Traci Blackmon, William J. Barber II, Raphael G. Warnock, and many others.

“"This book is nothing short of stellar, fulfilling its promise to provide an expansive history of this tradition from the assassination of MLK to the present."--Rub”

Recipient of the Morehouse College Gandhi, King, Mandela Peace Prize

“This book is nothing short of stellar, fulfilling its promise to provide an expansive history of this tradition from the assassination of MLK to the present.”—Rubén Rosario Rodriguez, Saint Louis University

“Gary Dorrien is our foremost, most important, and most effective chronicler and interpreter of liberal and liberationist theology. He brings to his task his enormous great erudition, his appetite for data, his sharp critical discernment, and his great moral passion. With this book he completes his trilogy on recent Black theology. More than that, however, this book is a state-of-the-art critical assessment of recent Black theology that gives us close-up contact with the players (famous and less famous) who have shaped the enterprise. This book will be important reading for those who want to know how we got here, and what remains to be done in the work of faithful justice. Dorrien has laid down a marker to which careful attention must be paid.”—Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary

“What Gary Dorrien has accomplished in this book of otherworldly learning, insight, and ambition is simply unheard of. Combining deep historical research and knowledge with outstanding analytical clarity and a journalistic voice, this book is simply mesmerizing.”—Jonathan Tran, author of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism

Gary Dorrien is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and professor of religion at Columbia University. His books include The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel, Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel, Social Democracy in the Making: Political and Religious Roots of European Socialism, and American Democratic Socialism: History, Politics, Religion, and Theory. He lives in New York City.

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