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Jonathan Walton recommends that Black theology appropriate the theoretical legacy of Birmingham University’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) to improve on Dwight Hopkins’s contrasting account of “conservative” and “prophetic” religious practices. However, Hopkins does affirm the theoretical value of the CCCS. Hopkins’s criticism of Black televisual popular culture follows from his account of how the divine has worked in history for the sake of poor and oppressed agents to combat the monopolization of power. Hopkins’s perspective can be construed, theoretically, to identify, analogously, with Stuart Hall’s account of cultural studies, particularly if Hall’s anti-theory supplements rather than replaces Black theology’s identification with the Black freedom struggle. By showing (1) how Hopkins can be understood to identify with the CCCS and (2) that he presupposes the agency of otherwise socially conservative Black religious practitioners, I offer three conditions for the re-visitation of Black theology with and to the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At the turn of the twentieth century (1910), Veblen published an essay which explored the relationship between Christianity and capitalism by focusing on the interaction between the two institutions as they evolved. Veblen's analysis begins by detailing the evolution of Christianity prior to the age of industrialized capitalism, after which he explores the evolutionary interplay between the two. Just over ten years prior to the publication of this essay (1899), Veblen published the Theory of the Leisure Class while over ten years after the publication of the essay (1923), Veblen dissected the sales efforts of Christianity in a note titled "Salesmanship and the Churches." Nearly 100 years later, these three works together explain a modern and distinctly American religious movement—Prosperity Theology. This research argues that Prosperity Theology as practiced in the United States over the past nearly half century embodies and integrates all three of these works by Veblen and proposes the conceptual term "Veblenian Social Practice." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay provides a new reading of the intersections between religion and rap music in its genealogical consideration of how black laborers' orientations to the market—from the antebellum slave market to the contemporary music industry—have informed their consequent commodifications of race and religion. The essay (1) traces the informal economy and sacred world of the slaves to the twinned births of the modern black prosperity gospel and hip-hop culture and (2) connects the religio-economic modalities of postbellum peddling and celebrity preachers to contemporary black prosperity preachers and hip-hop moguls. Finally, this essay concludes that the commodified formulations of race and religion in rap music represent transformations of spiritual and market categories of "authenticity" and "freedom" which have structured and sometimes limited our understandings of distinct articulations of race, religion, and the market throughout African-American history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberalism relies on optimism. Without faith in meritocracy—unwavering belief that rewards will eventually and justly come to those who work hard enough—support for the capitalist system and belief in neoliberalism would unravel. How that optimism is perpetuated in the face of persistent income inequality and exploitation within the workplace requires an examination of those cultural institutions which reinforce and reproduce optimism over practical experience. This research focuses on one particular religious institution of the United States—the Prosperity Gospel. The Prosperity Gospel is a modern, neoliberal variation of Pentecostalism that is premised on the belief that a Biblical covenant between the individual believer and God guarantees that believer blessings of health and wealth, provided she demonstrates adequate faith. Accordingly, for those who are less adept at navigating the business world, financial success is still available for those believers who can dedicate themselves with the same frenzied ambition to the spiritual world. The Prosperity Gospel thus supports and sustains neoliberalism; the Prosperity Gospel is an institution which provides ref-uge to individuals from the exigencies of the market as well as a social practice which reinforces individual responsibility and fault. The Prosperity Gospel is the spiritual articulation of neoliberalism as well as a reinforcing institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a Black theological reading of the cultural production of African American producer, writer, actor and entrepreneur, Tyler Perry, in conversation with the African American writer, director, producer and polemicist, Spike Lee. In this article I seek to explore issues of masculinity, as addressed through the prisms of cinematic and religious imagery, juxtaposing Perry and Lee and their differing conceptualizations of Black masculinity. In looking at the work of Tyler Perry I hope to explore how Black male identity is played out in terms of religio-cultural tropes within the mainstream culture of America. What I offer in the pages that follow is a reading of Tyler Perry that locates him within a tradition of masculinity in America. What I forward is a historicist interpretation of Black masculinity, which sees Tyler Perry as a gendered throwback from the not too distant past. In light of this reading, I argue that Perry embodies a cultural legacy of African Americans, which has not been fully engaged, a legacy that is worthy of critical examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]