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Paperback
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
In this accessible and provocative study, Brian Blount reads the book of revelation through the lens of African American culture, drawing correspondences between Revelation’s context and the longstanding suffering of the African American church. Applying the African American social, political, and religious experience as an interpretive cipher for the book’s complicated imagery, he contends that Revelation is essentially a story of suffering and struggle amidst oppressive assimilation. He examines the image of the lamb as a model for Christian behavior and discusses Revelation’s hymns, showing how they can be glimpsed as coded calls to champion God’s cause and the cause of transformative liberation.
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| Accessible and thought-provoking |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Blount reads Revelation through the context of African-American culture, particularly African-American church culture. Blount states that in Revelation, John is asking, "Can I get a witness?" and when the preacher in an African-American worship asks this, "The preacher wants you not only to hear what he is saying but to understand and then to act upon it" (37).
In terms of literary context, Blount writes that at John's time, witness meant witness, not martyr. He sees parallel irony in the fact that just as Roman slaughter brought more witnesses, not less, the same is true for racial hatred directed at African Americans. Slaves were not permitted to have their own services; to do so was to express resistance. Blount likens the shouting out of slaves in worship to the shouting out of the slaughtered souls in Revelation (54). Similarly, Blount sees the dressing up of African Americans at worship as related to the wearing of white robes by the slaughtered souls in Revelation.
In Chapter 4, Blount interprets the hymns in the Book of Revelation through African-American music. Blount sees the hymns in Revelation as helping "John's hearers and readers to initiate such resistance on their own" just as "music has been a primary weapon black people have waged in their fighting back" (93). Blount sees the hymns in the African-American church and the musical genres of African-American spirituals, blues, and rap as being created out of oppression and an active resistance against it. He sees the hymns in Revelation as arising out of the same combination of oppression and active resistance.
I highly recommend this book.
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