Liberating Our Dignity, Saving Our Souls - by Lee H Butler (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In Lee Butlers own words, "This book is an attempt to answer the question, Who are we as African Americans?" Attempting to answer this question is one way we participate in the works of salvation. Liberating Our Dignity, Saving Our Souls is a study of African American identity aimed at pointing a way out of a current crisis into a new liberation and salvation. Butler combines insights and methodologies from developmental psychology, liberation theology, and African and African American history to plot a new course for contemporary African Americans to gain a sense of identity that will guide them away from the identity the European and American cultures have traditionally forced upon them. This involves determining identity by personal worth, not by occupation, economic class, or social class.

Review Quotes

"The synergism of diverse resources--black liberation theologies, psychodynamic psychologies, historical-cultural analyses, and religious-spiritual practices--launches Professor Butler's Liberating Our Dignity, Saving Our Souls. Butler is one of a growing cadre of African American pastoral psychologists whose work tackles the complex interplay between culture and identity. He shows how communal spirituality is for African Americans a liberated and soulful identity and not simply a means of coping with racism and genderism. This is a book about African American identity formation, yes, and also, because all human identities are forged in powerful cultural dynamics akin to those he describes, it is, indirectly, a book about us all."

About the Author

Lee H. Butler, Jr., Ph.D., is professor of theology and psychology at the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS). He is founder of the Center for the Study of Black Faith and Life at CTS, president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion, past chairperson of the Committee on Race and Ethnicity in Theological Education (a standing committee of the Association of Theological Schools), and is a member of the Association of Black Psychologists, the Society for Pastoral Theology, and the American Academy of Religion.