Notes of a Native Daughter: Testifying in Theological Education

Theological Education between the Times

By: Keri Day

Narrated by: Robin Eller

In Notes of a Native Daughter, Keri Day testifies to structural inequalities and broken promises of inclusion through the eyes of a black woman who experiences herself as both stranger and friend to prevailing models of theological education.

Inviting the listener into her religious world - a world that is African American and, more specifically, Afro-Pentecostal - she not only uncovers the colonial impulses of theological education in the United States but also proposes that the lived religious practices and commitments of progressive Afro-Pentecostal communities can help the theological academy decolonize and reenvision multiple futures. Deliberately speaking in the testimonial form - rather than the more conventional mode of philosophical argument - Day bears witness to the truth revealed in her and others’ lived experience in a voice that is unapologetically visceral, emotive, demonstrative, and, ultimately, communal.

With prophetic insight, she addresses this moment when the fastest-growing group of students and teachers are charismatic and neo-Pentecostal people of color for whom theological education is currently a site of both hope and harm. Calling for repentance, she provides a redemptive narrative for moving forward into a diverse future that can be truly liberating only when it allows itself to be formed by its people and the Spirit moving in them.

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