Black Lives Matter: A Theological Response to Racism’s Impact on the Black Body in the United States

After the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, there has been a renewed movement in the United States and across the world in support of black lives. The movement, under the guiding framework of Black Lives Matter, has resulted in a national conversation on police brutality and racism, and the violent effects these have on the black body. Using the framework of black theological thought on the body, this paper identifies the many ways that racism, as Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, “lands, with great violence, upon the body” across multiple domains and levels throughout history and across the life course. The paper closes with some initial recommendations for historically predominantly white churches to offer an anti-racist response to this violence, as informed by black theology.

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