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Simms, Rupe
Rupe Simms lectures in Africana Studies and Sociology at North Park University. Dr. Simms received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Loyola University Chicago. He also holds a doctorate Bible Exposition from the Dallas Theological Seminary.
2010 0-7734-3754-1Gramscian theory is examined as an interpretive grid in examining the use of Christianity by European colonizers to facilitate their oppression of Africans on the continent and in diaspora. The work clarifies how the western powers utilized their religion in North America, Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya to justify their exploitation of Blacks and how many Africans, as Christian converts, assisted them to accomplish their imperialist goals. In addition, this research explains how other Blacks, in these same locations, interpreted their own religious tradition or revised western Christianity to form liberatory ideologies that legitimated their struggle for freedom and inspired their communities to oppose subordination.
2000 0-7734-7696-2
This study argues that the church has the capability of fostering ideological resistance to the dominant order and therefore making a profound contribution to the sociopolitical liberation of Black Americans. By developing this position using qualitative research methods in three African-American churches, the work confirms the reality of this potential, showing that a counter-hegemonic approach to church in the Black community is possible. This is significant because many politically active scholars, even African-American radicals, disparage the institution as a politically destructive hegemonic organization that misuses social and economic resources. This study will interest those interested in African-American church and culture, sociology, urban ethnography, social history, and the sociology of religion.