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Jude 3 Project
The Scholars
The Scholars · Unspoken

Walter Strickland

He wrote the two-volume history of Black Christianity in America. Ask him why the Black church exists and he gives you a date, a church address, and the name of the usher.

Who he is

Dr. Walter R. Strickland II. Professor of Systematic and Contextual Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Associate Fellow at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge, and a teaching pastor. Author of Swing Low: A History of Black Christianity in the United States (IVP Academic), a two-volume theological and intellectual history running from 1619 to the present, which proposes five theological anchors of Black Christianity.

Also anchors sessions 4.5, 5.3, 6.5 of the learning path

Who he is

Walter Strickland teaches systematic and contextual theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, is an associate fellow at Cambridge's Kirby Laing Centre, and pastors. He wrote Swing Low, a two-volume history of Black Christianity in the United States running from 1619 forward.

He is the historian of the institution. Where others in this archive establish that Africa was Christian early, Strickland tells you what happened here, decade by decade, with names and dates attached.

What you are getting in this dossier

The three specific mechanisms by which a shared church taught Black worshippers they were a lower class, which is the concrete answer to why a separate church exists. The interrupted prayer that produced a denomination. The theological trick the plantation gospel ran on. Three rebellions argued from Scripture. And the single most surprising sentence anyone in this archive attributes to a witness of the civil rights movement.

Why the Black church exists

He opens with the answer and then proves it three ways.

"The black church began because Black worshippers wanted to come together and worship God in dignity."

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The rest of this dossier is part of Unspoken

1,587 more words and 5 more clips of him making the case, including the three objections he answers and the place he refuses to flatter his own argument.

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The usher, and the balconyWalter Strickland · 1:05 of interview
While your body is mine, your soul is freeWalter Strickland · 1:14 of interview
Garnet, and the blacksmith who took the Nazarite vowWalter Strickland · 1:28 of interview
A man of prayerWalter Strickland · 0:55 of interview
Cecil Cone on his own brotherWalter Strickland · 1:12 of interview
All the scholars