“What does it mean to follow Jesus when we strip Whiteness and westernness from his skin and the Brown colonized context from which he rose? What happens when those at the bottom read the words of those at the bottom? What suppressed, covered over, hidden, and obliterated meanings rise again? That is the project of the next five hundred years. Angela Parker’s If God Still Breathes takes us one step further on the journey.”
— Lisa Sharon Harper
from the foreword
“I’ve been waiting for this book! If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? brings a fresh perspective to the biblical text that makes it come alive with hope of liberation for all people. Dr. Angela Parker calls us past the superficial into a deep engagement with a contextual theology that is relevant and life-giving. We must rethink how to address the racial and social injustices taking place in the world today, and I am convinced that the way forward is womanist! So if you want to become brave enough to move from being a concerned bystander to an active participant—this book is for you! I highly recommend it.”
— Brenda Salter McNeil
author of Becoming Brave: Finding the Courage to Pursue Racial Justice Now
“Dr. Parker understands the power of testimony to speak truth. This book marks a path away from death-dealing forms of scholarly formation in evangelical biblical studies and toward thriving life in a field and for a field. Parker’s powerful text adds greatly to a growing number of theologically rich antiracist and antisexist resources for addressing our current struggles. Now we have yet another weapon of righteousness.”
— Willie James Jennings
author of After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging
“This book invites readers to embrace justice and Black Lives Matter by taking them on a journey of personal re-membering and critical reflection toward a womanist consciousness. Dr. Parker employs the metaphorical language of God-breath (inspired scriptures) and breathing (liberating interpretation that embraces all bodies and blackness) unobstructed by the suffocating, breath-taking authoritarian claims of whiteness-centered biblical scholarship buttressed by doctrinal claims of inerrancy and infallibility.”
— Mitzi J. Smith
author of Womanist Sass and Talk Back: (In)Justice, Intersectionality, and Biblical Interpretation
“What might the church be like if we were a people who walked with each other so well that we all ‘made it home’? In this spirit (ruach)–filled book, Dr. Angela Parker calls with courage for us to release the white supremacist authoritarianism of inerrancy and infallibility. She invites with vision for us to journey into a living relationship with the Bible, one in which we need not—and, in fact, must not—leave our embodied experiences and identities behind. This book offers womanist air, as vital as it is ‘God-breathed.’”
— Jennifer Harvey
author of Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation
“If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? is not only an invitation to examine how we are conditioned to read Scripture; it is also a thought-provoking intervention in which Parker reveals the often invisible yet insidious ways biblical inerrancy and infallibility uphold white supremacist authoritarianism. At the same time, Parker challenges us to reimagine a liberated world, one in which we create community, walk with one another, and learn to live into the tension that accompanies diversity. If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? is indeed a breath of fresh air from which all readers of Scripture will benefit.”
— Jennifer T. Kaalund
associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Booklist
“While this is mostly a scholarly work, Parker includes anecdotes from her life experiences, including as the target of racism, to personalize and illustrate her points.”
Review of Biblical Literature
“Readers will welcome this fresh and innovative study for many reasons: its trenchant critique of authoritarianism; the voice and visibility it affords to the hopes and aspirations of Black bodies; the clarion calls it makes about the appreciation of Black women’s fully embodied identities; and even the book’s fluid prose and page-turning economy of expression.”
Review of Biblical Literature
“Angela Parker’s illuminating study, If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I?, is a remarkably eloquent, original, modulated study of the pernicious legacies of White supremacist authoritarianism’s suffocating death grip on Western biblical interpretation and Protestant formations of Christian faith and practice.”
The Christian Century
“Part memoir and part biblical exegesis, this small book packs a powerful punch.”
Interpretation
“An essential addition to any biblical studies library.”