First Pure, Then Peaceable : Frederick Douglass Reads James.

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- CHAPTER 1 FREDERICK DOUGLASS, BIBLE READER -- Biblical Studies: An On-going Critique -- African Americans in the Guild of Biblical Studies -- Cultural Interpretation: A Review and Critique -- Moving from Silence to Darkness -- Reading "Darkness": A Theoretical Model of Marronage -- To Read "Darkness": Frederick Douglass as Exemplum -- CHAPTER 2 FREDERICK DOUGLASS, "DARKNESS READER" -- A Very Brief Biography -- Is Douglass "Dark" Enough? -- The Language of Religion -- "First Pure, then Peaceable: The choice of Jas 3:17 -- Formation or Home-Building and the Bible -- CHAPTER 3 REDEFINING "RELIGION": DOUGLASS'S ABOLITIONIST SPEECHES AND JAMES 3:17 -- Oratory and Orientation -- The Dimensions of Home: Frederick Douglass and Jas 3:17 -- "American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland" -- Structural, Textual, and Ideational Aspects -- Rhetoric and Signification -- Other Formative Uses of Jas 3:17 in Douglass's Abolitionist Speeches -- "The Fourth of July" and Jas 3:17 -- "John Brown" and Jas 3:17 -- The Language of Formation: Further Considerations -- CHAPTER 4 "FRIENDSHIP WITH THE [Omitted] IS ENMITY WITH GOD": "DARKNESS READING" AND THE EPISTLE OF JAMES -- Reading "Darkness," Reading James -- A Brief Overview of the Epistle -- James as Re-form[ul]ation -- Intertextuality and "Scripturalizing" in James -- Signification and Other Rhetorical Moves in James -- "Darkness Reading" and Jas 3:17 -- The Contours of the Pericope: Formal and Structural Considerations -- Re-form[ul]ation and Jas 3:13-18 -- Intertextuality in Jas 3:13-18 -- Signification, Rhetoric and Jas 3:13-18 -- James and Darkness: Preliminary Conclusions -- CHAPTER 5 TAKING AN "ELL": READING, DARKNESS, AND RESISTANCE -- A "Reading" Lesson -- "Reading" as Resistance -- "Scriptures": The Norms of "America".

Evangelical Christianity and the Myth of America -- "Taking an Ell": "Reading" and "Darkness" -- Why did Douglass "Read" James? -- CHAPTER 6 "READING DARKNESS" AND "BIBLICAL STUDIES" -- "Reading Darkness" as "Changing the 'Subject' " -- Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index of Ancient Sources -- Index of Authors/Subjects -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- J -- K -- L -- M -- P -- R -- S -- T -- W.

In 2001, Continuum published the extensive collected papers from African Americans and the Bible, an interdisciplinary conference held at Union Theological Seminary, NYC. In the collection's introduction, Vincent L. Wimbush issued a challenge to take seriously those who "read darkness," and to consider what it is they are doing when they read the Bible as "scripture." Wimbush's focus on "darkness readers," both within and outside of the African diaspora, breaks open the discourse around the nature, meaning, and importance of the Bible. By following the lead of "darkness readers," the Bible is revealed to be more than a collection of ancient documents from an inaccessible past; it is the site upon which modern, contemporary ideological battles have and continue to be waged. In this book Margaret Aymer takes up his challenge. It is an examination of the way in which Frederick Douglass, the nineteenth-century abolitionist, used the epistle of James, particularly Jas 3:17, in his abolitionist speeches, to "read" the "darkness" of slavery and slaveholding Christianity. Within the epistle of James is a rhetoric of the world as "darkness". Douglass uses this to read his contemporary "darkness." As part of her research, Aymer has created an index of biblical references in all of Frederick Douglass' abolitionist speeches as collected by J. W. Blassingame (1841-1860).

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.