Willie James Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School. He is the author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race, which received the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Constructive-Reflective category as well as the Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the largest prize for a theological work in North America. A prolific writer and highly sought-after speaker, he is also an ordained Baptist minister.
"A treat for the mind, the heart, and the flesh. This moving
meditation on God's 'divine desire placed in us by the Spirit' is a
powerful theological commentary on how it is possible for us to
break down our categories and barriers that separate us and
journey, together, to the new, to our next. This is a book of hope
and possibilities about a book of hope and possibilities . . . and
this is good news."
--Emilie M. Townes, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of
Womanist Ethics and Society, Vanderbilt University Divinity
School
"Jennings writes as poet, preacher, and prophet. He takes the
reader on a theological tour of Acts, and like a good tour guide,
he describes the familiar places thoughtfully. Like the best of
tour guides, he also takes the reader to places of importance that
are often unnoticed. We are familiar with Paul's beatings and
imprisonment, but Jennings invites us to think theologically about
prisons and beatings. We are familiar with the Jewish-Christian
struggles in Acts, but Jennings guides us to think more deeply
about the Jewish diaspora and the trauma that empire imposes. These
visits to neglected places engender new understanding and
perspective on the events recounted in Acts. This commentary
preaches as faithfully as it teaches."
--Daniel Aleshire, Executive Director, The Association of
Theological Schools
"The latest addition to the Belief series is a remarkable
commentary. Through his fresh, stimulating interpretation of the
book of Acts, Jennings offers profound and deep theological-ethical
engagement with Luke's second volume. This beautifully written
commentary will inspire readers who seek to listen with care to
what Acts has to say to the theological and ethical challenges of
contemporary life. Page after page, readers of Jennings's work,
like the Saul of Acts 9, may find vision-obscuring scales falling
away from their eyes. This is an important voice for our time."
--John T. Carroll, Harriet Robertson Fitts Memorial Professor of
New Testament, Union Presbyterian Seminary
"This commentary on Acts is unlike any I've read, for Willie
Jennings is not afraid to read against the grain. His distinctive
voice and prophetic reading is essential, especially in these days
of social turmoil, days in which the church is seeking to make
sense of its seeming loss of cultural power, days in which clarity
about Scripture and its transformative power is needed more than
ever."
--Eric D. Barreto, Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New
Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary
"Willie Jennings has long called us toward the truly Christian
imagination needed for a post-Christendom and post-colonial (both
contested notions and realities) world. Here he announces that such
an imaginative revolution was long ago heralded by the divinely
poured-out Spirit on the Day of Pentecost two thousand years ago
that inspired cross-Mediterranean diasporic witness, a new form of
Jew-Greek cosmopolitanism, and empire-resisting messianic
citizenship. The book of Acts thus ignites faithful discipleship
for a plurimorphic and polyglot people of God navigating the
nationalisms, ethnocentrisms, and globalisms of the third
millennium!"
--Amos Yong, Professor of Theology and Mission, Fuller Theological
Seminary, and author of Who Is the Holy Spirit: A Walk with the
Apostles
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