Society for the Study of Black Religion (SSBR)

April 2, 2023 

Professor Webb was recently nominated and inducted into full membership of the Society for the Study of Black Religion (SSBR) in DC. The oldest scholarly society dedicated to the formal study of religious experience across the African Diaspora. 

The SSBR was founded in 1970 to support black religious scholars' critical inquiry into the foundations of black theology. The intellectual ferment which led to the group's founding began with Joseph B. Washington's publication of the seminal Black Religion in 1964 and continued with the publication of James H. Cone's Black Theology and Black Power in 1969.

The group chose "religion" rather than "theology" to avoid the constraints imposed by the narrower term. Charles Shelby Rooks, who would later become the first African-American head of a traditionally white-led seminary at the Chicago Theological Seminary, took a leading role in the founding and served as the SSBR's first elected president.

I was also happy to spend some time in the Rustin archives @ the Library of Congress.

Thankful for my sponsor, big sister, and sitting Executive Director, Dr. Michele E. Watkins. Thankful for senior scholars who planted great seeds in me long before I knew where the fertile soil was. And for all those who stand alongside my work in the most life-giving ways.

Alpha Bruton is sitting in a chair, preparing for a video interview. 

FACEBOOK 

Visit https://www.facebook.com/taurean.webb.3 on Facebook for more information and updates on the project.

By Kenny Gu, Crimson Staff Writer

March 30, 2022

Taurean J. Webb, an instructor at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and a Harvard Divinity School fellow, presented a collaborative art exhibition called “Ye Shall Inherit the Earth & Faces of the Divine” at a virtual event sponsored by the Divinity School.

The event — “A Home for the Human Spirit: Cultural Activism and the Moral Imagination in the Inherit Art Project” — was part of a series by the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at HDS to showcase the work of its fellows. The virtual event included a preface to the position by Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary professor Brian Bantum, a video trailer, and an interview with a featured artist.

In spearheading the project, Webb hoped to reimagine links between Black and Palestinian identities and highlight “Black-Palestinian transnational solidarity and the shared joys and the shared fears.”

“While this project and this conversation isn't a move to kind of universalize Blackness or Palestinianness or exceptionalize them in these weird sorts of ways, it is an argument for and a project about constantly recasting and recasting and recasting and redeploying how we might imagine what I sometimes call these transnational resonances,” Webb said.

Webb said he hoped to build on the work activists and scholars have already begun in recognizing these connections and create a new “entry point” for those who were not as familiar with Palestine.

“I wanted to offer them a place to enter, hoping that when they saw people who reminded them of themselves, and they aunties and sisters and grandmamas and cousins, they begin to see humanity more broadly,” Webb said.

Webb’s project features the work of and interviews with various artists to highlight the Black-Palestinian experience and connect it with a broader discussion of humanity.

“I gathered about 15 artists — visual artists — from both the African diaspora and Palestinian exiled migration together into a visual arts exhibition that uses portraiture to reflect on the relationship between humanity and the sacred,” Webb said.

A traveling exhibition created from the project will continue to move around the U.S., and Webb plans to release a film in 2023, including artist interviews and footage of the exhibits.

“I gathered about 15 artists — visual artists — from both the African diaspora and Palestinian exiled migration together into a visual arts exhibition that uses portraiture to reflect on the relationship between humanity and the sacred,” Webb said.