The latest gathering of McClendon readers saw us engage with Part One of Ethics, which McClendon calls Embodied Witness, chapters on Body Ethics, Sarah and Jonathan Edwards and Eros: Towards an Ethic of Sexual Love.
A few folk we're saying this was the bit of Ethics they struggled with most, some skipping over, but it was interesting to read it nearly 35 years after it was first published. In the chapter on Body Ethics, McClendon turns to what he calls black religion as embodied ethics. In the first of narrative chapters he uses Sarah Edwards, wife of the theologian and pastor Jonathan as another example of an embodied love. And in chapter 5 on Eros, he explores a theology of eros against the backdrop of the myth of romantic love. There is a sense perhaps McClendon was pioneering some of where theology as a discipline has gone in the last thirty years and while there are questions to ask in terms of his presentation of black religion and female narrative, he was doing something that few others were doing at the time.
Amy Chilton and Mike Broadway offer brief engagements with this part of the book and this is followed by comments and conversation.
We will continue to read and respond to McClendon and chapters 6-8 on 17th September.
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