Contributor: Vincent W. Lloyd Vincent Lloyd is associate professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. He is the author of The Problem with Grace: Reconfiguring Political Theology (Stanford University Press, 2011), Black Natural Law (Oxford University Press, 2016), Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology (Fordham fUniversity Press, 2017), and In Defense of Charisma (Columbia University Press, 2018).

Vincent Lloyd’s Religion of the Field Negro makes an important contribution to redefining the theological enterprise. --- Religion of the Field Negro is an excellent exploration of the task, and necessity, of reenvisioning Black theological discourse.---Darrius D. Hills, The Journal of Religion --- In the wake of George Floyd, and too many others’ brutal deaths, a potential renewal of abolitionist religion hangs in the air... Lloyd’s work makes an invaluable contribution to actualizing that potentiality in everyday life. It needs to be widely read and taught. --- Religion of the Field Negro incisively analyzes dominant trends within the field of Black theology and Black religious thought, most especially secularism, by discussing ideas rather than by rehearsing a long list of authors and texts: Lloyd refreshingly refrains from composing a litany of the saints. This philosophically sophisticated and original argument will be of interest to scholars of religion, Black theology, philosophy of religion, whiteness studies, and African American history (religious and secular). It could profitably be assigned in graduate courses on these and other topics. --- Religion of the Field Negro is an exciting book and one that injects both intellectual and revolutionary passion into black theological discourse. Its insistence that the theological be taken seriously in order to fight racial injustice and, in turn, all injustice inscribed into contemporary culture dominated by whiteness is crucial. It unapologetically seats black theological critique as the most important, and most needed, site of cultural and political criticism today. It never shies away from taking the disruptive potential of God, of black church tradition, deeply seriously. And it invests itself in not shying away from black religion being sufficient, in fact necessary, on its own terms in theology and in the world at present.---Jason Wyman, Manhattan College, Theology Today --- Religion of the Field Negro succeeds at engaging an audience outside of the academy. It is accessible to both lay and expert audiences. It seeks to broaden and deepen the discourse about Black theology and the Black church. It provides an entry point into an important conversation as well as a foundation from which to expand the conversation. This collection of essays would be a solid addition to an upper division undergraduate, or first year graduate, course in Black theology or African and African American philosophy. --- Religion of the Field Negro is an intellectual tour de force. Lloyd exercises a unique ability to bring conversational partners from diverse positions and discourses into dialogue so as to better obtain critical clarity on the future prospects and possibilities of black theology. He is intent on recovering the revolutionary goals of a black theology grounded in the lives, hopes, thoughts, and expressions of ordinary African Americans. --- Once again Vincent Lloyd has written an insightful, demanding, even daring book, and this time with an irritating title straight out of the 1960s. Lloyd throws down a stinging challenge to all those of us who cling to idolatries of race, class, and gender as well as to our privileges in the classroom, the boardroom, and the pulpit. We have betrayed black theology in our failure to uphold the wisdom of the marginalized, the cherished people of God.---M. Shawn Copeland, Boston College