Can I Get a Witness
In this accessible and provocative study, Brian Blount reads the book of Revelation through the lens of African American culture, drawing correspondences between Revelation's context and the long-standing suffering of African Americans. Applying the African American social, political, and religious experience as an interpretive cipher for the book's complicated imagery, he contends that Revelation is essentially a story of suffering and struggle amid oppressive assimilation. He examines the language of "martyr" and the image of the lamb, and shows that the thread of resistance to oppressive power that runs through John's hymns resonates with a parallel theme in the music of African America.
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Brian K. Blount is president and professor of New Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina. His scholarship focuses on the Gospel of Mark, the book of Revelation, cultural hermeneutics, and New Testament ethics. He is the author of Cultural Interpretation: Reorienting New Testament Criticism (1995); Go Preach! Mark's Kingdom Message and the Black Church Today (1998); Then the Whisper Put On Flesh: New Testament Ethics in an African American Context (2001); Struggling with Scripture, with Walter Brueggemann and William Placher (2001); Preaching the Gospel of Mark in Two Voices, with Gary W. Charles (2002); Can I Get a Witness? Reading Revelation through an African American Lens (2005); Revelation: A Commentary (2009); and Invasion of the Dead: Preaching Resurrection (2014). With Leonora Tubbs Tisdale, he has coedited Making Room at the Table: An Invitation to Multicultural Worship (2000).
