The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans by Almeda M. Wright (review)

Emilie Townes, Thomas Groome, Peter Parker, Sharon Daloz Parks, Evelyn Parks and Anne Streator Wimberly: to these names we must now add the name of Almeda Wright, whose book The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans is an important and timely work that contributes to understanding the daily life and coping mechanisms of young African Americans. Almeda Wright builds upon the work of religious educator Evelyn Parker's Trouble Don't Last Always: Emancipatory Hope among African American Adolescents, as well as the narrative storytelling work of Anne E. Streator Wimberly (Soul Stories). Parker's work defines the problem of fragmented spirituality in African-American adolescents' discourse about their faith in light of racism. Wright builds upon Parker's work in looking not only at racism, but also classism, sexism, and youth violence in today's society. Wimberly's work focuses on the formative aspect of religious education as defined by the stories of a people. Wright uses storytelling as a framework for understanding the lives of young African Americans. Almeda Wright's book is an important contribution not only to studies in spirituality, but also to further research in religious education, race studies, and theories of adolescent development.

The author was able to shine a light on the spirituality and experience of young African Americans by use of a narrative method which included interviews of 20 young African Americans. She chose to use a practical theological approach-to relate to their stories. Her practical approach included three movements. The first is attending closely to the lived realities of African-American adolescents and their spirituality. The second is a constructive critical reflection on this reality, placing the experiences of African-American youth in relation to theories of adolescent spirituality and religious education, identity development, sociology of religion, African-American history, and womanist and black theology. Third, she returns to the concrete realities of youth by offering proposals for improved practice with African-American adolescents.

In looking at the lived experience of young African-Americans, Smith examines their religious educational curriculum. She reviewed 106 lessons from the Urban Ministries Inc. adolescent curriculum line, including 53 lessons with those aged 12 to 14, and the InTeen curriculum for use with those 15 to 17 (258). She also conducted online and face-to-face interviews with African American adolescents of various ages who participated in the Theological Initiative Summer Academy at Emory University. The interviews explored their daily activities, their concerns and struggles in the world, their understanding of God, their experience of God, as well as their hopes and dreams for a future world (247–256). She acknowledges the influence of Ana Maria Isasi-Diaz (En La Lucha), who uses ethnographic interviews as well as meta-ethnography.

Chapters 1 and 2 focus on narrative and what is viewed as the fragmented spirituality and context of young African Americans. Through interviews and the telling of their stories she introduces us to African-Americans ranging in age from 16-19 and how their understanding of God has shaped their own experience of oppression. Chapter 3 moves to the second movement of practical theology which focuses on the the lives of adolescents as primary texts. In this section she reviews their religious educational curriculum and asks whether African American churches are currently influencing, in a positive or negative way, the lived realities of young people. She found in her research that a theology focused on the personal and interpersonal seemed to prevail. In chapters 4 and 5 she writes that African American youth are not making a connection between their understanding of and belief in God, and how this experience and belief had an impact on their life and the world. This fragmentation is not just a reality for young adolescents but as she states has become a common phenomenon across generations. In this section of her book she also looks at that which she calls the unspoken question of theodicy at the center...