Jawanza Eric Clark
Professor
Religious Studies
Professor
Religious Studies
Contact Information
Office Location
MGL 411
Contact Information
Office Location
REL 110 The Nature and Experience of Religion
REL 210 Jesus
REL 238 Theologies of Liberation
REL 320 Race, Religion, and Resistance
REL 300 Black Theology
REL 300 African Christianity
REL 300 "Whose Earth Is It?" Race, Religion, and the Natural World
REL 300 Study Abroad: Black Theology in South Africa
REL 300 Study Abroad: Postcolonial African Religious Thought in Ghana
REL 351 God and Evil
REL 420 Majors' Seminar: Colonial Christianity and Indigenous Religions in America
My primary training is in Protestant Christian theology, with specialization in Black liberation and womanist thought, but I am also interested in comparative theology as it pertains to African religions and African and African-American Christianity.
My current research engages the intersection between Black theology, African spirituality, and Eco-Theology. I argue that the current global ecological crisis is an outgrowth of the most consequential problem of the modern era, the problem of whiteness. I propose naming and rejecting white epistemological hubris, which universalizes its truth, objectifies the land, and misunderstands the spiritual potency of nature, and creating space for formerly colonized and oppressed perspectives to inform our response to ecocide and make their contribution to the restoration of the Earth. African-descended and Native American people, informed by their traditional spirituality, must reclaim the space(s) and restore the lands from which they've been dispossessed. In my latest book, I construct a spatially-oriented theology that radically reimagines creation, the doctrine of God, rituals of sacred memory, and the telos of Black liberation theology, and in so doing offers a response to the politics of spatial dislocation and containment of black bodies that is the legacy of white supremacy.
Books
Reclaiming Stolen Earth: An Africana Ecotheology, Orbis Books, 2022.
Albert Cleage Jr and The Black Madonna and Child, edited book, Palgrave Macmillan 2016.
Indigenous Black Theology: Toward An African-Centered Theology of the African-American Religious Experience, Palgrave Macmillan 2012.
Articles/Book Chapters
"Nothing is More Sacred Than the Liberation of Black People: Albert Cleage's Method as Unfulfilled Theological Paradigm Shift," in Albert Cleage Jr. And the Black Madonna and Child, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
"The Great Ancestor: An African Conception of God," in Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities, Springer, 2013.
"Jonathan Edwards," in Beyond the Pale: Reading Theology from the Margins, eds. Miguel de la Torre and Stacey Floyd Thomas, Westminster John Knox, 2011.
"Reconceiving the Doctrine of Jesus As Savior in Terms of the African Understanding of Ancestor: A Model for the Black Church," in Black Theology: An International Journal Vol 8 (2) 2010.
Professional Experience
Professor of Global Christianity, Manhattan College, Bronx, NY (2023-2024, 2025-present)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia (2024-2025)