Joe Aldred – författare

** Second impression, revised and reissued in 2020 **The Black Church in the 21st Century provides an exciting and fresh look at the key issues facing the Black Church Movement in Britain today, representing a bold attempt for scope and analysis. Now over 60 years old, and having experienced great success, the Black Church is facing an uncertain future as part of a context in which Christianity is itself challenged by an increasingly secular, plural society. The book shows why at a post-modern moment of competing voices and simultaneous calls for faith and cultural cohesion, the Black Church is crucial as a prophetic advocate for the Black Community. Its chapters also demonstrate that current and future social, economic and political challenges demand of the Black Church in Britain greater awareness and progressive change in both style and substance.

Although part of a worldwide Christian spirituality, Pentecostals and Charismatics in the UK are rooted in British religiosity dating back to at least the 1920s. However, the emergence of migrant communities from the Caribbean and Africa since the 1950s has tended to attract popular attention and consequentially has come to represent the popular public face of Pentecostals and Charismatics in Britain. Latterly, however, an intellectual base has begun resisting the anti-intellectual reputation that has attached itself to Pentecostalism. This book draws upon the scholarship of eminent academics and practitioners in the field of Pentecostal and Charismatic studies, who together consider the history of pentecostal and charismatic movements, their relationship with mainline Christian churches and their engagement with the social, economic and political world. Topics covered include: the theological and doctrinal marks in British Pentecostalism, Anglican-Pentecostal relations, and the impact of the Vineyard movement on Charismatic and Pentecostal worship in the UK. Contributors include: Professor Anne E. Dyer (Mattersey Hall), Professor William K.  Kay (Chester University), Professor David Hilborn, (Moorlands College),  Dr R. David Muir (University of Roehampton) and Dr Babatunde A. Adedibu (Redeemed Christian Bible College, Nigeria). With a foreword by Justin Welby.

Black theology has long been about oppression and liberation. But is there a different story to tell? Can the black story be one about a quest for flourishing through agency and self-determination and not only an existence of nihilistic struggle? Drawing on a fresh reading of Jeremiah’s letter to Jewish exiles, and his own Pentecostal tradition, Joe Aldred offers a fresh understanding of the Black British experience which draws on a realised eschatology rooted in identity, empowerment and an agenda. In a contested diasporan context in the shadow of empire there exists opportunity to fully flourish without apology – or as Jeremiah puts it to those in exile, to ‘settle, build and grow'.