Philemon is as important a letter from an African American perspective as Romans or Galatians have proven to be in Eurocentric interpretation. Here the editors gather critical essays by a constellation of African American and other scholars, highlighting the latest in interpretive methods and troubling scholarly waters, interacting with the legacies of Hegel, Freud, Habermas, Ricoeur, and James C. Scott as well as the historical experience of African American communities. Onesimus Our Brother opens surprising new vistas on Pauls shortest and, in some ways, most troubling letter.

This book situates the study of Black Religion within the modern temporal and historical structuresin the Atlantic World. It describes how black people and Black Religion made a phenomenological appearance in modernity simultaneously and were signified in the identity formation of whites and their religion."