Too often the negative characterization of "others" in the biblical text is applied to groups and persons beyond the text whom we wish to define as the Other. Otherness is a synthetic and political social construct that allows us to create and maintain boundaries between "them" and "us." The other that is too similar to us is most problematic. This book demonstrates how proximate characters are constructed as the Other in the Acts of the Apostles. Charismatics, Jews, and women are proximate others who are constructed as the external and internal Other.

The Literary Construction of the Other in the Acts of the Apostles explores the beginnings of the Christian Church, showing how early believers united and created a self-identity through delimiting the Other. Mitzi Smith shows how the creation and subjugation of the Other was crucial for the expansion of Christianity by the Apostles. Mitzi Smith employs Jonathon Smith's theory of otherness as a framework for analysing Luke's literary and discursive construction of character in Acts. In order to define the Self we define the Other, using opposition as a form of definition and subjugation....

That Christian missionary efforts have long gone hand-in-hand with European colonization and American imperialist expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries is well recognized. This book deals with the role played by the Great Commission - the risen Christ's command to go into all the world and teach all nations.

I Found God in Me is the first womanist biblical hermeneutics reader. In it readers have access, in one volume, to articles on womanist interpretative theories and theology as well as cutting-edge womanist readings of biblical texts by womanist biblical scholars. This book is an excellent resource for women of color, pastors, and seminarians interested in relevant readings of the biblical text, as well as scholars and teachers teaching courses in womanist biblical hermeneutics, feminist interpretation, African American hermeneutics, and biblical courses that value diversity and dialogue as...

In this volume in the series Reading the Bible in the Twemty-First Century: Insights, Mitzi J. Smith describes the distinctive African American experience of Scripture, from slavery to Black Liberation and beyond, and the unique angles of perception that an intentional African American interpretation brings to the text today. Smith shows how questions of race, ethnicity, and the dynamics of "othering" have resulted in new reading of particular texts, and describes challenges that scholarship raises for the future of biblical interpretation.