Getting to the Promised Land by Kevin W. Cosby

Stephen Baptist Church, the largest African American church in Kentucky and the president of Simmons College, a HBCU school, contends for replacing the preaching of Exodus with Nehemiah.

Indeed, the title of this book might lead one to think that this is another lesson in Exodus preaching. Most often, Black preaching and rhetoric appeals to the Exodus narratives to cast a vision for throwing off the yoke of oppression and coming into the freedom of the Promised Land. Summary: An argument for the use of the Nehemiah narratives rather than Exodus to ground the appeal by American Descendents of Slaves (ADOS) for restitution for the centuries of abuse they and their ancestors suffered. Cosby calls all Americans to move from a place of relative nonengagement and detachment to a place of active support of ADOS's efforts for justice and healing. In the stories of Nehemiah and other biblical leaders, Cosby finds inspiration on how to rebuild Black America including the necessity of government reparations for ADOS. Cosby lays out the first theology of the ADOS movement, turning the traditional lens of Black liberation theology from Moses leading escaped Hebrew slaves in Exodus to other biblical leaders like Solomon, Daniel, and Nehemiah. But the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) hold a unique claim to economic and reparative justice: for ADOS, after all, is the only group whose ancestors were forcibly brought to America, enslaved, built much of the wealth of the country, yet continue to be specifically excluded from the same social, political, and economic rights of other Americans. Too often, all oppressed people in America are lumped together under the moniker people of color, as if each group's experience under the yoke of systemic racism has the same economic and social repercussions.

Getting to the Promised Land by Kevin W. Cosby