Pre-Order | Pub Date February 2025
“Yolanda Pierce provides a celebration of the diverse ways the Black church nurtures gifts of leadership and moral power, gifts that are so needed for the facing of twenty-first-century crises. Pierce weaves an amazing tapestry of biblical, historical, and experiential reflection. Everyone who reads this deeply poetic and accessible theological gift will grow and be strengthened. ”
From celebrated scholar Dr. Yolanda Pierce comes this indelible meditation on Black faith, suffering, hope, and the healing possibilities of justice, written in the venerable tradition of James Cone and Kelly Brown Douglas.
What do we do with wounds--our own, others', and a nation's? We can turn away, avert our gaze. We can make a spectacle of suffering. Or like the doubting disciple who longed to touch Jesus's side, we can acquaint ourselves with the wounds: both the story they tell and the healing they prefigure.
In The Wounds Are the Witness, Yolanda Pierce, dean of Vanderbilt University Divinity School and author of In My Grandmother's House, weaves together her own memories, vignettes from Black life, and scenes from scripture, especially the passion of Christ. To work for liberation in a broken world, we cannot look away from crucified flesh. Bones from the Middle Passage, GI Bill benefits denied to Black veterans, women inmates shackled while giving birth: we must take all such wounds seriously. They testify to both the pain and the faith of a people.
With the lyrical eye of a poet and the moral precision of a preacher, Pierce casts readers into the astounding story of God's healing. From the curative powers of a spiderweb to the work of justice in history, politics, medicine, higher education, and the Black church, Pierce asks: Where are the remedies for the battered and broken? What does accountability look like? Is there any cure?
Healing takes time, Pierce writes, and even the wounds of the risen Christ do not immediately close. When the wounds become the witness, we find a faith reimagined and a hope transfigured. They tell the truth: about the extent of the injury and the extraordinary work of healing.
PRAISE
“As Howard Thurman preaches in her right ear, as James Baldwin prophesies in her left, as Pauli Murray prays over her, and as Zora Neale Hurston prepares a path before her, Yolanda Pierce shapes a majestic theology of sound and crafts a masterly psychology of voice. The Wounds Are the Witness is where Teilhard de Chardin meets Beyoncé, as Pierce takes the world to church with sacred speech that transforms trauma, heals hurts, rejoices in justice, and celebrates spirit. In this brilliant book, we hear the testimony of arguably the greatest interpreter of religion for the thinking public in our present age.”
“Yolanda Pierce provides a celebration of the diverse ways the Black church nurtures gifts of leadership and moral power, gifts that are so needed for the facing of twenty-first-century crises. Pierce weaves an amazing tapestry of biblical, historical, and experiential reflection. Everyone who reads this deeply poetic and accessible theological gift will grow and be strengthened.”
“With the power of a Sunday sermon and the insight of a thought-provoking lecture, Dr. Yolanda Pierce’s The Wounds Are the Witness calls readers to attend to the scars and faithfulness that have shaped the Black experience. Pierce gestures us toward honoring the sacredness in our collective journey toward wholeness. This profound and accessible book is a must-read for anyone looking to heal from pain and keep the faith!”
“Navigating both pain that is visible and all the hurt that lingers beneath the surface, The Wounds Are the Witness holds suffering with care and intimacy. Especially attentive to the ways people rush to ‘healing,’ Dr. Yolanda Pierce instead bears powerful witness. With unflinching clarity she names a litany of wounds, the searing truth that scars proclaim.”
“Too often Christian leaders sacrifice theological depth for blithe encouragement. This is a book for Christians who have considered leaving the church when superficial theology is not enough. Yolanda Pierce helps us to hold the pain of this world together with the light and hope of Christ. In a time when critiquing the church is as common as attending it, Yolanda Pierce draws us back to the faith that sustained our ancestors, the faith that was, for many of us, our first love. With unparalleled theological insight and scriptural wisdom, she reconnects us to the spiritual might of the Black church and provides fresh sustenance in our modern context. This is a book to savor and return to again and again.”
“With the precision of a pathologist, Yolanda Pierce poignantly parses the painful progression of racial harm. With the profundity of the prophets, she heralds the hope of healing for our weary and wounded souls. A must-read.
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“Dr. Pierce’s latest text, The Wounds Are the Witness, supplies the kind of balm that can make attentive readers whole and undergird their work of justice. It contains incisive narrative analysis and displays her deft theological stewardship of the womanist tradition. As one of her former students, and like so many of her readers, I deeply appreciate how her scholarship and Christian witness shine through in every paragraph.”