Hoodies and Holy Disruption: Black Protest Preaching and Multicultural Congregations

Abstract

Black prophetic preaching offers a moral critique of individuals and oppressive powers rooted in Scripture and divine promises. However, in an ever-diversifying contemporary landscape shaped by persistent racial injustice, social upheaval, and compounded oppression, Black protest preaching is emerging as a sub-genre of this tradition that serves as a source of resistance and renewal for all. This article explores the theology and practice of Black protest preaching, using Ezekiel’s embodied homiletic acts in Ezekiel 4–5 and the contemporary observance of “Hoodie Sunday” as interpretive anchors, and how this type of preaching can be used in multicultural contexts. While prophetic preaching typically draws on moral exhortation to call a community toward change and speak truth to power, protest preaching functions through symbolic action, embodied resistance, and spatial disruption to make that truth unavoidable.

Repository attribution: Timothy Levi Adkins-Jones. Hoodies and Holy Disruption: Black Protest Preaching and Multicultural Congregations. Religions, 16(11), issue year 2025; article page publication date 2025-10-29. Original: source article. DOI: 10.3390/rel16111366. Original PDF reproduced without changes under CC BY 4.0. No endorsement is implied. Copyright 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/