(1:23) First Woman Bishop of African Methodist Episcopal Church

Vashti McKenzie was elected as the first female bishop in 2000 — more than two centuries after the African Methodist Episcopal Church's establishment. Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times chronicled her path, often drawing comparisons to campaigning for political office:

The election was hotly contested and highly political, with candidates making their way through the convention center shaking hands and waving, like members of Congress at a county fair. Supporters dressed in matching T-shirts and caps paraded through the convention center chanting and singing and carrying signs with pictures of their favorites. Candidates hand out pencils and water bottles, hair gel and even tubes of toothpaste imprinted with their names. Ms. McKenzie's campaign set up a television screen just inside the doors of the convention center to play over and over a video promoting her accomplishments.

(20:09) The Prophetic Tradition

In the Abrahamic faiths — Christianity, Judaism, Islam — the term "prophet" has a meaning rooted in the Hebrew Bible. There, stories feature a series of enigmatic figures such as Elijah, Jeremiah, and others who were representatives of God delivering stark warnings to the societies around them. A prophet was a kind of spiritual whistle blower whose aim was the realignment of society toward ethical (or often monotheistic) goals.

Modern civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel have carried on the tradition of prophetic preaching. Said Heschel, "When I see an act of evil, I am not accommodated — I don't accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere. I'm still surprised. That's why I'm against it; why I can fight against it. We must learn how to be surprised, not to adjust ourselves. I am the most maladjusted person in society."

(23:34) Sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ

On Easter Sunday in 2008, Bishop McKenzie delivered at the sermon "Don't Let Your Wounds Get in the Way" at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the congregation formerly attended by Barack Obama and pastored by Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Trinity United Church is now pastored by Reverend Otis Moss III. In this sermon, McKenzie uses the metaphor of Jesus' resurrection as a model for overcoming difficulties faced by individuals and the community as a whole.

(38:26) James Cone and Black Theology

The more formal beginnings of black theology can be traced to a group of African-American pastors who took out a full-page ad in The New York Times (July 31, 1966) advocating for a theological interpretation of black power. One of the most notable architects of black theology is James Cone, a professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Cone was responsible for identifying the sources of black theology — the historical and religious experience of African Americans, the revelation of God at work in the black experience, the witness of Scripture, the truth in Jesus Christ, and church tradition. "Its chief task," Cone wrote in his autobiography My Soul Looks Back, "is to help the church to be faithful to the task of preaching and living the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ in the world today."

Dwight Hopkins of the University of Chicago Divinity School defines "Black theology" as the way in which "God, or the spirit of freedom, works with the oppressed black community for their full humanity." And, in his book God of the Oppressed, James Cone writes:

Black people did not devise various philosophical arguments for God's existence, because the God of black experience was not a metaphysical idea. He was the God of history, the Liberator of the oppressed from bondage. Jesus was not an abstract Word of God, but God's Word made flesh who came to set the prisoner free. […] While white preachers and theologians often defined Jesus Christ as a spiritual Savior, the deliverer of people from sin and guilt, black preachers were unquestionably historical. They viewed God as the Liberator in history. That was why the black Church was involved in the abolitionist movement in the nineteenth century and the civil rights movement in the twentieth. Black preachers reasoned that if God delivered Israel from Pharaoh's army and Daniel from the lion's den, then he will deliver black people from American slavery and oppression. So the content of their thought was liberation and they communicated that message through preaching, singing, and praying, telling their story of how "we shall overcome."