Street Scriptures

"""Nava introduces an intervention into the excesses and shortcomings of two of the major theological movements of the 20th century: Latin American liberation theology and Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theology of beauty, the via pulchritudinis. He notes how liberation theology underdetermined beauty as a suspicious distraction from social justice, while the theology of beauty, in liturgy and beyond, overdetermined beauty through a fixed cultural lens. . . . This erudition and range make the book’s most compelling case for itself."" * America Magazine * ""Nava explores the connections between religion and hip-hop, revealing the overlooked theological roots of the genre and its potential to change the world."" * US Catholic Magazine, ""What We're Reading"" * “Using examples from current hip-hop artists, as well as popular artists from the past, Nava passionately describes the blending of religion, politics, culture, and aesthetics in hip-hop music.” * Reading Religion * ""With this majestic study, Nava reclaims ‘the streets’ as a living, breathing text, through which black and brown youth transmute everyday terror into spiritual beauty and hurl truth on the doorsteps of power. By placing academic theology and urban hip-hop culture side by side, Nava’s work has the potential to usher both into a more liberating future.” -- Onaje X. O. Woodbine, author of 'Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball' “Nava’s writing pulses with passion—electric, vivid, joyful, and oh so readable. By immersing the reader in the music, Nava offers the most compelling lens available on exactly how hip-hop created a moral aesthetic that moves people to change the world. Street Scriptures is social criticism of the highest order.” -- Jonathon Kahn, author of 'Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois' “In this compelling work, Nava reads the radically subversive ‘street scriptures’ of hip-hop as a distinctive form of urban liberation theology. This elegantly argued book by a scholar and activist is an important contribution to the study of urban religion and of ‘religion’ itself in one of its most powerful and challenging contemporary instantiations.” -- Robert Orsi, author of 'History and Presence'"