Claiming God: Reclaiming Dignity-- African American Pastoral Care

In this volume, Edward P. Wimberly attempts to answer two questions: What does it mean to be persons of worth and value in our contemporary culture? and How can a relationship with God give us a renewed sense of our worth and value? The thesis of this book is that we become persons by internalizing the conversations in which we take part, but we become holy persons by giving conversation with God a privileged status over all other conversations. Following the African American tradition of drawing on biblical material, Wimberly uses biblical narratives, but also contemporary African American autobiography and fiction to show pastors how to enable the transformation that comes when persons learn to put conversations with God in the forefront.