The biblical text and its key figures have played a prominent role in the development of religious discourse on pressing socio-political issues. Slavery and continued discrimination were given theological sanction through the Old Testament story of Ham, but what of his descendent Nimrod the hunter?

From support for racial discrimination to justification for struggle against the status quo, the biblical text and its key figures have played a prominent role in the development of religious discourse on pressing socio-political issues. Slavery and continued discrimination were given theological sanction through the Old Testament story of Ham, but what of his descendent Nimrod the hunter?" African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod" interrogates the nature and meaning of the biblical figure Nimrod's legacy for the children of Africa, shedding light on an intriguing question: For people of African descent is Nimrod famous, or infamous?

Introduction: "Figures of the True"
Part I: Nimrod as Hero
Who Is the Man?...: Nimrod, Afrocentrism, and the African American Dream
L. H. Butler, Jr.
The Hunter and the Game: Reappropriating the Legend of Nimrod from an African American Theological Perspective
J. H. Evans, Jr.
Nimrod and the South African Context
D. Farisani
"Lest We Be Scattered Abroad:" Nimrod, Marcus Garvey, and Black Religious Humanism in Harlem
J. M. Floyd-Thomas
"I am Black and Beautiful, O Ye Daughters of Jerusalem:" African American Virtue Ethics and a Womanist
Hermeneutics of Redemption
S. Floyd-Thomas
God of Restraint: An African American Humanist Interpretation of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel
A. B. Pinn
The Story of Nimrod: The Struggle with Otherness and the Search for Identity
A. L. Pressley
More than a Mighty Hunter: George Washington Williams, Nineteenth-Century Racialized Discourse and the Reclamation of Nimrod
A. Smith
Nimrod and Dead Prez: Walking Like a Warrior
R. C. Watkins
Part II: Nimrod as Infamous
"The Strength of Collective Man:" Nimrod and the Tower of Babel
A. Dwight Callahan
Nimrod: Paradigm of Future Oppressive Systems
J. Kirby
Beyond the Curse of Noah: African American Pastoral Theology as Political
E. P. Wimberly
Part III: A Neutral Stance
A Tower of Pulpits
D. P. Andrews
Reorientation by Reference to "Wrong Way" Makers: Evaluating a Modern Signifying Mythicization of Ancient
Mythicization
T. Walker, Jr.