31: Culture & Religion. A conversation with Cleve Tinsley.

How does a young man growing up in an “under resourced” community make sense of the mystical experiences that began at the age of 14 years old spending time with friends? By making his exploration of African American religion and theology the center point of his spiritual and academic development – and helping others through the process. This episode explores Cleve’s development and the dissertation that has provided him the container to examine his thinking as it relates to those thoughts and thinkers who have influenced him. At Princeton Theological Seminary, Cleve, began to expand his understanding of the great thinkers within Black Theology and African American Cultural studies including people such as Hortense Spillers, W.E.B. Du Bois, Cornell West, James Cone, Martin Luther King Jr, and others. Cleve provides a deeper understanding of Black critical thought, and how this intellectual tradition has influenced religion and culture. Interwoven into this rich conversation, we also discuss personal symbols for Cleve such as how N.W.A provided a means by which Cleve, as a young guy, began to understand his cultural upbringing and the basic struggle as an adolescent boy – in particular what factors shaped his understanding of himself, of his religion, and of his community. Bio: Cleve V. Tinsley IV is an ordained Baptist minister, scholar of religion and African American culture, and community social justice strategist based in Houston, TX. He is currently the Co-Managing Partner of projectCURATE—a non-profit social impact enterprise and intersectional justice collaborative—and a PhD candidate in the Department of Religion at Rice University. Cleve’s research focuses on critical understandings of the wider social scientific and historical approaches to the study of religion in general and African-American religion in particular. His current research explores the relationship between religion, black freedom struggles, and African-American formations in America and argues for more expansive sociological approaches to studying the meaning and nature of black religious identity given the complexity of religion and spirituality in the lives of African Americans today. Cleve also works as a research fellow in the Religion and Public Life Program (RPLP) at Rice and, prior to his doctoral training, earned his Master of Divinity (MDiv) at Princeton Theological Seminary. Cleve has worked in the past as a pastor and consultant for several churches and educational non-profit organizations in the US South and on the East Coast. www.projectcurate.org Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the week: Abstract Rude and Tribe Unique https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/p-a-i-n-t/306865459 Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks