This text is a re-affirmation of the radical intent and practice of Black theology. I have described this work as one of re-imaging Black theology in the twenty-first century for it seeks to offer a new model of and methodological approach to undertaking this discipline. This “new” model and approach is one that seeks to combine participative methodologies of Christian education and discipleship with Black constructive and systematic theologies.

Working against the Grain represents the distillation of an ongoing process of seeking to combine Christian education – with its emphasis upon participative learning for ordinary people and Black liberation theology – and its structured approach to re-articulating the meaning of God and faith. This convergence of transformative education and Black theological content has been undertaken in much of my previous writing, but this text is a notable departure, in that the scale and methodological intent of this work represents a more comprehensive appraisal of this approach to doing Black theology.

Working against the Grain is offered as a radical commitment to a reimagined form of deconstructionist thought which, like the plane that works against the grain of the wood, seeks to disrupt, complicate and, in Jamaican speak, “to mash up” the settled pattern of that which presently exists.