Intellectual: Rooted in The Black Prophetic Imagination

The Cultural Soul Project is rooted in The Black Prophetic Imagination. This means we are intentional about putting Blackness, Liberation Theology, and the historical development of the Black Church in a symbiotic relationship to imagine a possibility for ministry, community, and cultural work for all People who have been shaped by life on the margins.

The Cultural Soul Project fundamentally understands Blackness as a lived experience, lived reality, cultural sensibility, and cultural lens that People who self-identify as Black draw upon to respond to, relate to, and make sense of the world. We acknowledge that historically Blackness has always been on a quest for social dignity, social decency, and self-respect, so we submit that at its highest prophetic point, The Black Prophetic Imagination can be the perennial cultural response to injustice, asserting that justice is for everyone. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere (MLK).”

The Cultural Soul Project also views Blackness as a dialectic and a metaphor. For us, Blackness is a dialectic because we put it in juxtaposition or relationship with things some may view as having conflicting ideas or perspectives (e.g., the way we put Hip-Hop in relationship with the Church). And for us, Blackness is also a metaphor because we use it as a figure of speech and ideal to sometimes represent other matters (e.g., the way we use Blackness to represent the experiences of all People who have been shaped by life on the margins).

The Cultural Soul Project is constantly praying, reflecting, and exploring ways our interpretation of the Black Prophetic Imagination can have progressive implications on the Church, Liberation Theology, and our very own Critical Hip-Hop Theory. We strive to be a catalyst for social, cultural, and spiritual transformation, while simultaneously creating a Church space where every individual has mutual worth and value.