A way forward: Nurturing imagination at the intersection of race, class, gender, and age

The catalyst for this dissertation was my work as a youth minister and educator involved in urban ministry. I continually struggled to understand was the persistent feeling of personal hopelessness held by youth. Youth might believe that "God can do anything but fail," but they seemed to believe this collectively and for other people, but not for themselves. This dissertation, therefore, proposes the nurturing of theological imagination as one way to combat the personal hopeless found among youth. This work further focuses the conversation on a particular group whose members find themselves particularly oppressed because they fall on the non-hegemonic side of the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and age: Black girls from poor and working class backgrounds.;This study places the field of Christian Education in conversation with systematic theology, developmental psychology, critical race theory, and womanist and feminist thought. This dissertation involves the following movements: 1) An overview of the problem of personal hopelessness and the contributing factors that lead to it; 2) a presentation of a liberating theological anthropology that would aim to raise self esteem; 3) a study of emancipatory pedagogical practices aimed to raise one's critical consciousness; 4) a presentation of an emancipatory ecclesiology that would provide a needed community for these girls. All of these movements come together to create the overarching goal of this dissertation---to serve as a tool for scholars and lay persons who seek to work with this population and to combat personal hopelessness with theological imagination.