General Resources
- A religious portrait of African-American LifeA study from the Pew Research Center, with data and analysis. Published in 2009.
- Center for the Study of African American Religious Life (Smithsonian)Part of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the center has collections, events, and information about religion in African American life.
- Ethnic NewsWatch (Proquest) This link opens in a new windowNewspapers from around the United States representing ethnic and religious communities
Books:
African American Religions, 1500-2000 by
This book provides a narrative historical, postcolonial account of African American religions. It examines the intersection of Black religion and colonialism over several centuries to explain the relationship between empire and democratic freedom. Rather than treating freedom and its others (colonialism, slavery and racism) as opposites, Sylvester A. Johnson interprets multiple periods of Black religious history to discern how Atlantic empires (particularly that of the United States) simultaneously enabled the emergence of particular forms of religious experience and freedom movements as well as disturbing patterns of violent domination. Johnson explains theories of matter and spirit that shaped early indigenous religious movements in Africa, Black political religion responding to the American racial state, the creation of Liberia, and FBI repression of Black religious movements in the twentieth century. By combining historical methods with theoretical analysis, Johnson explains the seeming contradictions that have shaped Black religions in the modern era.
ISBN: 9780521198530Publication Date: 2015-08-06
African American Religious Thought: An Anthology by
Believing that African American religious studies has reached a crossroads, Cornel West and Eddie Glaude seek, in this landmark anthology, to steer the discipline into the future. Arguing that the complexity of beliefs, choices, and actions of African Americans need not be reduced to expressions of black religion, West and Glaude call for more careful reflection on the complex relationships of African American religious studies to conceptions of class, gender, sexual orientation, race, empire, and other values that continue to challenge our democratic ideals.
ISBN: 0664224598Publication Date: 2003-11-01
Down in the Valley: An introduction to African American Religious History by
African American religions constitute a diverse group of beliefs and practices that emerged from the African diaspora brought about by the Atlantic slave trade. Traditional religions that had informed the worldviews of Africans were transported to the shores of the Americas and transformed to make sense of new contexts and conditions. This book explores the survival of traditional religions and how African American religions have influenced and been shaped by American religious history. The text provides an overview of the central people, issues, and events in an account that considers Protestant denominations, Catholicism, Islam, Pentecostal churches, Voodoo, Conjure, Rastafarianism, and new religious movements such as Black Judaism, the Nation of Islam, and the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors. The book addresses contemporary controversies, including President Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright, and it will be valuable to all students of African American religions, African American studies, sociology of religion, American religious history, the Black Church, and black theology.
ISBN: 9781506408040Publication Date: 2016-02-01
Establishment Black Christian Churches
- The Black Church (American Experience)This essay to accompany the PBS American Experience series "the Black Church" gives an overview of Black Christian establishment churches and their history.
- Life, Experience, and Gospel Labors by Richard Allen (UNC Library, full text)A classic work by the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal church in America. Allen, born into slavery, converted to Methodism and founded the first AME society and church, in Philadelphia in 1787.
Books
The Divided Mind of the Black Church by
A revealing look at the identity and mission of the black church What is the true nature and mission of the church? Is its proper Christian purpose to save souls, or to transform the social order? This question is especially fraught when the church is one built by an enslaved people and formed, from its beginning, at the center of an oppressed community's fight for personhood and freedom. Such is the central tension in the identity and mission of the black church in the United States. For decades the black church and black theology have held each other at arm's length. Black theology has emphasized the role of Christian faith in addressing racism and other forms of oppression, arguing that Jesus urged his disciples to seek the freedom of all peoples. Meanwhile, the black church, even when focused on social concerns, has often emphasized personal piety rather than social protest. With the rising influence of white evangelicalism, biblical fundamentalism, and the prosperity gospel, the divide has become even more pronounced. In The Divided Mind of the Black Church, Raphael G. Warnock, Senior Pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., traces the historical significance of the rise and development of black theology as an important conversation partner for the black church. Calling for honest dialogue between black and womanist theologians and black pastors, this fresh theological treatment demands a new look at the church's essential mission.
ISBN: 9781479864102Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Sisters in the Wilderness by
"In this landmark work of emerging African American womanist theology, Delores Williams finds in the biblical figure of Hagar - mother of Ishmael, cast into the desert by Abraham and Sarah, but protected by God - a prototype for the struggle of African-American women. African slave, homeless exile, surrogate mother, Hagar's story provides an image of survival and defiance appropriate to black women today." "Exploring all the themes inherent in Hagar's story - poverty and slavery, ethnicity and sexual exploitation, exile and encounters with God - Sisters in the Wilderness traces parallels in the history of African-American women from slavery to the present. A particular theology - a womanist theology - emerges from this shared experience; specifically, from the interplay of oppressions on account of race, sex, and class." "In Part I, Williams shows how reading Hagar's story exemplifies the issues and problems black women face. The "forced motherhood," "single motherhood" and "surrogate motherhood" Hagar experienced have been part of black women's lives. Williams also explores the dismal reality of contemporary "racial narcissistic...consciousness" which finds its parallel in Hagar's travail as foreign servant and outcast. Finally, there is the religious resonance of Hagar's sojourns in the wilderness and her encounters with God. These themes Williams finds echoed in the cultural and literary traditions of African-American women." "Part II considers the theological implications of the womanist understanding of Hagar's history. Williams explores the relationship between womanist and black liberation theology, and womanist theology and the black church. Through the combination of social history, political theology, and literary criticism, Williams demonstrates how approaching theology consciously informed by the awareness of the identity of black women results in a rich and vibrant knowledge of the sacred. Sisters in the Wilderness provides a reconstruction of "God-talk" that adds a new dimension of meaning to the struggle for faith in God, Who "makes a way out of no way.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 088344772XPublication Date: 1993-03-01
Islam and African Americans
See also the "Islam" page in this guide.
- African American Islam (Oxford, open access)Overview article from the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, by Herbert Berg.
- The Great Debate: Critical Race Theory and MuslimsA discussion by public intellectuals in the onlien magazine Maydan about applying critical race theory to American Islam.
African American Islam by
Islam is a vital, growing religion in America. Little is known, however, about the religion except through the biased lens of media reports which brand African American Muslims as "Black Muslims" and portray their communities as places of social protest. African American Islam challenges these myths by contextualizing the experience and history of African American Islamic life. This is the first book to investigate the diverse African American Islamic community on its own terms, in its own language and through its own synthesis of Islamic history and philosophy.
ISBN: 0415907853Publication Date: 1995-02-08
Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas by
Despite the explosion in work on African American and religious history, little is known about Black Muslims who came to America as slaves. Most assume that what Muslim faith any Africans did bring with them was quickly absorbed into the new Christian milieu. But, surprisingly, as Sylviane Diouf shows in this new, meticulously researched volume, Islam flourished during slavery on a large scale. Servants of Allah presents a history of African Muslim slaves, following them from Africa to the Americas. It details how, even while enslaved many Black Muslims managed to follow most of the precepts of their religion. Literate, urban, and well traveled, Black Muslims drew on their organization and the strength of their beliefs to play a major part in the most well known slave uprisings. Though Islam did not survive in the Americas in its orthodox form, its mark can be found in certain religions, traditions, and artistic creations of people of African descent. But for all their accomplishments and contributions to the cultures of the African Diaspora, the Muslim slaves have been largely ignored. Servants of Allah is the first book to examine the role of Islam in the lives of both individual practitioners and in the American slave community as a whole, while also shedding light on the legacy of Islam in today's American and Caribbean cultures. Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 1999.
ISBN: 081471904XPublication Date: 1998-11-01
