American Priestess
American Priestess

Author: Jane Fletcher Geniesse

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2009-09-08

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0307277720

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For generations, The American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem has been a well-known retreat for journalists, diplomats, pilgrims and spies. However, few know the story of Anna Spafford, the enigmatic evangelist who was instrumental in its founding Branded heretics by Jerusalem’s established Christian missionaries when they arrived in 1881, the Spaffords and their followers nevertheless won over Muslims and Jews with their philanthropy. But when her husband Horatio died, Anna assumed leadership, shocking even her adherents by abolishing marriage and establishing an uneasy dictatorship based on emotional blackmail and religious extremism. With a controversial heroine at its core, American Priestess provides a fascinating exploration of the seductive power of evangelicalism as well as an intriguing history of an enduring landmark.

Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister
Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister

Author: Susan Starr Sered

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1996-04-11

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0195355784

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Religion is often denounced as one of the tools used by patriarchal societies to maintain the status quo, and especially to persuade women to accept subordinate roles. This does not explain, however, the existence of many religious groups in which women are both leaders and the majority of participants. How are these women's religions different from those dominated by men? What can we learn from them about the special ways in which women experience their unique reality? In this fascinating and pathbreaking work--the first comparative study of women's religions--Susan Starr Sered seeks answers to these compelling questions. Looking for common threads linking groups as diverse as the ancestral cults of the Black Caribs of Belize, Korean shamanism, Christian Science, and the Feminist Spirituality movement, Sered finds that motherhood and motherly concerns play a vital role in these female-dominated groups. Nurturing and concern for others are at the center, as are healing arts and ways of dealing with illness and the death of children. Religion not only enables women to find sacred meaning in their daily lives, from the preparation of food to caring for their families, but an offer intense and personal relationships with deities and spirits--often through ecstatic possession trance--as well as opportunities to celebrate and mourn with other women. By examining the shared experiences of women across great cultural divides, Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister offers a new understanding of the role gender plays in determining how individuals grapple with the ultimate questions of existence. In the process, it not only highlights the profound differences between men and women, but the equally important ways in which we are all alike.

Down by the Riverside
Down by the Riverside

Author: Larry Murphy

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2000-11

Total Pages: 506

ISBN-13: 0814755801

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An introductory overview of the development of African American religion and theology Down by the Riverside provides an expansive introduction to the development of African American religion and theology. Spanning the time of slavery up to the present, the volume moves beyond Protestant Christianity to address a broad diversity of African American religion from Conjure, Orisa, and Black Judaism to Islam, African American Catholicism, and humanism. This accessible historical overview begins with African religious heritages and traces the transition to various forms of Christianity, as well as the maintenance of African and Islamic traditions in antebellum America. Preeminent contributors include Charles Long, Gayraud Wilmore, Albert Raboteau, Manning Marable, M. Shawn Copeland, Vincent Harding, Mary Sawyer, Toinette Eugene, Anthony Pinn, and C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya. They consider the varieties of religious expression emerging from migration from the rural South to urban areas, African American women's participation in Christian missions, Black religious nationalism, and the development of Black Theology from its nineteenth-century precursors to its formulation by James Cone and later articulations by black feminist and womanist theologians. They also draw on case studies to provide a profile of the Black Christian church today. This thematic history of the unfolding of religious life in African America provides a window onto a rich array of African American people, practices, and theological positions.

Yoruba Traditions and African American Religious Nationalism
Yoruba Traditions and African American Religious Nationalism

Author: Tracey E. Hucks

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2012-05-16

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0826350771

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Exploring the Yoruba tradition in the United States, Hucks begins with the story of Nana Oseijeman Adefunmi’s personal search for identity and meaning as a young man in Detroit in the 1930s and 1940s. She traces his development as an artist, religious leader, and founder of several African-influenced religio-cultural projects in Harlem and later in the South. Adefunmi was part of a generation of young migrants attracted to the bohemian lifestyle of New York City and the black nationalist fervor of Harlem. Cofounding Shango Temple in 1959, Yoruba Temple in 1960, and Oyotunji African Village in 1970, Adefunmi and other African Americans in that period renamed themselves “Yorubas” and engaged in the task of transforming Cuban Santer'a into a new religious expression that satisfied their racial and nationalist leanings and eventually helped to place African Americans on a global religious schema alongside other Yoruba practitioners in Africa and the diaspora. Alongside the story of Adefunmi, Hucks weaves historical and sociological analyses of the relationship between black cultural nationalism and reinterpretations of the meaning of Africa from within the African American community.

Varieties of African American Religious Experience
Varieties of African American Religious Experience

Author: Anthony B. Pinn

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2017-10-15

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1506403360

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Twenty years ago, Anthony Pinn‘s engrossing survey highlighted the rich diversity of black religious life in America, revealing expressions of an ever-changing black religious quest. Based on extensive research, travel, and interviews, Pinn‘s work provides a fascinating look especially at Voodoo, Santeria, the Nation of Islam, and black humanism in the United States and uses the diversity of religious belief to begin formulation of a comparative black theology-the first of its kind. This twentieth-anniversary edition is an expanded version, including a new preface and a new concluding chapter. An important contribution to classroom studies!

American Priestess
American Priestess

Author: Jane Fletcher Geniesse

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2009-09-08

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0307277720

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For generations, The American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem has been a well-known retreat for journalists, diplomats, pilgrims and spies. However, few know the story of Anna Spafford, the enigmatic evangelist who was instrumental in its founding Branded heretics by Jerusalem’s established Christian missionaries when they arrived in 1881, the Spaffords and their followers nevertheless won over Muslims and Jews with their philanthropy. But when her husband Horatio died, Anna assumed leadership, shocking even her adherents by abolishing marriage and establishing an uneasy dictatorship based on emotional blackmail and religious extremism. With a controversial heroine at its core, American Priestess provides a fascinating exploration of the seductive power of evangelicalism as well as an intriguing history of an enduring landmark.

Her Hidden Children
Her Hidden Children

Author: Chas Clifton

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780759102019

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A history of wicca and neopaganism in the United States focusing on the post-WW II period.