The Million Man March in Washington, D.C. remains a major landmark in the journey of the African-American community. Attended by controversy, it fired the imagination of African-American males throughout the country. Black Religion after the Million Man March brings together a range of Black theologians -- men and women -- to assess the spiritual and theological issues posed by this event and, of greater importance, its implications for the future. Essays in the first part wrestle with conflicting reactions to the March itself -- including sharply critical perspectives. The second part addresses the theme of "manhood". The third part considers the themes of responsibility, atonement, restoration, reconciliation, and renewal. Together, these essays provide a challenging agenda for Christians committed to African-American liberation.
This book is an interview of Elijah Muhammad explaining his initial encounter with his teacher, Master Fard Muhammad and how his messengership came about. The subjects discussed are Master Fard Muhammad's whereabouts, the races and what makes a devil and satan. He answers questions dealing the concept of divine and how ideas are perfected. More basic subjects include Malcolm X, Noble Drew Ali, C. Eric Lincoln, Udom, and a comprehensive range of information.
Discussing the Million Man March of October 16, 1995 as a turning point in the history of African American protest, this volume offers five interpretive contexts to demarcate its cultural location: The March is analyzed as a struggle within the African American political establishment (1), as an attempt at unified black action against a new politics of white resentment (2), and as the Nation of Islam's (NOI) most visible self-dramatization since its founding in the 1930s (3). Relying on these themes, a rhetorical analysis of Louis Farrakhan's speech at the March uncovers the NOI's uneasy yet intimate relationship with the rituals of American civil religion (4). Finally, Con/Tradition addresses Farrakhan's influence on black HipHop culture and academic Afrocentrism (5).
The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.
Black Theology emerged in the 1960s as a response to black consciousness. In South Africa it is a critique of power; in the UK it is a political theology of black culture. The dominant form of Black Theology has been in the USA, originally influenced by Black Power and the critique of white racism. Since then it claims to have broadened its perspective to include oppression on the grounds of race, gender and class. In this book the author contests this claim, especially by Womanist (black women) Theology. Black and Womanist Theologies present inadequate analyses of race and gender and no account at all of class (economic) oppression. With a few notable exceptions Black Theology in the USA repeats the mantras of the 1970s, the discourse of modernity. Content with American capitalism it fails to address the source of the impoverishment of black Americans at home. Content with a romantic imaginaire of Africa, this 'African-American' movement fails to defend contemporary Africa against predatory American global ambitions.
Since the first African American denomination was established in Philadelphia in 1818, churches have gone beyond their role as spiritual guides in African American communities and have served as civic institutions, spaces for education, and sites for the cultivation of individuality and identities in the face of limited or non-existent freedom. In this Very Short Introduction, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. explores the history and circumstances of African American religion through three examples: conjure, African American Christianity, and African American Islam. He argues that the phrase "African American religion" is meaningful only insofar as it describes how through religion, African Americans have responded to oppressive conditions including slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and the pervasive and institutionalized discrimination that exists today. This bold claim frames his interpretation of the historical record of the wide diversity of religious experiences in the African American community. He rejects the common tendency to racialize African American religious experiences as an inherent proclivity towards religiousness and instead focuses on how religious communities and experiences have developed in the African American community and the context in which these developments took place. About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.
Some say Christianity is white man's religion. . . . And it is true that there is a long and ugly history of abuse of African-Americans at the hands of Anglo Christians. Afrocentric interpretations of history often point to slavery, lynchings and the like as proof that Christianity is inherently antiblack. But Craig Keener and Glen Usry contend that Christianity can be Afrocentric. In this massively researched book, they show that racism is not unique to Christianity. More important, they show how "world history is also our history and the Bible is also our book." Black Man's Religion is one of the first of its kind, a pro-Christian reading of religion and history from a black perspective. Fascinating and compelling, it is must reading for all concerned for African-American culture and issues of faith.
“The Negroes must have Jesus, Jobs, and Justice,” declared Nannie Helen Burroughs, a nationally known figure among black and white leaders and an architect of the Woman’s Convention of the National Baptist Convention. Burroughs made this statement about the black women’s agenda in 1958, as she anticipated the collapse of Jim Crow segregation and pondered the fate of African Americans. Following more than half a century of organizing and struggling against racism in American society, sexism in the National Baptist Convention, and the racism and paternalism of white women and the Southern Baptist Convention, Burroughs knew that black Americans would need more than religion to survive and to advance socially, economically, and politically. Jesus, jobs, and justice are the threads that weave through two hundred years of black women’s experiences in America. Bettye Collier-Thomas’s groundbreaking book gives us a remarkable account of the religious faith, social and political activism, and extraordinary resilience of black women during the centuries of American growth and change. It shows the beginnings of organized religion in slave communities and how the Bible was a source of inspiration; the enslaved saw in their condition a parallel to the suffering and persecution that Jesus had endured. The author makes clear that while religion has been a guiding force in the lives of most African Americans, for black women it has been essential. As co-creators of churches, women were a central factor in their development. Jesus, Jobs, and Justice explores the ways in which women had to cope with sexism in black churches, as well as racism in mostly white denominations, in their efforts to create missionary societies and form women’s conventions. It also reveals the hidden story of how issues of sex and sexuality have sometimes created tension and divisions within institutions. Black church women created national organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women, the National League of Colored Republican Women, and the National Council of Negro Women. They worked in the interracial movement, in white-led Christian groups such as the YWCA and Church Women United, and in male-dominated organizations such as the NAACP and National Urban League to demand civil rights, equal employment, and educational opportunities, and to protest lynching, segregation, and discrimination. And black women missionaries sacrificed their lives in service to their African sisters whose destiny they believed was tied to theirs. Jesus, Jobs, and Justice restores black women to their rightful place in American and black history and demonstrates their faith in themselves, their race, and their God.
This two-volume work celebrates 50 notable achievements of African Americans, highlighting black contributions to U.S. history and examining the ways black accomplishments shaped American culture. This two-volume encyclopedia offers a unique look at the African American experience, from the arrival of the first 20 Africans at Jamestown through the launch of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Ferguson Protests. It illustrates subjects such as the Jim Crow period, the Brown v. Board of Education case that overturned segregation, Jackie Robinson's landmark integration of major league baseball, and the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. Drawing from almost 400 years of U.S. history, the work documents the experiences and impact of black people on every aspect of American life. Presented chronologically, the selected events each include at least one primary source to provide the reader with a first-person perspective. These range from excerpts of speeches given by famous African American figures, to programs from the March on Washington. The remarkable stories collected here bear witness to the strength of a group of people who chose to survive and found ways to work collectively to force America to live up to the promise of its founding.
Sourcing the major traditions of progressive Christian social ethics--social gospel liberalism, Niebuhrian realism, and liberation theology--Gary Dorrien argues for the social-ethical necessity of social justice politics. In carefully reasoned essays, he focuses on three subjects: the ethics and politics of economic justice, racial and gender justice, and antimilitarism, making a constructive case for economic democracy, along with a liberationist understanding of racial and gender justice and an anti-imperial form of liberal internationalism. In Dorrien's view, the three major discourse traditions of progressive Christian social ethics share a fundamental commitment to transform the structures of society in the direction of social justice. His reflections on these topics feature innovative analyses of major figures, such as Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, James Burnham, Norman Thomas, and Michael Harrington, and an extensive engagement with contemporary intellectuals, such as Rosemary R. Ruether, Katie Cannon, Gregory Baum, and Cornel West. Dorrien also weaves his personal experiences into his narrative, especially his involvement in social justice movements. He includes a special chapter on the 2008 presidential campaign and the historic candidacy of Barack Obama.
