Down by the Riverside : Readings in African American Religion

by Murphy, Larry G.

• ISBN13: 9780814755815
• ISBN10: 081475581X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: New York University Press

Summary

This colection brings together two generations of scholarship on many important topics in African-American religious history.... A useful and judiciously chosen compilation that should serve well in the classroom. -- Religious Studies Review It serves as a smorgasbord of the study of black spirituality.-- Black Issues Book ReviewDown 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.

Author Biography

Larry G. Murphy is Professor of the History of Christianity at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary/Northwestern University. He was also Senior Researcher, Religion in Urban America Project, at the University of Illinois

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(8)
Larry G. Murphy
PART I: Thematic, Contextual Prisms for Understanding African American Religion
Perspectives for a Study of African American Religion	9	(11)
Charles H. Long
African Americans, Exodus, and the American Israel	20	(6)
Albert J. Raboteau
What Is African American Christianity?	26	(6)
Gayraud S. Wilmore
The Religious Dimension: ``The Black Sacred Cosmos''	32	(9)
C. Eric Lincoln
Lawrence H. Mamiya
PART II: From the Motherland to Another Land: The Emergence of African American Religion in the Antebellum United States
Black Religion: The African Model	41	(8)
Maulana Karenga
``The Rule of Gospel Order'': Religious Life in the Slave Community	49	(10)
Albert J. Raboteau
Sources of Black Denominationalism	59	(10)
Mary R. Sawyer
Pre--Twentieth Century Islam	69	(12)
Richard Brent Turner
Memoir of Abraham	81	(4)
Jon F. Sensbach
The Idea of Missions	85	(12)
Monroe Fordham
Black Women in Religious Institutions: A Historical Summary from Slavery to the 1960s	97	(12)
Delores C. Carpenter
PART III: ``Slavery's Chains Done Broke At Las''': African American Religion in the Aftermath of Slavery
The Gospel and the Primer	109	(13)
Leon F. Litwack
The Black Faith of W.E.B. Du Bois: Sociocultural and Political Dimensions of Black Religion	122	(11)
Manning Marable
``All Things to All People'': The Functions of the Black Church in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century	133	(8)
Larry G. Murphy
The Redemption of Africa and Black Religion	141	(14)
St. Clair Drake
PART IV: A Shift of Locus and Focus: African American Religion and the Transition into the Twentieth Century
``Everyone Is Welcome'': North the the Promised Land	155	(5)
Martha Fowlkes
The Grip of the Negro Church	160	(15)
St. Clair Drake
The Development of Gospel Song	175	(14)
Lawrence W. Levine
The Black Roots of Pentecostalism	189	(14)
Iain MacRobert
PART V: Expanding the Options: Diversification in African American Religious Expression
The Second Emergence of Islam	203	(5)
Gordon Melton
The Voodoo Cult among Negro Migrants in Detroit	208	(13)
Erdmann Doane Beynon
Father Major Jealous Divine	221	(4)
Gary L. Ward
Black Judaism in the United States	225	(7)
Merrill Singer
The Historical Development of Black Spiritual Churches	232	(11)
Hans Baer
Merrill Singer
Orisha Worship in the United States	243	(13)
Anthony B. Pinn
African American Yorubas in Harlem and the Transition to Oyotunji Village	256	(4)
Tracey Hucks
The Other Kind of Doctor: Conjure and Magic in Black American Folk Medicine	260	(13)
Bruce Jackson
African Americans and Humanism	273	(16)
Anthony B. Pinn
PART VI: ``Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?'': African American Religion and Social Advocacy
In Search of the Promised Land	289	(4)
Albert J. Raboteau
The Black Church and Black Politics: Models of Ministerial Activism	293	(10)
Mary R. Sawyer
Black Religion and Social Change: Women in Leadership Roles	303	(14)
Mary R. Sawyer
Black Religious Nationalism and the Politics of Transcendence	317	(12)
R. Drew Smith
The Dialectical Model of the Black Church	329	(10)
C. Eric Lincoln
Lawrence H. Mamiya
PART VII: Profiles of the Contemporary African American Church
Rural, Urban Clergy and Churches	339	(28)
C. Eric Lincoln
Lawrence H. Mamiya
The Black Denominations and the Ordination of Women	367	(14)
C. Eric Lincoln
Lawrence H. Mamiya
The Churches and Broader Developments in Black Religion: Two Congregational Case Studies	381	(8)
David D. Daniels
PART VIII: Claiming a Theological Voice: Black and Womanist Theologies in the Twentieth Century
Black Theology as Liberation Theology	389	(34)
Jams H. Cone
Statement by the National Committee of Black Churchmen, June 13, 1969
National Committee of Black Churchmen	414	(3)
Statement by the National Committee of Black Churchmen, Third Annual Convocation, November 11--14, 1969
National Committee of Black Churchmen	417	(6)
African American Catholics and Black Theology: An Interpretation	423	(11)
M. Shawn Copeland
``Lifting as We Climb'': Womanist Theorizing about Religion and the Family	434	(13)
Toinette M. Eugene
PART IX: Looking Back to the Future
Survival, Elevation, and Liberation in Black Religion	447	(22)
Gayraud S. Wilmore
Fighting for Freedom with Church Fans: To Know What Religion Means	469	(20)
Vincent Harding
APPENDIXES
1 Timeline of the African American Religious Experience	482	(6)
2 Filmography of the African American Religious Experience	488	(1)
Acknowledgements	489	(4)
Index	493	(3)
About the Editor	496