Terror and Triumph

by Pinn, Anthony B.

• ISBN13: 9780800636012
• ISBN10: 0800636015
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: Fortress Pr

Summary

Given the unique history of African Americans and their diverse religious traditions -- seen in black Christianity, the Nation of Islam, Voodoo, and others -- is there one fundamental meaning to black religion in America? What is the heart and soul of African American religious life?

As a leader in both black religious studies and theology, Anthony Pinn has probed the dynamism and variety of African American religious expressions. In this work, which he also delivered as the Edward Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham, England, he searches out the basic structure of black religion, tracing the black religious spirit in its many historical manifestations. Pinn finds in the terrors of enslavement of black bodies and subsequent oppressions the primal experience to which the black religious impulse provides a perennial and cumulative response. Oppressions entailed the denial of personhood and creation of an object: the Negro. Slave auctions, punishments, and later, lynchings created an existential dread but also evoked a quest, a search, for complex s

Author Biography

Anthony B. Pinn is Professor of Religious Studies and Coordinator of African American Studies at Macalester Collage, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
``Look, a Negro!'' How the New World African Became an Object of History	1	(26)
Framing the Initial Contact	3	(1)
The African as a ``Problem'': Phase One	4	(4)
The African as a ``Problem'': Phase Two, or Slavery	8	(4)
Slavery and Dehumanization	12	(8)
Dehumanization and Postslavery America	20	(7)
Part One Constructing Terror
``How Much for a Young Buck?'' Slave Auction and Identity	27	(25)
Slavery and the Business of Production	29	(2)
The Middle Passage	31	(2)
The Other ``Middle Passage''	33	(3)
Slave Auctions: Peddling Flesh	36	(10)
Slave Trading and Social Arrangements	46	(1)
Slave Auctions and Historical Displacement: Objects Defined	47	(1)
Slave Auctions as Ritual of Reference	48	(4)
Rope Neckties: Lynching and Identity	52	(29)
The Price of Freedom	53	(2)
Disenfranchisement and Movement	55	(3)
The Good Ol' Days: Social Order and Popular Punishment	58	(2)
Blacks and the Practice of Lynching	60	(8)
Rope, Violence, and Social Control	68	(2)
Destruction of Flesh and the Containment of Chaos	70	(2)
Lynching as Ritual of Reference	72	(9)
Part Two Waging War
Houses of Prayer in a Hostile Land: Responses of Black Religion to Terror	81	(27)
Blacks and Religion	82	(1)
The Art of Christianization	83	(3)
Blacks and Independent Religious Institutions	86	(2)
Religion, Socioeconomic Transformation, and Political Liberation	88	(6)
Religion, Conduct, and Aesthetics as Liberation	94	(4)
Spiritual Practices, Ecstatic Behavior, and Liberation	98	(4)
Theological Rhetoric as Liberation	102	(6)
Covert Practices: Further Responses of Black Religion to Terror	108	(25)
Blacks and Their Proper Religion	109	(3)
Religion and Socioeconomic Development as Liberation	112	(2)
Health and Aesthetics as Liberation	114	(2)
Ethical Conduct as Liberation	116	(4)
Theology of Special-ness as Liberation	120	(3)
Theological Anthropology on Its Head	123	(4)
Louis Farrakhan and the Nation's Agenda	127	(6)
``I'll Make Me a World'': Black Religion as Historical Context	133	(24)
Fragile Cultural Memory and the Study of Religion	133	(3)
Method, Part One: Archaeology as Metaphor and Practice	136	(3)
Method, Part Two: Archaeology and the Hermeneutic of Style	139	(3)
Hermeneutic of Style and the Body	142	(4)
Display of Black Bodies: Expressive and Decorative Culture	146	(4)
Bodies Celebrated: Visual Arts and Literature	150	(3)
Bodies in Motion: The Ethics of Perpetual Rebellion	153	(4)
Part Three Seeking Triumph
Crawling Backward: Toward a Theory of Black Religion's Center	157	(23)
Dehumanization and Subjectivity	158	(1)
Conversion Experience and Complex Subjectivity	159	(11)
Conversion and the Nature of Religion	170	(3)
Black Religion as Quest for Complex Subjectivity	173	(1)
Experiencing Religion	174	(3)
Why Is This Religion?	177	(3)
Finding the Center: Methodological Issues Considered	180	(21)
Psychology of Religion and Centering	180	(5)
History of Religions and the Hermeneutic of the Ontological Dimension	185	(3)
Art History and the Meaning of Things	188	(4)
Art Criticism---Talking about Things Hidden from Sight	192	(3)
An Interdisciplinary Venture, or Introducing Relational Centralism	195	(6)
Notes	201	(52)
Selected Bibliography	253	(12)
African-Derived Religious Practices	253	(1)
Art, Art Theory, and Art Criticism	254	(1)
Christianity	255	(1)
Cultural Criticism	256	(1)
Disenfranchisement	257	(1)
Islam and the Nation of Islam	258	(1)
Philosophy and Critical Theory	259	(1)
Religious Thought	260	(1)
Slavery and the Slave Trade	261	(2)
Theory of Religion	263	(2)
Index	265