Traces the author's and African Americans in general, historical roots and personal and professional understanding of her culture.

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.

This encyclopedia offers the most comprehensive presentation available on the diversity and richness of religious practices among African Americans, from traditions predating the era of the transatlantic slave trade to contemporary religious movements. Like no previous reference, African American Religious Cultures captures the full scope of African American religious identity, tracing the long history of African American engagement with spiritual practice while exploring the origins and complexities of current religious traditions. This breakthrough encyclopedia offers alphabetically organized entries on every major spiritual belief system as it has evolved among African American communities, covering its beginnings, development, major doctrinal points, rituals, important figures, and defining moments. In addition, the work illustrates how the social and economic realities of life for African Americans have shaped beliefs across the spectrum of religious cultures.

Preceded by three introductory essays and a chronology of major events in black religious history from 1618 to 1991, this A-Z encyclopedia includes three types of entries: * Biographical sketches of 773 African American religious leaders * 341 entries on African American denominations and religious organizations (including white churches with significant black memberships and educational institutions) * Topical articles on important aspects of African American religious life (e.g., African American Christians during the Colonial Era, Music in the African American Church)

The Progressive Era, the period in the United States between 1898 and 1917, was a time of great social, political, and industrial change. Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, an event that signaled the emergence of the United States as a great power, the country soon was involved in its first overseas guerrilla war, in the Philippines. Vast changes in communications and transportation, immigration and migration patterns, social mores, gender roles, family structure, class structure, work patterns, business methods, education, intellectual life, religion, the professions, technology, science, medicine, and much else were transforming the scope and feel of people's lives and relationships. In many ways what happened in this era set the agenda for the rest of the 20th century. The Historical Dictionary of the Progressive Era is the most comprehensive and coherent reference work on the Progressive Era. Through its chronology, introductory essay, bibliography, appendixes, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the key events, people, organizations, and ideas of the period, this resource is a lively, complete, and accessible overview of this significant era.

Melanie Harris argues that African American women make unique contributions to the environmental justice movement in the ways that they theologize, theorize, practice spiritual activism, and come into religious understandings about their relationship with the earth. This unique text stands at the intersection of several academic disciplines: womanist theology, eco-theology, spirituality, and theological aesthetics.

Gayraud S. Wilmore is Professor of Church History and Afro-American Religious Studies at The Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia. He has published numerous articles and booksl including Black Witness to the Apostolic Faith, David Shannon, co-ed.; Black and Presbyterian: The Heritage and the Hope; and Last Things First. Professor Wilmore is the recpicient of the Bruce Klunder Award of the Presbyterian Interracial Councils (1969), the Sward of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Harlem (1971), and various honorary degrees.

The eighteen essays collected in this book originate from a conference of the same title, held at the Wingspread Conference Center in October of 1993. Leading scholars were invited to reflect on their specialties in American religious history in ways that summarized both where the field is and where it ought to move in the decades to come. The essays are organized according to four general themes: places and regions, universal themes, transformative events, and marginal groups and ethnocultural "outsiders." They address a wide range of specific topics including Puritanism, Protestantism and economic behavior, gender and sexuality in American Protestantism, and the twentieth-century de-Christianization of American public culture. Among the contributors are such distinguished scholars as David D. Hall, Donald G. Matthews, Allen C. Guelzo, Gordon S. Wood, Daniel Walker Howe, Robert Wuthnow, Jon Butler, David A. Hollinger, Harry S. Stout, and John Higham. Taken together, these essays reveal a rapidly expanding field of study that is breaking out of its traditional confines and spilling into all of American history. The book takes the measure of the changes of the last quarter-century and charts numerous challenges to future work.

Examining the analytic tools of scholars in religious studies, as well as in related disciplines that have shaped the field, this updated textbook includes cultural approaches from anthropology, history, literature, and critical studies in race, sexuality, and gender. Each chapter is written by a leading scholar and includes: the biographical and historical context of each theorist their approaches and key writings analysis and evaluation of each theory a list of key terms suggested further reading Part One: Comparative Approaches considers how major features such as taboo, texts, myths, and ritual work across religious traditions. This section explores the work of Mary Douglas, Phyllis Trible, Wendy Doniger, Catherine Bell and, new to this edition, Tomoko Masuzawa, whose contributions reveal the colonialist assumptions of the comparative, world religions model. Part Two: Examining Particularities analyzes the comparative approach through the work of Alice Walker, Charles Long, and Caroline Walker Bynum, who all suggest that the specifics of race, body, place and time must be considered. Part Three: Expanding Boundaries examines Gloria Anzaldúa's language of religion, as well as the work of Judith Butler on performative, queer theories of religion, Saba Mahmood, whose work considers postcolonial religious encounters, secularism, and the relationship between “East” and “West”. New to this edition is Jasbir Puar's work on work on affect, gender, sexuality, and disability. Along with a list of key terms, each section now includes an introduction highlighting the contributions of each thinker and their relation to previous theories that dominated the field.

This perceptive study of African American spirituality sees the experience of the African American church as an example for all other peoples in their struggles for liberation from the world's shackles.