This book provides a sophisticated new interdisciplinary interpretation of the formulation and evolution of African American religion and culture. Theophus Smith argues for the central importance of "conjure"--a magical means of transforming reality--in black spirituality and culture. Smith shows that the Bible, the sacred text of Western civilization, has in fact functioned as a magical formulary for African Americans. Going back to slave religion, and continuing in black folk practice and literature to the present day, the Bible has provided African Americans with ritual prescriptions for prophetically re-envisioning, and thereby transforming, their history and culture. In effect the Bible is a "conjure book" for prescribing cures and curses, and for invoking extraordinary and Divine powers to effect changes in the conditions of human existence--and to bring about justice and freedom. Biblical themes, symbols, and figures like Moses, the Exodus, the Promised Land, and the Suffering Servant, as deployed by African Americans, have crucially formed and reformed not only black culture, but American society as a whole. Smith examines not only the religious and political uses of conjure, but its influence on black aesthetics, in music, drama, folklore, and literature. The concept of conjure, he shows, is at the heart of an indigenous and still vital spirituality, with exciting implications for reformulating the next generation of black studies and black theology. Even more broadly, Smith proposes, "conjuring culture" can function as a new paradigm for understanding Western religious and cultural phenomena generally.

From the earliest slave narratives to modern fiction by the likes of Colson Whitehead and Jesmyn Ward, African American authors have drawn on African spiritual practices as literary inspiration, and as a way to maintain a connection to Africa. This volume has collected new essays about the multiple ways African American authors have incorporated Voodoo, Hoodoo and Conjure in their work. Among the authors covered are Frederick Douglass, Shirley Graham, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ntozake Shange, Rudolph Fisher, Jean Toomer, and Ishmael Reed.

From black sorcerers' client-based practices in the antebellum South to the postmodern revival of hoodoo and its tandem spiritual supply stores, the supernatural has long been a key component of the African American experience. What began as a mixture of African, European, and Native American influences within slave communities finds expression today in a multimillion dollar business. In Conjure in African American Society, Jeffrey E. Anderson unfolds a fascinating story as he traces the origins and evolution of conjuring practices across the centuries. Though some may see the study of conjure.

In The Cross of Christ in African American Christian Religious Experience: Piety, Politics, and Protest Demetrius K. Williams examines and explores the ideational importance and rhetorical function of cross language and terminology in the spirituals, conversion narratives, and Black preaching tradition through an ideological lens.

This collection introduces readers to the history and practice of the Vodou religion, and corrects many misconceptions. The book focuses specifically on the role Vodou plays in Haiti, where it has its strongest following, examining its influence on spiritual beliefs, cultural practices, national identity, popular culture, writing and art.

Historically, religious scriptures are defined as holy texts that are considered to be beyond the abilities of the layperson to interpret. This volume takes a look at the social, cultural and racial meanings invested in these texts.

This book engages the ways African American authors have shifted, recycled, and reinvented the conjure woman in fiction. Kameelah Martin Samuel traces her presence and function in twentieth-century literature through historical records, oral histories, blues music, and collections of African American folklore.

Hoodoo, voodoo, and conjure are part of a mysterious world of African American spirituality that has long captured the popular imagination. These magical beliefs and practices have figured in literary works by such authors as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Ishmael Reed, and they have been central to numerous films, such as The Skeleton Key. Written for students and general readers, this book is a convenient introduction to hoodoo, voodoo, and conjure. The volume begins by defining and classifying elements of these spiritual traditions. It then provides a wide range of examples and texts, which illustrate the richness of these beliefs and practices. It also examines the scholarly response to hoodoo, voodoo, and conjure, and it explores the presence of hoodoo, voodoo, and conjure in popular culture. The volume closes with a glossary and bibliography. Students in social studies classes will use this book to learn more about African American magical beliefs, while literature students will enjoy its exploration of primary sources and literary works.

Manifesting the Primal Imagination explores a little known, but important, aspect of Black American Christianity—the primal spirituality of the Black Pentecostal and spiritual church. Set against the backdrop of a Christianity believed by many to be synonymous with White Western culture, Manifesting the Primal Imagination demonstrates how this image of Christianity came to be, and how it is false, through a historical and scriptural examination of Christianity itself. At a time in which the nature of Christian faith is hotly contested, with many rejecting Christianity on the basis of its historical association with White supremacist claims, Settles advocates for a rereading of the history of Black American faith in a way that recognizes the importance of the primal imagination to Christianity itself.

The Reverend John Marrant (1755–91) was North America’s first Black ordained minister and one of America’s earliest Black authors and preachers. In The Gospel of John Marrant, Alphonso F. Saville IV examines how Protestantism and West African indigenous religious practices deeply informed his life and ministry. Saville follows Marrant from his time evangelizing the Cherokee in Georgia to meeting with Black Freemasons in Boston to engaging with diasporic communities along the Eastern Seaboard and in England. Using the Black folk magic tradition of conjure as a lens for understanding Marrant’s religious imagination, Saville outlines the importance of Africana religious and cultural themes, symbols, and cosmologies in the biblical interpretation and ritual culture of early Black North American Christian communities. Marrant’s life and work, Saville contends, reveal the diverse religious cultures that contributed to the formation of African American Christianity and its evolution into a prominent institution during the colonial and early history of the United States. In so doing, he demonstrates the need to recenter both religion and Africa in the study of African American cultural and intellectual history.