Africanamerican religion. African americans beene of the value had extracted. Unlike livestock, this particular brand of this peculiar brand of property fought to preserve their humanity in their relationships with each other, in the establishment and operation of social institutions, and especially in their sacred beliefs. Peoples of african descent adopted a belief system that reflected their diverse ethnicities and the systems that shaped their lives and labor. The descendents of these men and adopted new ways of looking at the world and their place and it. But like those before them, they adopted religion as means to challenge as well as cope with the realities of their life in america. Institutionalized religion constituted the core of the Africanamerican Community and freedom. It was the center of training for black leadership, the blackin that connected people in common cause, including in protest of their oppression. Growing up in rural virginia in the six these, i could scarcely in the 60s, i could scarcely imagine there was any religious experience beyond my own. It was christianbased, maledominated but women were the worker bees, as they still are today church centered, and emotionally charged. Baptist tradition meant a twohour sunday service. Apparently our ministers had the old adage that no souls are saved after the first 30 minutes. There was robust reaching, primarily hellfire and brimstone, to be exact, older ladies being overcome by the holy ghost, and music that would inspire godly behavior, at least for a day or two. I had graduated and enrolled in Hampton Institute not hampton university. You know how long ago that was. Before i ever heard about the ame church. Methodism was for white folks. There were 11 black churches in our county. Every single one was a baptist urge. Black hebrews did not exist in my sacred world, nor did perceived alternative groups like those founded by elijah mohammed. You can imagine how far in the backwoods i was. We did not have that muslim presence there. Of course, mikes rinse was one of many narratives that help my experience was one of many narratives that help to define the africanamerican experience in religion. Is professorelist glaude, chair of africanamerican studies at Princeton University. Judith w followed by eisenfeld, professor of religion at Princeton University who will foruss sites and sources the africanamerican religion in the past. The lineup was a little different. Weve a flannel we have a panel of feisty rebels. They decided it did not make sense to place them in the order i placed the men and i agree with them totally. The lesson there is to always ask the panel what they think. Be ird presenter will let me just indicate feld will talken about sources for the study of the africanamerican religious past. She will be followed by evelyn ham, professorot of africanamerican studies at willrd university who address the politics of the black freedom struggle, and last, but not least, Anthea Butler im not sure if i am pronouncing it wonderful, associated associate professor at the university of pennsylvania. Rethinking thes framework. And we will start with professor galude. [applause] you,ssor glaude thank sister edna. Welcome to Early Morning service. [laughter] i want toglaude thank the organizers for thinking of me and inviting me to this extraordinary conversation. I have learned a lot. It has been a long time coming, but i am delighted to see this happen. And i am delighted and words cannot really express. Thank you for all that you do and thank you for reading here. Let me just jump into this. I was thinking this morning when i got up at some ungodly hour in preparation for this about lovebirds and splitters, and i was thinking about the great isaiah berlins distinction between hedgehogs and boxes. I tend not to identify myself as either one. I like to take myself to be more attentive to what hedgehogs and foxes do, what splitters and lovebirds take themselves to be a two. This is what im going to try to do today, is that all right . Many of the concerns evidence in these questions about whether igion is a visible to reducible are interestingly copper gated when we think about religion in tandem with race. Or more specifically, the issue becomes messier when the modifier black or africanamerican describes religion. Unusualditives bear the burden of a history that colors the way religion is practiced and understood in the United States. They register the horror of slavery and the terror of jim crow and the experiences of a captured people, from sorrow stands alongside joy. It is in this context, one characterized by the ever present need to account for ones presence in the world that africanamerican religion takes on such significance. I want to make a distinction between africanamerican religion and africanamerican religious life. Africanamerican religion is not. Educible africanamerican religious life is not reducible it contains avenues for solace and comfort and and hers about who we take ourselves to be answers about who we take ourselves to be and the meaning of the universe. Oh, lord, i got it all backwards. Meaning is found as insufficient , and your evil is accounted for and hope, at least for some is assured. In short, africanamerican religious life is as rich and complicated as the religious life of other groups in the United States, but africanamerican religion emerges and the encounter between faith and all of its complexity and White Supremacy. Let me claim what i mean. My approach assumes that the context in the united dates is a sufficientbut not study it is the phrase africanamerican religion to significance at all, it must mean something more than africanamerican to our religious. Africanamericans practice a number of different religions. There are black people who are buddhist, jehovah witnesses, mormons. The africanamericans who practiced these traditions do not lead us to describe it as a lacked buddhism or black mormonism. Black buddhism or black mormonism. Signalamerican religion something more substantive than that, right . It does not refer to a definite kind of experience that is its of religious or religious. Onsciousness my aim here is not to secure the unique datas of the category status of the category of africanamerican religion as its own kind. The adjective refers to a relational racial context in which religious meetings have been produced and reproduced or a you all all right . Alright, i just want to check on you. Andhistory of slavery religious dissemination in the night is dates, in the United States in the context of slavery , leaving many white denominations to form their own. Instinctive he distinctive interpretation of islam. We can accurately describe certain variants of christianity and islam as africanamerican and Means Nothing beyond the rather uninteresting claim that belong toviduals these different religious traditions. Of course, africanamerican institutions can be understood it helps to explain why the scholar has called the particular religious formation of africanamerican religion. In other words, the raises the thention of those of us phrases the invention of those of us with the aims and purposes to seek, describe, analyze, and the rise the religious practices of africanamericans under a particular racial raising regime. This is what you get for inviting a philosopher to a history conference. The words black or africanamerican operate as markers of difference in my view, the definition of a cultural repertoire that rep thate unique represents the unique struggle and calls of our effort to understand the religious practice of 80 people. When i use the phrase africanamerican religion, i am not referring to something that can be defined substantively. You, too to orient single out the workings of the human imagination and there it under a particular condition. Sentences that begin africanamerican religion is are rarely simple descriptive. They usually contain normative assumptions about what the africanamerican religion is, like it is aesthetic or emotional. Risksly in this way, it the problem of verifying a particular understanding of africanamerican religious actresses, denying complexity by snatching practices out of the africanamerican religious practices, denying complexity by snatching practices out of the tradition. I like things messier. Saying you should give attention to this rather than that. Im going to bring it home. What howard thurman, the great 20 Century Black theologian claimed that the slave is there to redeem, offering an understanding of what christianity am a not the idolatrous to embrace of christian doctrine, right . Christian doctrine that justified the subordination of black people. Embraced instead, it the liberating power of jesuss example. He sought to orient the reader to a specific inflection of her sanity in the hands of those who lived as slaves. Church. t black i have to say aint rather than isnt. What is being noted is the absence of something. This in theough paper. I tried to make a distinction about how africanamerican religion works and how it takes us into the thicket of actual practices. What i am thinking about is what happens when the category is not doing the work we expect it to. Nigerian think about the cost does . It . Do we think about it keeps us from seeing all of the complexity on the ground. We need to think about the descriptive, analytic work, where it is leaving us. If it is getting in the way, is time we get rid of it. Thank you. [applause] professor weisenfeld in going to switch this powerpoint and that is not what i meant to do. [indiscernible] professor weisenfeld i dont think so, but for some reason think through images and about images, so i wanted to offer you some images from my work. . Ou are good my goal is to suggest ways to broaden our scope for the study of African American religious history beyond the focus on protestantism and churches. Needless to say we missed the onlycomplexity if we attend to the tradition that emerges from its context. Mean to argue not that this tradition of protestantism is not worthy of scholarlyt attention. I believe it is vital that we expand our scope of inquiry. This involves devoting more attention to buddhist, humorous forumanist, secularists, example. I am interested in what new understandings of and perspectives on africanamerican religious history emerge when we bring sites and sources other than churches and clergy interview, and i offered resources i have encountered in my own research on 20thcentury africanamerican religious history that have led me to broaden my view on the social actors of that history. Spencer william released the blood of jesus. And there is a trailer it is unclear whether he made it and it was lost or he never got to make it. These voters are part of the broader landscape of film produced for black audiences and had begun to decline in popularity. Jesus delivered a message of christian redemption and an entertaining in and entertaining package. Williams was uniquely successful in appealing to africanamerican viewers who saw his films. The blood of jesus is about Popular Culture and oems places the character of williams places the character of martha at the center of thes tory. At theet in a center of the story. Although set in a christian context, it highlights women as essential figures in black religious life and he present a complex portrait of the allergy with only a passing theology with only a passing reference to church for clergy. It rendered the Movie Theater a productive right for the study of africanamerican religious history. My sources called on me to think of the cinema not only as a social and political environment as many scholars of early black film have demonstrated, but also a religious one that viewers of be ams films and other century films have engaged as such, bringing media and culture more centrally into the history of African American religious history, disseminating ideas about religion, but also the mediation of religious six. And. Religious experience. Thehe course of researching great migration, i turned to an online database to learn more matthew, an immigrant from st. Kitts and a rabbi. Because racial and religious origins were essential to how black he drew how black hebrew authorities in harlem were essential i was interested in his point he had been born in nigeria. Matthew most often gave his st. Kitts, but one source dashes world war ii draft registration cards from april 26, 1942 raised a host of other questions about individual and collect the understanding collective understanding about in early 20th Century America. We see that matthew considered his clerical title of rabbi to be oh important he squeezed it in above his name and included it in his signature. Of theother portion registration card, matthew as or an amendment daughters asked fo matthew asked hebrew. Mendment, adding his request led me to wonder whether he was alone in this. Documents hundreds of from members from what i have come to call religious racial who sought to be represented according to what they understood to be an intertwined relioracial identity. Racial identity. In keeping with father divines theology that race is a negative construct of the mind, he asked listed as human. The registrar complied, but wrote that above the designation of negro. Another insisted he was moorishamerican. Registrarmpelled the andharacterize his skin hair color as all of as olive. We see the registrar pushed back. He wrote that he believed he was actually a negro. In the course of my research, i came to the such paperwork, as draftords such registration cards and. Mmigration paperwork as rich reading through and with such documents illuminates the race making and Maintenance Work members of these religious groups undertook in daily life and in public contacts and calls as an exercise of state power and religious expression and experience, sometimes a challenge to state power. In 1915, Law Enforcement and medical officials decided that mary wood should be committed to the stockton State Hospital for the ins name. For the insane. It said she would not sleep night or day, wanted to be appointed as a preacher and a local church. The diagnosis was of insanity, accompanied i religious by andgious tha delusions the psychiatrist noted religion as a factor. The desire to preacher not obvious indicators of Mental Illness [laughter] professor weisenfeld although it seems to me that gendered understands of leadership may have had a role in the perception that would was disruptive somehow. This was situated in an ongoing manic state that produced sleeplessness and exhaustion, leading to her death eight days after her admission to the hospital. This is not particularly revealing beyond an individuals religious expression and psychological distress. But placed in the larger context of psychiatrics course and practice about race and religion, it directs us to a set of sources for angry. For inquiry. Would was among wood was among those diagnosed with some form of religiouslygrounded Mental Illness. Dollars of the history of the racials age and scholars of the history of the racialization have noted this as a containment of individual action. The process of diagnosis and the practice oftment treatment. Early psychiatric literature about africanamericans are filled with assertions about enduring negro savagery, manifest particularly and religion. Them want to continue to shape habits and behavior. The page of the stockton state to examines led me psychiatric literature that might reveal more about the history of disability in the form of Mental Illness. Wondering about mary woods life, her religious amendment and aspiration, and erics. And in the stockton State Hospital and her experience in the stockton State Hospital how might her diagnosis as suffering rum religious insanity from religious insanity of guided her treatment . Did race and religion play a role in her treatment and eventual death . I am putting my research before you. As is clear, the sources and sites often emerge from or have connection to these arenas of religious life. They highlight new social act ors. Returning from the almost exclusive attention to lag churches and political struggles black churches and eslitical struggles, it includ developments like the prosperity gospel that has had influenced yon whack immunity beyond new forms ofties. Spirituality not tied to christian institutions, new religious bases that signal a black queer presence and more. So, a more textured understanding helps situate these and a much broader variety that has always characterized religious life in america. Thank you. [applause] good morning. Good morning. An honor to be here and i am so appreciative of jim gro this and all who have made possible. I of seen friends i have not seen in 40 years. Its wonderful to be here. To you about the bible politics of the black freedom struggle. Today, most americans, upon hearing the term bible politics would associate it with the religious right, the conservative evangelical wing of the Republican Party read yet Republican Party. Yet etymology speaks of oots, those who believe gods laws and justice lay at the very foundation of civil government and laws. Unlike the followers of William Lloyd arison who disdained the constitution and sought the end of slavery through moral suasion who followtionists historians like james brewer stewards and most termtly observed the bible politics that was coined by these abolitionists, specifically and thirdparty politics. The Liberty Party and its successors, particularly the radical Abolition Party. They claimed the gospel of liberty in order to end the sin of slavery. However, despite the coinage in these specific context, bible politics precisely captures the fusion of religion and politics. It looks at the interlocking discourses of religion, race, d synthesizes rests on the distinction between obedience to natural, divine law. And civil manmade law. It rejects as artificial the binary between the religious and political. I higherng gods law, moral law, as the basis of civil law. And as