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The role in public life of religious organizations such as black churches has been a contested and heated topic, with their advocates calling for them to have a major place in public discourse and their critiques demanding their silence in public if not their total destruction. This book offers a creative and compelling way to think about this dilemma. Unlike some, it does not deny the effort on the part of such organizations to be involved in public discourse and public policy; instead, it argues this interest is insufficient. Drawing attention to the basic elements of organizations such as black churches theology, organizational hierarchy, and so on Pinn argues these churches (and other religious organizations by extension) are not structured in such a way as to allow participation in the public arena in ways that appreciate and nurture the diversity of that arena. Instead, Pinn calls for recognition of their value in the private life of some, but their failure to have usefulness within the public arena.
Black Religion in America is an introduction to the religious history of African Americans from the period of slavery to the twenty-first century. It analyses Black people’s varying religious responses to W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness, the experience of racial exclusion in America, of having “two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body.” The book traces the social justice thought and activism of Black Christians, Conjurors, Muslims, Pentecostals, Humanists, and various esoteric prophets across historical epochs, introducing students to major religious groups and innovators within African American religious history who hav...
Named an Honor Book for Nonfiction by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association African American theology has a long and important history. With modern roots in the civil rights movements of the 1960s, African American theology has gone beyond issues of justice and social transformation to participate in broader dialogues of theological inquiry. The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology brings together leading scholars in the field to offer a critical and comprehensive analysis of this theological tradition in its many forms and contexts. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this Oxford Handbook examines the nature, structures, and functions of African American Theology. Th...
In recent years, as government agencies have encouraged faith-based organizations to help ensure social welfare, many black churches have received grants to provide services to their neighborhoods’ poorest residents. This collaboration, activist churches explain, is a way of enacting their faith and helping their neighborhoods. But as Michael Leo Owens demonstrates in God and Government in the Ghetto, this alliance also serves as a means for black clergy to reaffirm their political leadership and reposition moral authority in black civil society. Drawing on both survey data and fieldwork in New York City, Owens reveals that African American churches can use these newly forged connections with public agencies to influence policy and government responsiveness in a way that reaches beyond traditional electoral or protest politics. The churches and neighborhoods, Owens argues, can see a real benefit from that influence—but it may come at the expense of less involvement at the grassroots. Anyone with a stake in the changing strategies employed by churches as they fight for social justice will find God and Government in the Ghetto compelling reading.
Over the past three decades, the study of religion and politics has gone from being ignored by the scholarly 7ommunity to being a major focus of research. Yet, because this important research is not easily accessible to nonspecialists, much of the analysis of religion's role in the political arena that we read in the media is greatly oversimplified. This Handbook seeks to bridge that gap by examining the considerable research that has been conducted to this point and assessing what has been learned, what remains unsettled due to conflicting research findings, and what important questions remain largely unaddressed by current research endeavors. The Handbook is unique to the field of religion and American politics and should be of wide interest to scholars, students, journalists, and others interested in the American political scene.
Relations between the United States and South Africa - or the parts of the world these nations now occupy - go nearly as far back as the very beginning of their inception as permanent European colonial intrusions. This book is a critical overview of these relations from the late seventeenth century to the present. Unprecedented in its scope - and supported by substantive and detailed notes, together with an extensive bibliography, chronology, glossary, and appendices - the book distinguishes itself from extant works in a number of other ways. Set against the backdrop of a wider interdisciplinary exploration of both ideational and structural issues of historical context, it not only gives att...
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