Further Reading
PART 1: THE NATURE, ORIGINS, AND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION
- What is African American religion?
- Africans in the Americas
- Beginnings of African American religion
- African American religion in the nineteenth century
- African American religion in the twentieth century
PART 2: MAJOR THEMES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION
- Worldly change, or a new world?
- Religion, race, and racism
- The question of gender
- Dreams of democracy
- African American religion and economics
- Liberation theology
PART 3: ISSUES AND CONCERNS IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION
Chapter 1
Lincoln, C. Eric and Lawrence Mamiya. The Black Church in the African American Experience. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990.
Mays, Benjamin E. The Negro’s God: As Reflected in His Literature. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2010.
Paris, Peter. The Spirituality of African Peoples. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994.
Pinn, Anthony B. Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003.
Raboteau, Albert. Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Savage, Barbara D. Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Sernett, Milton C. African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
Wilmore, Gayraud S. Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998.
Chapter 2
Allen, Norm Jr. African American Humanism: An Anthology. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991.
Austin, Allan D. African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Balmer, Randall, and Lauren Winner. Protestantism in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Davis, Cyprian. The History of Black Catholics in the United States. New York: Crossroads, 1991.
Holloway, Joseph E., ed. Africanisms in American Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Pitts, Walter F. Old Ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist Ritual in the African Diaspora. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Tallant, Robert. Voodoo in New Orleans. New York: Collier Books, 1946; Macmillan, 1971.
Turner, Richard. Islam in the African-American Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Chapter 3
Anderson, Jeffrey E. Conjure in African American Society. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
Berlin, Ira, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller, editors. Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experience of Slavery and Emancipation. New York: The New Press, 1998.
Chireau, Yvonne. Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006.
Epstein, Dena. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1977.
Levine, Lawrence. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Lovel, John. Black Song: The Forge and the Flame; the Story of How the Afro-American Spiritual Was Hammered Out. New York: Macmillan, 1972.
Mitchell, Henry H. Black Church Beginnings: The Long-Hidden Realities of the First Years. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004.
Newman, Richard. Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Pinn, Anthony B. By These Hands: A Documentary History of African American Humanism. New York: New York University Press, 2001.
Chapter 4
Boles, John. Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South, 1740-1870. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1988.
Diouf, Sylvaiane. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Fandrich, Ina J. The Mysterious Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveaux: A Study of Powerful Female Leadership in Nineteenth Century New Orleans. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction. New York: Harper Perennial, 1990.
Giggle, John M. After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875-1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Gomez, Michael A. Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina, 1998.
Greenberg, Kenneth S. Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Harding, Vincent. There Is a River: The Black Freedom Struggle in America. New York: Vintage Books, 1983.
Jacobs, Sylvia. Black Americans and the Missionary Movement in Africa. Cleveland, OH: Greenwood Press, 1982.
Johnson, Sylvester. The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity: Race, Heathens, and the People of God. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Martin, Sandy D. Black Baptists and African Missions: The Origins of a Movement, 1880-1915. Savannah, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998.
Miller, Randall M., Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, editors. Religion and the American Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Montgomery, William E. Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African American Church in the South, 1865-1900. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.
Sernett, Milton. Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.
Smith, Edward D. Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Rise of Black Churches in Eastern Cities, 1740-1877. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1988.
Stowell, Daniel W. Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Washington Creel, Margaret. A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community-Culture Among the Gullahs. New York: New York University Press, 1989.
Chapter 5
Brandon, George. Santeria from Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Brown, Karen McCarthy. Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
Chireau, Yvonne, and Nathaniel Deutsch, eds. Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Dannin, Robert. Black Pilgrimage to Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Essien-Udom, E. U. Black Nationalism: A Search for Identity in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Jacobs, Claude F., and Andrew J. Kaslow. The Spiritual Churches of New Orleans: Origins, Beliefs, and Rituals of an African-American Religion. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1991.
McGreevy, John T. Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Morrison-Reed, Mark D. Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, 3rd ed. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1994.
Sanders, Cheryl. J. Saints in Exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Williams, Angel Kyodo. Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace. New York: Penguin, 2002.
Chapter 6
Baldwin, Lewis V. The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr: The Boundaries of Law, Politics, and Religion. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.
Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Cone, James H. Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992.
Evans, Curtis. The Burden of Black Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Farrakhan, Louis. A Torchlight for America. Chicago, IL: FCN Publishing Co., 1993.
Frederick, Marla F. Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 2003.
Forman, James. The Making of Black Revolutionaries. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1997.
Harris, Frederick C. Something Within: Religion in African-American Political Activism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Joseph, Peniel E. Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. New York: Henry Holt Co., 2007.
Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Penguin Books, 2011).
Pinn, Anthony B. The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003.
Ross, Rossetta. Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003.
Savage, Barbara Dianne. Your Spirit Walks Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Chapter 7
Anderson, Victor. Beyond Ontological Blackness. New York: Continuum, 1995.
Carter, J. Kameron. Race: A Theological Account. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Copeland, M. Shawn. Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009.
Douglas, Kelly Brown. The Black Christ. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993.
Jordon, Winthrop. White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1968.
Lecky, Robert S. and H. Elliott Wright, Black Manifesto: Religion, Racism and Reparations. Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 1969.
Massingale, Bryan N. Racial Justice and the Catholic Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010.
Morgan, David. Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
Morrison-Reed, Mark D. Black Pioneers in a White Denomination. Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 1994.
Muhammad, Elijah. Message to the Blackman in America. Chicago, IL: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, 2009.
Murphy, Joseph M. Santeria: African Spirits in America. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993.
Townes, Emilie M. Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Chapter 8
Butler, Anthea D. Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Cooey, Paula M., William Eakin and Jay McDaniel, editors. After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the World Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991.
Giddings, Paula J. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1996.
Griffith, R. Marie and Barbara D. Savage, editors. Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power, and Performance. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Rouse, Carolyn Moxley. Engaged Surrender: African American Women and Islam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Tate, Sonsyrea. Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam. Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 2005.
Townsend Gilkes, Cheryl. If It Wasn't for the Women…: Black Women's Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000.
Weaver, Mary Jo. New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Chapter 9
Azaransky, Sarah. The Dream Is Freedom: Pauli Murray and American Democratic Faith. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.
Cleage, Albert. Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church. Detroit, MI: Luxor Publishing of the Pan-African, 1987.
Curtis, Edward E. Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960-1975. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Howard-Pitney, David. African American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2005.
Luker, Ralph E. The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Oltman, Adele. Sacred Mission, Worldly Ambition: Black Christian Nationalism in the Age of Jim Crow. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012.
Pinn, Anthony B., editor. Making the Gospel Plain: The Writings of Bishop Reverdy C. Ransom. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999.
West, Cornel. Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002.
Chapter 10
Clegg, Claude Andrew. An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad. New York: St. Martins, 1998.
Collier-Thomas, Bettye. Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.
Gardell, Mattias. In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.
Harrison, Milmon F. Righteous Riches: The Word of Faith Movement in Contemporary African American Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Lee, Shayne. T. D. Jakes: America's New Preacher. New York: New York University Press, 2007.
Martin, Darnise. Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
Mitchem, Stephanie Y. Name It and Claim It?: Prosperity Preaching in the Black Church. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2007.
Pinn, Anthony B. The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002.
Walton, Jonathan L. Watch This!: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Chapter 11
Cone, James. God of the Oppressed, Rev. Sub Ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997. Cone, James and Gayraud Wilmore. Black Theology: A Documentary History, Volumes 1-2. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993.
Davis, Cyprian and Diana Hayes, editors. Taking Down Our Harps: Black Catholics in The United States. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998.
Hayes, Diana. Standing in the Shoes My Mother Made: A Womanist Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010.
Hopkins, Dwight. Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999.
Massingale, Bryan. Racial Justice and the Catholic Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010.
Mitchem, Stephanie. Introducing Womanist Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002.
Pinn, Anthony B. Why, Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology. New York: Continuum, 1995.
Roberts, J. Deotis. Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology, 2nd Ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005.
Townes, Emilie. In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality and Social Witness. Louisville, KY: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Chapter 12
Ali, Kecia. Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith and Jurisprudence. New York: OneWorld, 2006.
Copeland, Shawn M. Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009.
Douglas, Kelly Brown. Sexuality and the Black Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999.
Ellison, Marvin M. and Kelly Brown Douglas, editors. Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010.
Gomes, Peter J. The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart. New York: HarperOne, 2002.
Griffin, Horace L. Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Churches. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2010.
Harris, Anquelique. AIDS, Sexuality, and the Black Church. New York: Peter Lang, 2010.
Jordan, Mark. Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk about Homosexuality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Jordan, Mark. The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Kugle, Scott. Homosexuality in Islam: Islamic Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims. New York: OneWorld, 2010.
Pinn, Anthony B. and Dwight Hopkins, editors. Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Wadud, Amina. Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam. New York: OneWorld, 2006.
Chapter 13
Chang, Jeff. Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. New York: Picador, 2005.
Forman, Murray and Mark Anthony Neal, editors. That's the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004.
George, Nelson. Hip Hop America. New York: Penguin, 2005.
Hodge, Daniel White. The Soul of Hip Hop: Rims, Timbs and a Cultural Theology. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010.
Kirk-Duggan, Cheryl and Marlon Hall. Wake Up: Hip-Hop Christianity and the Black Church. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2011.
Kitwana, Bakari. The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003.
KRS-One. The Gospel of Hip Hop: The First Instrument. Brooklyn, NY: powerhouse Books, 2009.
Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. Hip Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009.
Pinn, Anthony B., ed. Noise and Spirit: The Religious and Spiritual Sensibilities of Rap Music. New York: New York University Press, 2003.
Reeves, Marcus. Somebody Scream!: Rap Music's Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power. London: Faber & Faber, 2009.
Riza, The Wu-Tang Manual. New York: Riverhead Trade, 2005.
Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.
Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
Watkins, S. Craig. Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006.
Chapter 14
Allen, Norm. The Black Humanist Experience: An Alternative to Religion. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003.
Baggini, Julian. Atheism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Barker, Dan. Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists. Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2008.
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. New York: Mariner Books, 2008.
Epstein, Greg M. Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. New York: William Morrow, 2009.
Harris, Sam. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. New York: The Free Press, 2011.
Hitchens, Christopher. The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. New York: Da Capo Press, 2007
Hutchinson, Sikivu. Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values War. Los Angeles, CA: Infidel Books, 2011.
Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2004.
Lamont, Corliss. The Philosophy of Humanism. Washington, DC: Humanist Press, 1997.
Law, Stephen. Humanism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Le Poidevin, Robin. Agnosticism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Tapp, Robert B. Multiculturalism: Humanist Perspectives. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000.
Zuckerman, Phil. Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment. New York: New York University Press, 2010.