Religion Dispatches
…bumping into tourists, every few days, who’d ask: “which way’s north?” Or south, or east, or west. I’d smile, and turn south, and point out the World Trade Center. I’d tell them: Just keep an eye on that, and you’ll always know where to go. But there was just smoke, and it stole more and more of the sky, overcoming that beautiful September morning with a sick smell. If Eid ul-Fitr falls on the anniversary of that day, it will be an especially dif…
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…ns. There are other surprises in the study. One of the milder ones is that African Americans are more dubious that vaccination programs take the needs of those being vaccinated into consideration than other demographics across the board. That is to say, African Americans trust the vaccination system to serve whites and Hispanics even less than those groups do! Other surprises: while Americans without a religious faith routinely come in as one of t…
Read More…upsurge. At the same time that anti-gay violence is growing in Africa, the number of African Christians, including Roman Catholics, continues to increase. Catholics now comprise twenty percent of the population of the entire continent, or 185 million people. It would, of course, be unfair to blame increasing anti-gay violence in Africa entirely, or even primarily, on the Roman Catholic Church, given the pivotal roles played in this crisis by some…
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…’s Sowell’s “Anointed” or McWhorter’s “Elect,” the conclusion is the same: African Americans as a group are either unwitting or conscious dupes for liberal white social policy to their own detriment. Borrowing from feminist chronology, McWhorter calls wokeness “third-wave antiracism,” with the abolitionist movement and Reconstruction comprising the first-wave of anti-racism and the civil rights movement signaling the second. For McWhorter, however…
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…As the 20th century progressed ‘Black Santas’ were largely concentrated in African-American communities such as Harlem. For example, famed tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson suited up as Santa Claus in 1936 in Harlem for a children’s party. By the time of the Civil Right Movement, Black Santa became one of the many symbols of integration as groups like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) pushed for the inclusion of Black men to a…
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…e it’s quite convenient to take shortcuts by relying on the opinion of the Southern Poverty Law Center to explain the beliefs of African-American religious groups, it often relies on a flawed and completely problematic interpretation of African-American religions that do not place an integrationist ethos at the center of their worldview. Because these groups employ racial mythologies that condemn the racism that forms the cultural matrix of their…
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…some of their values and theological understanding. It’s a strain for many African-American evangelicals…what do African Americans gain in associating with white evangelicalism as it has been hijacked by the right?” “In other words,” says McCray “those who identify as black or African-American evangelicals must bend over backwards to explain who they are.” Despite their dismay over the prospect of a Trump presidency, those I spoke to appear to be…
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…d uncompensated labor. And I am a Christian–a faith that was birthed in an African cradle. I am not going to leave the faith bequeathed to me by my foremothers and forefathers. But I will always speak truth from my lived experience as an African American living in a nation in which the structural sins of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression are clearly evident even in the body of Christ. Yet I do not know as I write this whether the work…
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…anted to include a chapter on literature, music, and visual art created by African-American women. Their creative engagement with biblical texts is a part of the history of African-American biblical interpretation, but given my space limitations, there was just no way to include this chapter. I had to leave it out. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? Due to the popularity of the term “womanist” and how it paralleled with…
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…_____________________________ Who is the “We”? Yolanda Pierce Professor of African American literature and religion at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of Hell Without Fires: Slavery, Christianity & the African American Spiritual Narrative The frenzy of the primary election cycle is taking place during the Christian season of Lent, a period of religious observation between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday when Christians pause to reflect o…
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