Traces the author's and African Americans in general, historical roots and personal and professional understanding of her culture.

Since the first African American denomination was established in Philadelphia in 1818, churches have gone beyond their role as spiritual guides in African American communities and have served as civic institutions, spaces for education, and sites for the cultivation of individuality and identities in the face of limited or non-existent freedom. In this Very Short Introduction, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. explores the history and circumstances of African American religion through three examples: conjure, African American Christianity, and African American Islam. He argues that the phrase "African American religion" is meaningful only insofar as it describes how through religion, African Americans have responded to oppressive conditions including slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and the pervasive and institutionalized discrimination that exists today. This bold claim frames his interpretation of the historical record of the wide diversity of religious experiences in the African American community. He rejects the common tendency to racialize African American religious experiences as an inherent proclivity towards religiousness and instead focuses on how religious communities and experiences have developed in the African American community and the context in which these developments took place. About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

This book, The Fundamentals, Principles and Practices of African American Spirituality, traces the evolution, development, and practices of a large segment of African American Spiritual life, found within the Black Church. It seeks to provide a road map and link to traditions that made for highly evolved Spiritual Beings, while at the same time embraces the cultural legacy of African Americans, that is near and dear to this group of people. Dr. Baker is also the author of A Dreamer's Journey, and African American Spirituality Thought & Culture. She is soon to publish the book, The Sociology of Art, Religion and Culture.

While many of the most significant black intellectual movements of the second half of the twentieth century have been perceived as secular, Josef Sorett demonstrates in this book that religion was actually a fertile, fluid and formidable force within these movements. Spirit in the Dark examines how African American literary visions were animated and organized by religion and spirituality, from the New Negro Renaissance of the 1920s to the Black Arts movement of the 1960s.

This book is an attempt to make sense to myself; and to help other people understand themselves. Additionally, this works seeks to resurrect the souls of the ancestors, so we may draw from their knowledge, their power and their strength. It is to assist in putting our lives in perspective and provide a context that is meaningful and holistic. This work is for other ethnic and cultural groups as well, in an effort for them to gain some clarity and appreciation for the spiritual and cultural heritage of African Americans. In truth, there are some universal truths and principles that transcend culture. Perhaps this work can bring to light an understanding of how very fascinating human beings really are, particularly when viewed from a historical, cultural and spiritual context.

In this study, Victor Anderson traces instances of "ontological blackness" in African American theological, religious and cultural thought, arguing that African American critical thought has been trapped in a racial rhetoric that it did not create and which cannot serve it well. Drawing together 18th- and 19th-century accomodationism and its assimilationist heirs with the movements of Black Power and Afrocentrism, Anderson shows that all exhibit a similar structure of racial identity. He suggests that it is time to move beyond the confines of "the cult of black heroic genius" to what Bell Hooks has termed "postmodern blackness": a racial discourse that leaves room to negotiate African American identities along lines of class, gender, sexuality, and age as well as race.

Eminent black social ethicist Peter Paris focuses on African "spirituality"--the religious and moral values pervading traditional African religious worldviews. Paris's careful scholarship and his eye for value in varying cultural milieus combine to model comparative cultural analysis and to clarify cultural foundations of black ethical life.

Believing that African American religious studies has reached a crossroads, Cornel West and Eddie Glaude seek, in this landmark anthology, to steer the discipline into the future. Arguing that the complexity of beliefs, choices, and actions of African Americans need not be reduced to expressions of black religion, West and Glaude call for more careful reflection on the complex relationships of African American religious studies to conceptions of class, gender, sexual orientation, race, empire, and other values that continue to challenge our democratic ideals.

This perceptive study of African American spirituality sees the experience of the African American church as an example for all other peoples in their struggles for liberation from the world's shackles.

This book is an attempt to make sense to myself; and to help other people understand themselves. Additionally, this works seeks to resurrect the souls of the ancestors, so we may draw from their knowledge, their power and their strength. It is to assist in putting our lives in perspective and provide a context that is meaningful and holistic. This work is for other ethnic and cultural groups as well, in an effort for them to gain some clarity and appreciation for the spiritual and cultural heritage of African Americans. In truth, there are some universal truths and principles that transcend culture. Perhaps this work can bring to light an understanding of how very fascinating human beings really are, particularly when viewed from a historical, cultural and spiritual context.