Rejoice and Shout: A Journey through Gospel Music History

Paul Harvey

The new documentary Rejoice and Shout premieres this week. It’s a documentary featuring black gospel performances over a full century, from the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet in 1902 to some contemporary stars. The film has gotten a lot of nice write-ups; the link takes you to the film's website, where you can learn more about it. Here in flyover land probably will have to wait until it moves from the “save” to the “queue” part of my Netflix list. A little bit from the NPR segment on the documentary:

Director Don McGlynn, a veteran of the music documentary genre, wanted to trace gospel from its earliest roots to its current incarnation in the music world. The film even plays the first known recording of gospel music, a record made in 1902 by the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet.

The New York Times published a substantial review of the film here; a little excerpt:

This historical survey of the genre draws heavily on the extensive archives of its producer, Joe Lauro, and is grounded in the work of two experts: Anthony Heilbut, who wrote the classic book “The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times,” and Bil Carpenter, whose “Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopedia” chronicles the lives and careers of more than 650 gospel figures. Their analyses are supplemented by the observations of Jacquie Gales Webb, the host of a popular radio program. Mr. Heilbut’s approach is primarily scholarly and historical, and Mr. Carpenter’s is more sociological and political. Smokey Robinson, who introduces the film and offers its closing observations, sets its praiseworthy tone

If anyone wants to read the whole review but is shout out by the Times firewall, let me know and I’ll send to you.

I will be interested to see how it compares to my recent favorite in the genre of gospel documentaries, How Sweet It Was: The Sights and Sounds of Gospel’s Golden Age. This one comes as a documentary and a CD, and it features some astounding older clips; the DVD is basically a strung-together version of those full clips, so not really a “documentary” but more of a compilation. Anyway, I’m looking forward to Rejoice and Shout; if anyone reading this living around a real city gets a chance to watch it, feel free to post your thoughts here.

While you're waiting to see Rejoice and Shout, here's a great clip on Youtube that can be seen in its entirety on How Sweet it Was, for your enjoyment: The Meditation Singers doing "Sanctified Lord."

Through the Storm, Through the Night: A History of African American Christianity

Paul Harvey

It's a slow news week at the blog -- no Rapture, no David Barton sightings, politics as usual in Washington, the religious left arguing about Jim Wallis, etc. -- and some of you know what that means. Yes, it's time for the time-honored self-promotional post here at RiAH.

Later this summer, August I hope but by September for sure, my new book Through the Storm, Through the Night: A History of African American Christianity, will be out with Rowman & Littlefield. It's part of the "African American History" series put out by Rowman & Littlefield. And it's out just in time for your fall course text assignment!

I'm proud to have it standing there with very recent books by some tremendous historians in the same series, including Chris Waldrep's African Americans Confront Lynching: Strategies of Resistance From the Civil War to the Civil Rights Era, my old friend Burton Peretti's Lift Every Voice: The History of African American Music, and Edward Countryman's forthcoming Enjoy the Same Liberty: African Americans and the Revolutionary Era.

I'm also posting this now because some of you -- and you know who you are! -- are (if you're like me) now facing up to the fact that you've put off your fall book selections (which were due a month or two ago, remember that) long enough, and it's time to pick your texts for the fall. And for a select number of you, maybe this one will be right for you.

The text is short, about 140 pp., and written with the "general reader" and undergraduate reader in mind. I start with the diversity of religious expressions in West and Central Africa in the 14th/15th century, and end with Mama Lola and Kanye West, if that is a far enough chronological reach for you. And trust me, when drafts of this book failed to meet the aim of reaching the general audience and undergraduate reader, the tireless editors for this series, Jacqueline Moore and Nina Mkjagkij, were ever-ready with fierce and sometimes sarcastic pencils, rumbling through my prose like Sherman rumbled through Georgia, leaving a lot of detritus lying around but cleaning up the landscape considerably. Only, unlike Sherman, they rumbled through my landscape four times, Sherman as you recall having only moved through once. Kidding aside, it was a great experience to have a manuscript put through its paces so many times. I'm sure my other books would have been better with a similar full frontal attack on flabby prose.

In addition, the book comes with a "documents" section, about 60 pages, ranging from Virginia laws on baptism and freedom from the 1660s, to an account of the Stono Rebellion in 1739, to Daniel Payne's famous tour attempting to stamp out "ring shouts" in the 1870s, to Mahalia Jackson's reminiscences of growing up in New Orleans, to John Lewis reflecting on the meaning of non-violence, to Vincent Harding's great essay on the white Christ and Black Power, to Kanye West's "Jesus Walks." There is also a bibliographic essay, broken up by chapter, a Glossary, a Chronology section, and a timeline and some brief footnotes (brief enough not to scare off any freshman reader).

If any of ya'll want to preview it for possible purchase or course use, I'd by happy to send pdfs of the page proofs, or a sample chapter or something if you just want to briefly survey. Just email me, and I'll be there.

Table of contents and more info. below. And now after this brief commercial interruption, back to our usual programming. We'll have some blog posts up soon reflecting on the good times coming up at the Religion and American Culture Conference in Indianapolis starting tomorrow evening; I look forward to many great conversations there! Also, my co-blogmeisters Kelly Baker and the ubiquitous Randall Stephens have books coming out very soon, so we'll have some posts up about those soon.

And we won't even mention yet Phillip Luke Sinitiere's work on Joel Osteen, due up next year with NYU Press, and Linford Fisher's astonishing feat of research and analysis, The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of New England Indian Cultures in Early America, out I believe next year with Oxford Univ. Press, and sure to shape the study of colonial American religious encounters for the next generation to come. Of course, all these works will be featured here at RiAH in days and months to come.

But, enough about you, let's talk about me -- more on my book below.

_____________________________________

Book description (from book website):

Paul Harvey illustrates how black Christian traditions provided theological, institutional, and personal strategies for cultural survival during bondage and into an era of partial freedom. At the same time, he covers the ongoing tug-of-war between themes of "respectability" versus practices derived from an African heritage; the adoption of Christianity by the majority; and the critique of the adoption of the "white man's religion" from the eighteenth century to the present. The book also covers internal cultural, gendered, and class divisions in churches that attracted congregants of widely disparate educational levels, incomes, and worship styles.

Through the Storm, Through the Night provides a lively overview to the history of African American religion, beginning with the birth of African Christianity amidst the Transatlantic slave trade, and tracing the story through its growth in America. Paul Harvey successfully uses the history of African American religion to portray the complexity and humanity of the African American experience.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Themes in African American Religious History
• Middle Passage for the Gods: African and African American Religions from the Middle Passage to the Great Awakening
• The Birth of Afro-Christianity in the Slave Quarters and the Urban North, 1740-1831
• Through the Night: African Amerian Religion in the Antebellum Era
• Day of Jubilee: Black Churches from Emancipation to the Era of Jim Crow
• Jesus on the Mainline: Black Christianity from the Great Migration through World War II
• Freedom's Main Line: Black Christianity, Civil Rights, and Religious Pluralism
• Epilogue: Righteous Anger and Visionary Dreams: Contemporary Black Politics, Religion, and Culture
  
• Documents Section
• Glossary
• Bibliographic Essay

Advance reviews:

"If you teach, study, practice, or care about African American religion, then this is the book for you. Paul Harvey provides an indispensable overview of black Christianity from the age of slavery to the ascendance of Obama. With it, Harvey offers a bevy of fascinating primary documents that range from Nat Turner's righteous rage to Mahalia Jackson's soulful songs. Through the Storm, Through the Night does it all with such clarity that even the most complex concepts make sense."—Edward J. Blum, Author, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet

"Harvey provides an elegant and engaging introduction to the history of African American Christianity that charts the diversity of experience and expression among black Christians and illuminates the complex relationship between religion and race in American life."—Judith Weisenfeld, Princeton University

Malcolm X: Minister, Trickster, Black America, and Person

Emily Clark
I apologize for the length, but the book took two decades and is 500 pages – not something quickly summarized!

Manning Marable died of health complications just days before the release of his magnum opus Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. I posted about it during the few days between his death and the book’s release, but getting around to reading the book had to wait until the spring semester wrapped up. Marable’s task is clear from the title of the prologue; he sought to discover the “life beyond the legend.” With a particular focus to Malcolm’s religious and political evolution over his short 39 year life, Marable found that reinvention best describes Malcolm’s life. No single stage in Malcolm’s life “ever captured him fully.” Arguing that Malcolm’s personal story “is a brilliant series of reinventions” at first may seem a simple claim. After all, don’t all people undergo changes throughout their lives? The strength of Marable’s book comes from his painstaking contextualization of each reinvention, the main reason why the book runs 487 pages prologue to epilogue. These multiple layers obscure the historical Malcolm, but Marable demonstrates how each reinvention emerged from the previous one and this narrative is able to make sense of all these Malcolms. Malcolm Little, Jack Carlton, Detroit Red, Malik Shabazz, Omowale, Malcolm X – none of these alone can describe Malcolm’s life. The reinventions don’t emerge as abrupt but rather the culmination and intersection of multiple factors – be them economic, familial, racial, religious, political, or often all these at once.

In Marable’s telling, the transitions in Malcolm’s perspective from strict racial separatism to a more humanistic worldview are presented in context with the rest of his life story and the environment around him. His Garveyite parents, the poverty of his childhood, his self-education in prison, his admiration for and later criticism of Elijah Muhammad, his hajj, his respect for Ghana, etc. all shape his reinventions. Marable identifies and explores the increasing instances in Malcolm’s speeches and writings where he becomes more interested in human rights and global unity than radical black separation. His departure with the Nation of Islam does not come as a surprise in Marable’s telling. More than just his hajj experiences praying with Muslims of different races and the resulting epiphany and more than just the possible jealousy Elijah had of his famed minister, Malcolm’s schism with the Nation of Islam fits with his developing political and religious philosophy. Despite their talk about militancy, the Nation of Islam continually failed to act in Malcolm’s view; Malcolm wanted to engage the system around them. Fellow black Americans needed action, and he wanted to be a part of it. His pan-Africanism and pan-Islam perspective and his humanism all develop as his way to respond to the needs of black Americans. While Dr. King wanted America to become blind to race, Malcolm wanted to end all racism.

Along the way, Marable discredits some of the popularly accepted knowledge about Malcolm. Marable calls into question the accuracy of the famous Autobiography. In Marable’s estimation, this book was hardly an autobiography and the “as told to” author Alex Haley took a very active role in its creation. Haley disagreed with Malcolm on many political issues, and their goals for the book differed. According to Marable, Malcolm severely exaggerated his criminal past because this would help present his life as “a tale of moral uplift” – a gangster lifted from his ghetto past by Elijah Muhammad, while Haley wanted to illuminate “the tragedies produced by racial segregation.” In addition to his appraisal of the Autobiography, other provocative elements in Marable’s book involve Malcolm’s sexuality and his death. Marable suggests that Malcolm had a homosexual encounter in his earlier years and that the story about Rudy in the Autobiography was really about Malcolm and wealthy white William Paul Lennon. Adding to this, Marable’s depiction of Betty and Malcolm’s marriage is that of a tenuous one. Malcolm feels obligated as a minister to get married, and he is largely absent from his family’s lives, leaving town shortly after the birth of each child. Marable also believes that the assassination was not only horribly investigated (a cleaning staff mopped up some of Malcolm’s blood four hours after the shooting to prepare for the ballroom’s next reservation), but that most of the assassination conspirators and shooters remain uncharged for their role. He names these Newark Mosque members and attempts to recreate their planning and execution of Malcolm’s murder.

Marable’s book has received largely positive reviews, and I think they are deserved. Marable makes Malcolm human – he isn’t a saint or a demagogue, but a flawed, complex, at times beautiful, and at times troubled human being. Beyond the larger than life image, the powerful speeches, and the political action was a person, and in Marable’s book, you get a sense of that person, his trials, and his triumphs. Marable spent much time reflecting upon and wrestling with his own personal opinion of Malcolm. One can read both disagreement with and admiration for Malcolm in Marable’s biography, and despite his flaws, Marable saw Malcolm as “a representative for hope and human dignity.” But Marable may have stumbled at times with his objectivity in regards to Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad. There is a sense of disappointment laced in Marable’s assessment of Malcolm’s brief 1961 meeting with the KKK – “Malcolm’s uncritical adoption of Elijah Muhammad’s conservative, black separatist polices led him to an ugly dead end” – it is Elijah’s dogma that is the source of Malcolm’s bad choice.

Some reviewers call Marable’s prose bland and at times uninspired and find his depiction of international politics vague. These are fair criticisms, and though some may find Marable’s prose “bland,” it also flows smoothly and hardly seems 500 pages. Most of the negative feedback to Marable’s book focuses on the brief mention of Malcolm’s possible homosexual encounter and his allegations against Malcolm’s uncharged “murderers.” One particular negative review comes from Karl Evanzz, whose review “Paper Tiger: Manning Marable’s poison pen” was rejected by TheRoot.com. Later published on Evanzz’s blog, he calls the book “an abomination” and “a cavalcade of innuendo and logical fallacy, and is largely ‘reinvented’ from previous works on the subject.” Evanzz was most upset with Marable’s speculation on Malcolm’s life – claims he bluntly called “lies.” I am grateful for and I am intrigued by his investigation into Marable’s speculations, but I think Evanzz perhaps downplays Marable’s main point. According to his review, “Marable has two primary arguments: (1) the intelligence community and the New York Police Department deliberately ignored serious threats against Malcolm’s X life, and (2) there is overwhelming evidence that the five assassins came from the Nation of Islam’s Newark mosque. That’s it.” At the risk of sounding like a Marable apologist, I don’t think these were the primary goals or arguments of Marable’s book. Though Marable certainly wants to draw attention to the assassination and its investigation, the point of his book was to identify, contextualize, and explore the reinventions of Malcolm’s life and how they illuminate his developing political and religious views. To focus on just Marable’s depiction of Malcolm’s sexuality and/or the assassination conspiracy misses what this book offers. Zeroing in on these claims would be like only focusing on just brief flashes of Malcolm’s life; both miss the big picture.

Marable calls Malcolm “the embodiment of two central figures of African-American folk culture, simultaneously the hustler/trickster and the preacher/minister.” Furthermore, Malcolm “embodied the spirit, vitality, and political mood of an entire population – black urban mid-twentieth-century America.” And answering how Malcolm can embody so much can certainly be found in the pages of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.

Black Mecca: African Muslims in Harlem

Paul Harvey

This book has been on my shelf for a little while, and I was hoping to get to it/blog about it early this summer. But in the meantime, Choice has a nice review of Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem (Oxford 2010). Since we're just today on the subject of mapping religious life in New York boroughs and neighborhoods, now's a good time to repost this review, for those interested.

Abdullah, Zain. Black Mecca: the African Muslims of Harlem. Oxford, 2010. 294p bibl index afp ISBN 0-19-531425-5, $35.00; ISBN 9780195314250, $35.00. Review

How do West African Muslim immigrants fit into the fabric of Harlem, and how have they challenged established notions of Islam, race, and cultural difference in one of the centers of black culture, thought, and politics? Abdullah (Temple Univ.) offers theoretically sophisticated and evocative answers to these questions in his ethnographic study of West African Muslims in Harlem. Combining descriptions of ethnographic encounters and personal narratives with insight from existing literature, chapters address West African immigrants' expectations of America before their migration, encounters between black and African identities, the challenges of mastering language(s), negotiating religious and cultural practices, and the changing notions of family and sexuality. Abdullah weaves these topics into a dense, vivid portrait of what he describes as new "Blues people" immersed in narratives of suffering, survival, and hope. He skillfully avoids one-sided representations and allows himself to consider different angles for each encounter he describes. Situated at the intersection of race studies, anthropology, and Islamic studies, this book is significant beyond its role as a study of American Muslims in advancing readers' understanding of migration, religious identities, and globalization through the lives of people in this particular community. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. -- J. Hammer, George Mason Universityed in 2011apr CHOICE.

Also, there is a longer, more extensive review of the book here; it emphasizes the economic struggles of these black immigrants. A brief excerpt: The mosques of Harlem are where immigrants go to maintain their bonds with each other and to find meaning in their struggles in America. What is significant in Professor Abdullah’s observations is the recasting of one’s economic plight as divine providence. Although many West African Muslims are not able to find the lucrative jobs they imagined, many set up their own shops or drive taxis in order to maintain the flexibility they need to adhere to their Islamic faith and values. In a sense, their work on the streets as an effort to inform people about and to maintain their deen is viewed as amal saalih or blessed work. The recasting of the Western immigrant plight in this manner connects immigrants back to their families and provides justification and hopefor an improved condition. A bit more about the book, from the Oxford U. Press website: The changes to U.S. immigration law that were instituted in 1965 have led to an influx of West African immigrants to New York, creating an enclave Harlem residents now call ''Little Africa.'' These immigrants are immediately recognizable as African in their wide-sleeved robes and tasseled hats, but most native-born members of the community are unaware of the crucial role Islam plays in immigrants' lives. Zain Abdullah takes us inside the lives of these new immigrants and shows how they deal with being a double minority in a country where both blacks and Muslims are stigmatized. Dealing with this dual identity, Abdullah discovers, is extraordinarily complex. Some longtime residents embrace these immigrants and see their arrival as an opportunity to reclaim their African heritage, while others see the immigrants as scornful invaders. In turn, African immigrants often take a particularly harsh view of their new neighbors, buying into the worst stereotypes about American-born blacks being lazy and incorrigible. And while there has long been a large Muslim presence in Harlem, and residents often see Islam as a force for social good, African-born Muslims see their Islamic identity disregarded by most of their neighbors. Abdullah weaves together the stories of these African Muslims to paint a fascinating portrait of a community's efforts to carve out space for itself in a new country.

Playing Jane: Black Mormon History and Memory

Paul Harvey

While our blog contributor Chris Jones is getting ready to ace his comprehensives, he sent along this outstanding piece by Harvard graduate student Max Mueller: "Playing Jane: The History of a Pioneer Black Mormon Woman is Alive Today," published online at the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin. Highly recommended reading, particularly if (like me) you know absolutely nothing about this subject. The article discusses the historical re-creation efforts of Jerri Halwell, who "plays" the remarkable character of Jane Manning James, an African American woman who served in Joseph Smith's household, became a convert, made the trek to Utah, and remained a faithful member of the Church until 1908. A brief taste from this piece (footnotes omitted):

Last summer, I went to Salt Lake City to look for Jane Manning James in the archives of the LDS Church History Library and the archives of the Utah Historical Society. I hoped that Jane would speak to me from scratchy microfiche and dusty letter-books. I hoped she would tell me how she dealt with the precarious place in which she lived out her life as a black Mormon pioneer in Zion, simultaneously at the center and on the margins of the nineteenth-century Mormon experience. I planned to "ask" her: How did you understand your status as a beloved member of the community, celebrated as a friend of the first prophet's family, as a pioneer of 1847, and as a steadfast member of the LDS Church? At the same time, how did you come to terms with LDS Church policy that, due to your race, defines you as innately cursed and thus unworthy to receive the same blessings as your fellow white saints?

Although this was my plan, during my time in Salt Lake City, I found that the archives are not the only or even the best place to find Jane. Certainly, the archives shed light on the question of how Jane in writing subtly challenged the Church's marginalization of blacks within Mormon history and within the Mormon community. But it was in my interviews with Jerri and in my observations of her reenactments that I discovered the canon is not closed on Jane's story. The legacy of Jane's black Mormon experience unfolds today in the lives of modern black Mormons like Jerri, who strike a precarious balance between their ongoing struggles with the Mormon "folklore" about black spiritual inferiority and the spiritual truth they find within their own Mormon testimonies of faith.

Continue reading here.

Musical Monday: Larry Norman and Repurposing the Gospel Aura

Paul Harvey

A couple of musical posts to liven up your Monday. First, blog friend David Stowe, author of the very-soon-to-forthcome No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (which we blogged about a few weeks ago), has a guest post at the UNC Press blog based on a conversation in 2007 with Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman, shortly before he (Norman, that is) passed. The stories, full of musical celebrities, are fun. And he continues:

Were all these stories credible? Who knows. He told me he’d chatted in an airport lounge with a woman in a beautiful jacket who claimed that her husband was Bob Dylan. Andraé Crouch, who happened to be there with Norman, confirmed the woman’s story. Norman confirmed something that my ears had told me: that Dylan’s Grammy-winning single “Gotta Serve Somebody” was closely modeled on Norman’s song “Righteous Rocker,” released several years earlier.

This is a fun read, highly recommended.

As is Douglas Harrison, Repurposing the Gospel Aura, in today's Religion Dispatches, which takes the use of a gospel choir as a backdrop to Eminem's much-commented-upon Chrysler/Detroit commercial as a way of reflecting on how and why this music invites audiences "to imagine themselves as part of a colorblind fellowship of humanity bound together by the soulful sound of a black gospel choir." Harrison reflects on what is gained, and what is lost/missing, in that process. Black gospel is a "universal language of inspiration and transcendence that cuts across race, class, and history," but in the process, "the very real racial tension surrounding the struggle for equality of opportunity in America isn’t so much resolved or reconciled or even recognized. It is simply ignored in these digestible little pageants of musical and psychosocial harmony."

Thinking of this post at Religion Dispatches, it's a good time to congratulate our blog contributor Gerardo Marti, who has just finished his book manuscript, for Oxford, on a very similar theme: Worship Across the Racial Divide: Notions of Race and Religious Practice in Multiracial Churches, coming out with Oxford next year. Gerardo talks about how African American music comes to stand for authenticity in the churches he studies. And he talks about much else besides -- maybe we can entice him to do a little post here in celebration of mailing off the manuscript, telling us about his work a bit more? Let's hear it, ya'll.

Sacred Steel

Paul Harvey

A while back I blogged a bit about this unusual text: Robert Stone, Sacred Steel: Inside an African American Steel Guitar Tradition. The author also has produced a documentary video for the Arhoolie Foundation, Sacred Steel, which I hope to track down soon. Some wonderful examples of this tradition can be heard also on the 3 CD set Fire in My Bones: Raw + Rare + Otherworldly African American Gospel, 1944-2007 (the link takes you to my former post on that CD set). Here's a short review from Choice on the Sacred Steel book, which I hope will interest some of you:

Stone, Robert L. Sacred steel: inside an African American steel guitar tradition. Illinois, 2010. 280p bibl discography index videography afp; ISBN 9780252035548, $80.00; ISBN9780252077432 pbk, $25.00. Reviewed in 2011feb CHOICE.

In a consideration of African American music, one might not readily encounter the names of Chuck Campbell, Calvin Cooke, Little Willie Eason, Lorenzo Harrison, Glenn Renard Lee, Henry Randolph Nelson, or Robert Randolph. All these musicians were affiliated with music of the indigenous black American Holiness Pentecostal churches, music in which the steel ("Hawaiian") guitar plays an important role. Arcane though this information might seem, Stone (an independent folklorist) shows its importance both in its own right and in its relation to other musical and spiritual aspects of African American culture. This is a tale of personal discovery, a path that started in Florida two decades ago but broadened to California, Canada, Jamaica, Haiti, and the Bahamas as Stone investigated the liturgy and practices of the denomination and specific congregations. The photographs, videography, extensive bibliography, lengthy discography, and register of more 100 interview sessions reveal the implications of this music for those interested in African American culture (musical and religious) and folk and popular music traditions.Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. -- D.-R. de Lerma, Lawrence University

The Dream is Freedom: Pauli Murray and the American Democratic Faith

Paul Harvey

I remember attending a conference once, I think it was around 1990 or so, and someone was talking to me about the life of Pauli Murray. I said something more or less like, "who?" The name was totally unfamiliar to me. I didn't even realize then how embarrassed I should have been by that admission; since then, reading her wonderful autobiography, encountering her in various historical works (such as Glenda Gilmore's Defying Dixie, where she plays a central role in the narrative), and now seeing the publication of works such as the one discussed below, she has come better into full view as a central player in twentieth-century American civil rights and religious history.

Sarah Azaransky's The Dream is Freedom: Pauli Murray and the American Democratic Faith, to be published in February, is a full-length intellectual history of Murray's life and work, from young civil rights activist, to law school, and to her late life study to become an Episcopalian minister. I'm pasting in information below from the Oxford website, and definitely look forward to perusing this work.

Description

Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was a poet, lawyer, activist, and priest, as well as a significant figure in the civil rights and women's movements. Throughout her careers and activism, Murray espoused faith in an American democracy that is partially present and yet to come.

In the 1940s Murray was in the vanguard of black activists to use nonviolent direct action. A decade before the Montgomery bus boycott, Murray organized sit-ins of segregated restaurants in Washington DC and was arrested for sitting in the front section of a bus in Virginia. Murray pioneered the category Jane Crow to describe discrimination she experienced as a result of racism and sexism. She used Jane Crow in the 1960s to expand equal protection provisions for African American women. A co-founder of the National Organization of Women, Murray insisted on the interrelation of all human rights. Her professional and personal relationships included major figures in the ongoing struggle for civil rights for all Americans, including Thurgood Marshall and Eleanor Roosevelt.
In seminary in the 1970s, Murray developed a black feminist critique of emerging black male and white feminist theologies. After becoming the first African American woman Episcopal priest in 1977, Murray emphasized the particularity of African American women's experiences, while proclaiming a universal message of salvation.

The Dream Is Freedom examines Murray's substantial body of published writings as well personal letters, journals, and unpublished manuscripts. Azaransky traces the development of Murray's thought over fifty years, ranging from Murray's theologically rich democratic criticism of the 1930s to her democratically inflected sermons of the 1980s. Pauli Murray was an innovative democratic thinker, who addressed how Americans can recognize differences, signaled the role of history and memory in shaping democratic character, and called for strategic coalition building to make more justice available for more Americans.

Features

• First book-length study of Pauli Murray's democratic vision
• First consideration of Murray's democratic and religious thought from the 1930s through the 1980s

Reviews

"The Dream Is Freedom brings much needed attention to the remarkable life of Pauli Murray--activist, author, advocate, legal scholar, theological critic, poet, and organizer for freedom, justice and democracy. Across discrimination by race, gender, sex, and class, Pauli called us to be our better selves, join the struggle for change, and fulfill the promise of what America and we could be. This is a terrific book about an extraordinary and too little recognized fighter for a better world."--Heather Booth, President, Midwest Academy

"This careful and thoughtful study offers readers important insights into the nature and meaning of Pauli Murray's contributions to our theological self-understanding and our democratic desires." --Anthony B. Pinn, Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities, Rice University

Product Details

224 pages; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4;ISBN13: 978-0-19-974481-7ISBN10: 0-19-974481-5

Black Entrepreneurship, Religion, and Civil Rights

Paul Harvey

One of my favorite books over the last year or two was Suzanne Smith's To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death, which I blogged about previously here.

This morning, the author, Suzanne Smith (George Mason University), was interviewed on Morning Edition on NPR, talking about the black businessman A. G. Gaston, a figure pretty well known to civil rights historians but largely unknown outside of that. Check out the interview here.

The funeral business proved instrumental in the lives of a lot of ministers, including nineteenth-century minister-entrepreneurs who got in on the ground floor of modern undertaking, as "colored embalmers," and twentieth-century ministers who used their funeral business income to subsidize their activities in other areas, including the original sponsor of Mahalia Jackson's singing tours and radio performances.

American Religious History at the AAR

Paul Harvey

The below is from the Historical Society blog; Randall there has helpfully summarized some of the main sessions on American religious history at the upcoming AAR in Atlanta, including my session I blogged on before, "The Future of Southern Religious History."

The first morning, Saturday, is the main panel presenting new research in African American religious history. Monday afternoon, for those of you who can stay around until then (regrettably, not including me), is a dream team scholarly lineup discussing how Robert Orsi's Madonna of 115th St has affected (or not) the study of religion. Saturday afternoon at 1:00 features a panel discussion of our friend Tisa Wenger's work We Have a Religion, which we blogged about before here featuring an interview with the author.

The full program is searchable here.

Saturday 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Location: Marriott Marquis - L405-406
Missionary Innovation: African-American Religion and the New South

Presiding
* Josef Sorett, Columbia University

Presenters
* Lerone Martin, Emory University
Selling to the Souls of Black Folk: Atlanta, the Phonograph, and the Transformation of American Religion and Culture, 1920–1941

* Elizabeth Jemison, Harvard University
Writing and Righting Race: Women’s Interracial Cooperation in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South

* Brandi Hughes, University of Michigan
(En)Gendering the Trans-Nation: The Missionary Sojourns of Black Womanhood from Atlanta through Monrovia

* Brandon Winstead, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
“We are Responsible to God”: Black Nazarene Women’s Theology of Evangelistic Responsibility and Its Relationship to Their Contributions to the Church of the Nazarene’s Gulf Central District, 1953–1969

Responding
* Paul Harvey, University of Colorado

Saturday 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Location: Hyatt Regency - Hanover E
Author Meets Critics: Thomas A. Tweed’s Crossing and Dwelling (Harvard University Press, 2008)

Presiding
* Daniel Ramírez, University of Michigan

Panelists
* Richard Callahan, University of Missouri
* Marie Marquardt, Agnes Scott College
* Grant Wacker, Duke University

Responding
* Thomas A. Tweed, University of Texas

Saturday 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Location: Hyatt Regency - Hanover FG
Defining Religious Freedom: Reading Tisa Wenger’s We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (University of North Carolina Press, 2009)

Presiding
* Ines M. Talamantez, University of California, Santa Barbara

Panelists
* Quincy Newell, University of Wyoming
* Greg Johnson, University of Colorado
* Kenneth Mello, Southwestern University

Responding
* Tisa Wenger, Yale University

Saturday 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Location: Hyatt Regency - Hanover C
The Lutheran Tradition: New Theological and Global Perspectives
Presiding
* Kirsi Irmeli Stjerna, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg

Presenters
* Farisani Elelwani, University of South Africa
The Challenges Facing Lutherans in South Africa

* John Reynolds, Union Theological Seminary
The Heart in Sixteenth Century Physiology and the Role of Luther’s Theology in the Life of the Believer

* Hans Schwarz, University of Regensburg
Martin Luther’s Reception in Korea

* Cecilia Nahnfeldt, Karlstad University, Sweden
Lutheran Vocation and Gender Relations

Saturday 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Location: Marriott Marquis - L507
Seminar on Religion in the American West

Presiding
* Jane Naomi Iwamura, University of Southern California

Presenters
* Travis Ross, University of Nevada, Reno
Sectionalism in California’s Religious Periodicals: Place in Religious Rhetoric

* Jonathan William Olson, Florida State University
“Not Merely Asiatic but Pagan”: Religion, Chinese Exclusion, and the American West

* Barry Joyce, University of Delaware
Creating an Axis Mundi in the American Southwest: Religion, Science, and the Sacred at the Chaco Culture National Historical Park

* Brett Hendrickson, Arizona State University
Mexican-American Religious Healing and the American Spiritual Marketplace

Responding
* Tisa Wenger, Yale University


Sunday 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Location: Hyatt Regency - Hanover AB
Keywords in the Study of North American Religion: Anthropomorphism, Agency, and Vernacular

Presiding
* Gary M. Laderman, Emory University

Presenters
* W. Clark Gilpin, University of Chicago
Anthropomorphism: Human Connection to a Universal Society

* Elizabeth Jemison, Harvard University
Writing Agency: Reconsidering Agency in the Study of American Religion

* Rachel Lindsey, Princeton University
The Light of the World: Vernacular Photography and American Religion, 1839–1910

Monday 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Location: Marriott Marquis - M101
The Future of Southern Religious History

Presiding
* Paul Harvey, University of Colorado

Panelists
* Alison Greene, Yale University
* Michael Pasquier, Louisiana State University
* Randall Stephens, Eastern Nazarene College
* Curtis Evans, University of Chicago
* Ted Ownby, University of Mississippi

Responding
* Lauren Winner, Duke University

Monday 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Location: Marriott Marquis - M103-104
How Has Orsi’s Madonna of 115th Street Affected the Way We Think about Religion?

Presiding
* David Harrington Watt, Temple University

Panelists
* Judith Weisenfeld, Princeton University
* Stephen J. Stein, Indiana University
* Kathryn Lofton, Yale University
* Leigh E. Schmidt, Harvard University

Responding
* Robert Orsi, Northwestern University

From the Underside of the Millennium: My Take on God in America

Paul Harvey

Today's Religion Dispatches features a few of my thoughts on the God in America series which premiered last week: "The Brutality of the American Eden: From the Underside of the Millennium." As the post makes clear, I enjoyed and appreciated the series, but wanted to raise some questions about freedom and authority in American history:

But I do want to ask what this series would look like if we also understand American religious history to be about coercion and authority? Most of God in America is about the white Protestant majority in American history. In a series on religion and public life, that is fair enough; they have dominated religion and public life. But what if we make coercion,establishment, and repression as central to our narrative as freedom, disestablishment, and expression? What if this is a show in which Americans’ self-understanding as derived from Exodus is more critically examined than celebrated?

Read the full post here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts either at Religion Dispatches or here.

Oh, and while you're at it, catch Matt Sutton's take on the series here, also at Religion Dispatches. Matt defends the series against professorial carping, praises its success in reaching a broader public, and points out how much we all engage in our own forms of condensation and simplifying to get across a few basic points.

Glenn Beck, Methodism, and "Black Founders"

by Christopher Jones

Glenn Beck initially drew my interest because of his Mormonism—I sensed in Beck’s conspiratorial approach to politics something reminiscent of an earlier generation of Mormon public figures. The pervading fear of socialist subversion, combined with the particularly Mormon interpretations and understandings of human agency, the methods and aims of satanic opposition, and the divinely-inspired nature of America’s Founding documents, were reminders both that the influence of Cleon Skousen and Ezra Taft Benson’s religio-political views still loomed large among a certain segment of the Mormon population and that in them lay a narrative that had the power to appeal to not only conservative Mormons but other embittered Americans as well, suspicious of the government and intent on rescuing the nation from secularism and immorality (and make no mistake, perceived secularism and immorality are as central to Beck’s movement as is some vague libertarian notion of fiscal responsibility). These topics have been discussed, analyzed, and reanalyzed at least a hundred times over by now (though some commentators rehash them anew and claim such discoveries for their own, all while butchering the identities of key people and ideas in Mormon history), and to be honest, I’ve grown weary of thinking about Beck, his Mormonism, and his agenda in general. In fact, I’d sworn off posting anything more on Beck here or at the Juvenile Instructor.

But one of Beck’s more recent forays into early American history has forced me to reconsider. It touched a nerve not because of Beck’s subtle invocation of Mormon themes, but rather because they addressed the subject of my current research—early American Methodism. Sandwiched in between Beck’s recent assertion that race relations in America were (with the exception of some unidentified “racists”) fairly harmonious before the years immediately preceding the Civil War and that provisions for Revolutionary War soldiers and veterans operated on a sort of colorblind basis is an intriguing discussion of what Beck oddly refers to as “the first real megachurch … a white and black megachurch.” The "megachurch" in question (which goes unidentified) is St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia and the central figure is Richard Allen, eventual founder of the AME Church.

“Richard Allen,” Beck explains, “was a preacher at a white church—a megachurch. … And Richard Allen, this megapreacher, he tried to segregate.” Beck’s go-to guy for all matter historical, David Barton, chimes in, noting that “In the 1790s [Allen] proposed having a black denomination. And both whites and blacks said, ‘we don’t want that. We want the integrated stuff. We don’t want separate denominations.’ There was finally an overt act of racism in one church that kind of gave him the impetus to go ahead and start a black denomination. But for years, neither blacks nor whites wanted a separate denomination ‘cause they worshipped together in those churches, in Philadelphia and elsewhere.”

Rather than focusing on each of the several problematic points raised (the insightful scholarship of Albert Raboteau, Dee Andrews, and Richard Newman is recommended for those interested), I’d like to ruminate on the meanings and implications of two particular points.

First, I was struck by Beck and Barton omitting entirely any mention of Methodism. Richard Allen is simply “a black preacher” and St. George’s is simply a generic “megachurch.” Considering that Methodist theology and worship were so central to Allen’s identity as a Christian (and as a black man), and that his "black denomination" remained within Methodist Episcopal tradition, this seems as especially odd omission. This not only simplifies and distorts the history of St. George’s (and Methodism more generally) by ignoring the complex dynamics of early American religion, but also serves as a useful means of locating this supposed bastion of interracial harmony within the tradition so many of Beck’s listeners and viewers claim as there own today—conservative evangelical Christianity. This rhetorical maneuver, then, allows these conservatives to co-opt the legacy of interracial evangelicalism in early America (in much the same way that Beck has co-opted the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century).

Second, this conversation between Beck and Barton took place during a recurring segment of Beck’s show called “Founder’s Friday.” This particular episode was devoted to “Black Heroes in American History,” and was part of Beck’s stated effort to “spend more time learning about our black founders, and restoring this part of history” (a worthwhile effort, no doubt—at least theoretically). I was immediately reminded of Richard Newman’s biography of Richard Allen, Freedom’s Prophet, in which Newman sought to place Allen squarely within the tradition of America’s Founding Fathers. Echoing others, Newman reinforced the notion that Allen was a black founder, but moved beyond previous assessment by declaring that Allen was deserving of such a title not only because he founded black institutions but also because he “was essentially the forerunner of modern civil rights activists” and because “his belief in nonviolent but confrontational reform offered lessons for virtually every black leader who followed in his wake” (p. 4). As Alan Taylor summarized in his review of the book, “Allen was a Founder for all Americans. He emphasized a prophetic vision of America as a multi-racial democracy of equal rights and equal opportunity. His egalitarian vision was far more daring than anything considered by the more famous white Founders.”

In Beck’s vision of “black founders,” however, Richard Allen in cast as a foil to the interracial harmony he earlier enjoyed as a “mega-preacher” to “2,000 whites” by promoting “segregation.” Tellingly, then, what Beck sees as antithetical to his imagined ideal of American society, Newman see as admirable and daring. The implication of Beck’s narrative—that this “black preacher” and the black church he pioneered, are mere distractions to the real story of this Christian nation—serves as an interesting contrast to those who “seek a sense of authenticity” in black institutions and raises important questions about the place of the black church in the conservative white mind today.

White Rockers in Search of Soul Salvation

Paul Harvey

This piece of mine comes from today's Religion Dispatches -- I'm posting a snip below and you can follow the link from there.



Fifty-eight-year old rock veteran John Mellencamp recorded his latest record live, in three different sacred spaces — a legendary studio (Sun Studios in Memphis), a hotel room in San Antonio (where blues legend Robert Johnson cut some epochal sides in 1936), and, most significant for this article, the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia.



The first two are hallowed ground of American musical recording history. The third is the oldest black Baptist congregation in the country; so far as I know, it has no history of being used as a backdrop for popular recordings. All three, though, have deep mythical meanings for white Americans in search of authenticity. . . .

Read on < < <

Moses, Jesus, and the Trickster at OBU

Paul Harvey

From our Department of Self-Promotion, an announcement below which may be of interest to any blog readers we have in the great state of Oklahoma. I don't know for a fact that we have any, but just in case . . .

Celebrating Oklahoma Baptist University's Centennial

The Department of Anthropology, History and Political Science presents

Paul Harvey

1983 OBU Graduate

Professor of History, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Professor Harvey is a nationally recognized historian of Baptists and evangelicals in the South and commentator on present-day American religion and politics.

Tuesday, September 28

9:30-10:45 a.m. “Baptists and the American South” (Public Presentation; GC 220)

How have Baptists dealt with racial differences and other issues important in the South? Join Professor Harvey to reflect on this major problem in the American experience.

Noon-1:30 p.m. “History, Faith, and the Academy” (Open Lunch; GC 222)

Grab your lunch in the cafeteria and come to GC 222 for a rich

conversation! Cosponsored by the Faith and Disciplines Committee.

7-9 p.m. “Moses, Jesus, and the Trickster in the Evangelical South”

(Public Lecture; Bailey Business Building, Tulsa Royalties Aud.)

How do we explain the co-existence of the piously sacred and the violently

profane in the history of the American South? Through history, literature, music,

and film, this lecture explores four major archetypes of southern religious culture

from the 18th century to the present: Moses, Jesus, the Trickster, and Absalom.

Literary figures, cultural archetypes, and musical explorations have added layers

of complexity to what other wise might be seen as a solid South of evangelicalism.

Moorish Body Builder and Blood Purifier: From New Contributor Emily Clark!

Welcome to our new contributor Emily Clark! Emily is no stranger here, having tried her hand at a little blogging about the 5th anniversary of Katrina. Emily Clark is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Religion at Florida State University and the current managing editor for the Journal of Southern Religion. Her interests lie in the intersections of race, religion, and everyday life in the American South, particularly in the lives of women in New Orleans.

“Contains No Harmful Drugs”

by Emily Clark

Amassing pieces of material culture from American religion is a hobby of mine. My older sister collects thimbles from various times and places, while I prefer to build a more quirky and eclectic collection. I own a pack of “After the Rapture” mints aimed “for those of us not going anywhere,” and I gaze upon my officemate’s “Buddy Christ” from the movie Dogma with jealousy. While writing a paper last spring semester on the Moorish Science Temple’s Moorish Manufacturing Corporation, my curiosity about the curative and therapeutic products increasingly grew. Though Noble Drew Ali founded the MMC in 1927 and the products largely disappeared after his death, I found a temple in Brooklyn that still sold his teas and tonics. About two weeks ago, my purchase arrived.

Having ordered the Moorish Body-Builder and Blood Purifier with no online description, I was eager to see what exactly I had bought. Containing “No Harmful Drugs,” the label informs the consumer that Noble Drew Ali developed this particular tea to alleviate “rheumatism, lung trouble, run down constitution, indigestion, and loss of manhood.” For the consumption of men, women, and children, the tea is made with “the purest natural herbs.” Inside the box, the loose tea was packaged in a zip-lock sandwich bag. Curious enough, considering their proscription of alcohol, the suggested dose is “one wine glass full, twice daily.” In the maintenance of their bodily purity and good health, MST followers were willing to appropriate non-Moorish tools, from glassware to advertising forums. Advertisements for MMC Products could be found in late 1920s editions of the MST’s newspaper Moorish Guide and in the secular newspaper the Chicago Defender, next to notices for local fortune-tellers, “Mystic Arabian Oil,” and “Oriental Magic Loadstones.”

Though largely overlooked in the historiography on the MST, the products of the MMC offer another method of exploring the Temple’s early days and the everyday life of its adherents. In Edward Curtis’ chapter on the MST in his recent co-edited volume The New Black Gods: Arthur Huff Fauset and the Study of African American Religion, he briefly calls attention to the similarities between southern African American traditions of Conjure and the material culture products of the MMC. This proposal is historically plausible and compelling; though, Curtis does not take this idea further. In terms of form, function, and context, a familial resemblance exists between the practices of root-work and Noble Drew Ali’s products. By means of religious knowledge, both attempt to heal black bodies through engagement of both the physical body and spiritual identity. Noble Drew Ali’s vision for “a clean and pure nation” had a material and corporeal grounding in the men, women, and children composing the Moorish race. In the MST’s material culture and theology, the body, spirit, and race impact and influence one other.

Down LDS Lane

by John Turner

One of the joys of developing an interest in Mormon History is that there always seems to be a historic site to visit. AHA in San Diego? The Mormon Battalion. In New England? Joseph Smith's birthplace. And obviously lots to do in western New York, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Utah. For the details, see this list.

With a family, this surfeit can potentially be tricky to navigate, despite the family-friendly nature of the church. I've yet to persuade my wife that driving the length of the Mormon Trail would be a good use of our time and money -- perhaps we can just make a beeline to the Handcart Visitors' Center next summer.

My two-year-old daughter has had a mixed reaction to Mormon Historical Sites. Loved the stairwells at Salt Lake City's Beehive House. Screamed when subjected to a discourse on the history of the church at the Brigham Young summer home. Enjoyed collecting rocks at the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre (note: a site currently maintained by the church but not a "Mormon Historic Site") (second note: said daughter did not remove any rocks from the monument itself).

I'd long wanted to visit the massacre site, given the attention the massacre has received from historians over the past decade. It was strange to see the bucolic landscape surrounding the site, and it was hard to perceive the macabre given the pleasure of leaving boiling-hot St. George for a cooler and greener spot.

At the end of the summer, we drove from Rochester, NY to visit some friends in Vermont. (No time for Mormon tourism in Palmyra this year, but the Joseph Smith Family Farm and Sacred Grove were good stops last year). Somewhere near the NY-Vermont border on Rt. 4, we sped by the William Miller Chapel. In terms of signage and web presence, the Adventist Heritage Ministry lags way behind Mormon Historical Sites. I didn't think I could divert us for Miller this year. Perhaps next time. (I'd like to get a look at Ascension Rock).

Somewhat disappointed to have missed Miller's Chapel (but disappointment of course is relative in this case), I also regretted that our route to South Royalton, Vermont did not more closely approach Brigham Young's birthplace. However, I had forgotten that Joseph Smith was born in Royalton, Vermont. Our obliging hosts not only informed us of the birthplace and volunteered to take us the next day but also pulled out Hope Nash's 1975 Royalton Vermont.

A choice description from Nash of a religious minority making itself more acceptable to the mainstream:

...the Mormons, after raising the Joseph Smith monument in 1905, built a cottage, a reception center for visitors. In the 1920s they were fitting into the local scene with a dairy herd, sugaring operations, and an apple orchard. They made friends by inviting everyone to picnics, games, dancing, and programs of music and drama (p. 80) [Continued in a footnote on that page] The Mormons made themselves pleasant. They gave parties and pleased the children. When a little girl went up there they had a big box of candy on a high shelf and they lifted her way up so she could look down into it and choose ... In 1970 Mrs. Roland McIntosh said, "Now there is only one person on Dairy Hill who doesn't like the Mormons." She did not say who it was.

I didn't have time to sample contemporary local sentiment vis-á-vis Latter-day Saints.

The JS birthplace was much better marked than the Miller Chapel. One only had to find LDS Lane. All of our children loved the birthplace, so there must be something to Nash's analysis. I did find it a bit ironic that they received miniature American flags from the missionaries.

I think at this point my wife feared that Mormon Historical Sites would haunt her wherever we went. [None in the Southeast, though, at least until Patrick Mason's forthcoming book on anti-Mormon violence in the American South gets the ball rolling].

I did actually spend some time in the archives this summer, but one of the things I appreciate about the field of Mormon History is the passion with which Mormons (as well as ex-Mormons, anti-Mormons, and the curious) engage their history. What other church in the United States would invest so much time and money to promote the study of its past? There are both theological and historical reasons for this, but for outsiders like me, it is encouraging to spend my time studying something that is critically important to so many people.

Of course, the Mormons are not the only group to have cultivated a strong sense of their history. I recently read and reviewed Laurie Maffly-Kipp's recent Setting Down the Sacred Past, in which African American Protestants rejected the belief that they were a people without a history. In the process of discovering and refashioning a collective past, they became African Americans. A short paraphrase of Maffly-Kipp's conclusion:

The knowledge of a glorious past, the example of black and white heroes of the faith, and the anticipation of a millennial future enabled black Protestants to respond to the bitter disappointments of the Civil War's aftermath with efforts to shape a more just society either in the United States or abroad. In their books and speeches, the "point of history is to rise above ourselves and this world to an unmoving vantage point."

After spending another summer studying Mormon History and reading Setting Down the Sacred Past, it struck me that my own denomination (the dwindling PC(USA)) sorely lacks this keen interest in its history. We can't travel around the country visiting historic sites, we don't really have a pantheon of Presbyterian heroes, and most of us probably don't know what the word Reformed means in a Presbyterian context. I think historical forgetfulness impoverishes mainline Protestantism. We're not sure where we came from, and we don't have any idea where we're going. I don't think most mainline Protestants would want "an unmoving vantage point," and Maffly-Kipp doesn't argue that African Americans or other religious groups should re-embrace the historical or theological thought of her subjects. But whether Mormon, mainline or evangelical, white or black, there are distinct advantage to cultivating a sense of a shared sacred past.