Search results for ""author judith weisenfeld""

Winner of the 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Book Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions Shows how early 20th-century resistance to conventional racial categorization contributed to broader discussions in black America that still resonate today When Joseph Nathaniel Beckles registered for the draft in the 1942, he rejected the racial categories presented to him and persuaded the registrar to cross out the check mark she had placed next to Negro and substitute “Ethiopian Hebrew.” “God did not make us Negroes,” declared religious leaders in black communities of the early twentieth-century urban North. They insisted that so-called Negroes are, in reality, Ethiopian Hebrews, Asiatic Muslims, or raceless children of God. Rejecting conventional American racial classification, many black southern migrants and immigrants from the Caribbean embraced these alternative visions of black history, racial identity, and collective future, thereby reshaping the black religious and racial landscape. Focusing on the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, and a number of congregations of Ethiopian Hebrews, Judith Weisenfeld argues that the appeal of these groups lay not only in the new religious opportunities membership provided, but also in the novel ways they formulated a religio-racial identity. Arguing that members of these groups understood their religious and racial identities as divinely-ordained and inseparable, the book examines how this sense of self shaped their conceptions of their bodies, families, religious and social communities, space and place, and political sensibilities. Weisenfeld draws on extensive archival research and incorporates a rich array of sources to highlight the experiences of average members. The book demonstrates that the efforts by members of these movements to contest conventional racial categorization contributed to broader discussions in black America about the nature of racial identity and the collective future of black people that still resonate today.

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Winner of the 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Book Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions Shows how early 20th-century resistance to conventional racial categorization contributed to broader discussions in black America that still resonate today When Joseph Nathaniel Beckles registered for the draft in the 1942, he rejected the racial categories presented to him and persuaded the registrar to cross out the check mark she had placed next to Negro and substitute “Ethiopian Hebrew.” “God did not make us Negroes,” declared religious leaders in black communities of the early twentieth-century urban North. They insisted that so-called Negroes are, in reality, Ethiopian Hebrews, Asiatic Muslims, or raceless children of God. Rejecting conventional American racial classification, many black southern migrants and immigrants from the Caribbean embraced these alternative visions of black history, racial identity, and collective future, thereby reshaping the black religious and racial landscape. Focusing on the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, and a number of congregations of Ethiopian Hebrews, Judith Weisenfeld argues that the appeal of these groups lay not only in the new religious opportunities membership provided, but also in the novel ways they formulated a religio-racial identity. Arguing that members of these groups understood their religious and racial identities as divinely-ordained and inseparable, the book examines how this sense of self shaped their conceptions of their bodies, families, religious and social communities, space and place, and political sensibilities. Weisenfeld draws on extensive archival research and incorporates a rich array of sources to highlight the experiences of average members. The book demonstrates that the efforts by members of these movements to contest conventional racial categorization contributed to broader discussions in black America about the nature of racial identity and the collective future of black people that still resonate today.

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A comprehensive collection of the pioneering work of Leonard Norman Primiano, one of the preeminent scholars in religious studies In 1995, Leonard Norman Primiano introduced the idea of “vernacular religion.” He coined this term to overcome the denigration implied in the concept of “folk religion” or “popular religion,” which was juxtaposed to “elite religion.” This two-tiered model suggested that religion existed somewhere in a pure form and that the folk version transforms it. Instead, Primiano urged scholars to adopt an inductive approach to the study of religion and to pay attention to experiential aspects of belief systems, ultimately redressing a heritage of scholarly misinterpretation. Here for the first time, Leonard Norman Primiano’s pioneering works have been collected into one volume, providing a foundational look at one of the preeminent scholars of twentieth-century religious studies. Vernacular Religion makes visible the dimensions of vernacular religion in North America, exemplifying the richness of its ability to explain key facets of American society, including especially thorny issues around race and sexuality. The volume also demonstrates a method of abiding engagement, the creation of ongoing relationships with those who are studied, and how the relationship between scholars and the communities they study inform an ethics of critical commitment—what Primiano calls an “ethnography of collaboration and reciprocity.” This posthumous collection, edited by Deborah Dash Moore, brings together key studies in vernacular religion that explore its expression among such varied groups as Catholics, LGBTQ Christians, and the followers of Father Divine. Vernacular Religion models empathetic ethnographic engagement that embraces American religion in all its rich diversity, illuminating Primiano’s enduring legacy.

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A comprehensive collection of the pioneering work of Leonard Norman Primiano, one of the preeminent scholars in religious studies In 1995, Leonard Norman Primiano introduced the idea of “vernacular religion.” He coined this term to overcome the denigration implied in the concept of “folk religion” or “popular religion,” which was juxtaposed to “elite religion.” This two-tiered model suggested that religion existed somewhere in a pure form and that the folk version transforms it. Instead, Primiano urged scholars to adopt an inductive approach to the study of religion and to pay attention to experiential aspects of belief systems, ultimately redressing a heritage of scholarly misinterpretation. Here for the first time, Leonard Norman Primiano’s pioneering works have been collected into one volume, providing a foundational look at one of the preeminent scholars of twentieth-century religious studies. Vernacular Religion makes visible the dimensions of vernacular religion in North America, exemplifying the richness of its ability to explain key facets of American society, including especially thorny issues around race and sexuality. The volume also demonstrates a method of abiding engagement, the creation of ongoing relationships with those who are studied, and how the relationship between scholars and the communities they study inform an ethics of critical commitment—what Primiano calls an “ethnography of collaboration and reciprocity.” This posthumous collection, edited by Deborah Dash Moore, brings together key studies in vernacular religion that explore its expression among such varied groups as Catholics, LGBTQ Christians, and the followers of Father Divine. Vernacular Religion models empathetic ethnographic engagement that embraces American religion in all its rich diversity, illuminating Primiano’s enduring legacy.

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Movements, Motions, Moments shows how African Americans have negotiated their participation and engagement in religious spaces. The book is divided into three sections—Movements, Motions, and Moments. Images of figures including Rev. Henry Highland Garnett, Noble Drew Ali, Father Divine, Prophet Elijah Muhammad, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Pauli Murray, Bishop Myokei Cain-Barrett, and others are depicted next to photographs of religious celebrations, ritual practices, and individual moments of faith and spirituality. Photographers include Lola Flash, Chester Higgins, Jason Miccolo Johnson, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Kenneth Royster, James Van Der Zee, Milton Williams, Lloyd W. Yearwood, and others. Photographs in this volume range from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries and include religious traditions such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, African indigenous, non-secular, and other religious traditions (Humanism, Atheism, Spiritualism, and others). It also includes photography capturing contemporary events and movements including Black Lives Matter and the global pandemic.

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