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April 17 African American Religion Guest Lecturer: Wallace Best, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
ABSTRACT: Protestant Christianity is at the very center of African American history and culture. In order to demonstrate this, my lecture will explore the complex issues that surrounded efforts beginning in the 17th century to Christianize African slaves, explaining why these efforts were ultimately successful among the many slaves who were receptive to Christianity. I will show that "slave religion" was not a simple acceptance and appropriation of "the slave master's religion." Rather, it was a process of religious development that transformed not only slave culture, but also American Christianity itself. The various expressionos of black Christianity that currently exist, permeating both African American relgious and mainstream culture, have origins in that transformed "slave religion." Outline: Key Point: Christianity is at the very center of African American history and culture. 1. From
African religion to "slave religion" READINGS: |
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Wallace
Best, Ph.D. (Northwestern University) Assistant Professor, African-American
and American Religious History. African-American and American religious
history, Holiness and Pentecostal traditions, Black Theology, politics
and religiosity, the Nation of Islam, the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, black women's religious leadership, the relationships between
urbanization, racial ideologies and religious cultures.