Recreating Utopia in the Desert

Recreating Utopia in the Desert PDF

Author: Hans A. Baer

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1988-01-01

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780887066818

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Recreating Utopia in the Desert: A Sectarian Challenge to Modern Mormonism is the account of a millenarian sect, officially known as the Aaronic Order, one of the main splinter groups of the Mormon Church. Their story tells us much about the social tensions, particularly along class lines, that have emerged in Mormonism. The Aaronic Order, or Levites, emerged as the Mormon Church evolved from a religious utopia in the Midwest, to a near nation-state in the Intermountain West, to finally an international theocratic corporation. Drawing upon the concept of revitalization movements, the Levite sect is viewed as an attempt by working-class Mormons to resurrect the communitarian ideals they perceived as characteristic of earlier nineteenth-century Mormonism. From their beginnings in the Depression, the Levites have developed a series of cooperative and communal ventures in Utah, based upon the revelations of Maurice Glendenning. We see in the Levites the seemingly inevitable processes of institutionalization and fission characterizing revitalization movements that survive. By explaining the impetus for the development of sectarian groups such as the Levites, the author offers important insights for the discussion of religious communitarianism and schizmatic movements in contemporary religion.

African-American Religion in the Twentieth Century

African-American Religion in the Twentieth Century PDF

Author: Hans A. Baer

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 9780870497469

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A comprehensive overview of the great diversity of religious forms within the African-American community in the 20th-century--a diversity reflecting an abiding tension between accommodation to and protest against white society's domination. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

New World A-Coming

New World A-Coming PDF

Author: Judith Weisenfeld

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1479865850

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"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."--Publisher's description.

African American Religions, 1500–2000

African American Religions, 1500–2000 PDF

Author: Sylvester A. Johnson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-08-06

Total Pages: 437

ISBN-13: 1316368149

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This book provides a narrative historical, postcolonial account of African American religions. It examines the intersection of Black religion and colonialism over several centuries to explain the relationship between empire and democratic freedom. Rather than treating freedom and its others (colonialism, slavery and racism) as opposites, Sylvester A. Johnson interprets multiple periods of Black religious history to discern how Atlantic empires (particularly that of the United States) simultaneously enabled the emergence of particular forms of religious experience and freedom movements as well as disturbing patterns of violent domination. Johnson explains theories of matter and spirit that shaped early indigenous religious movements in Africa, Black political religion responding to the American racial state, the creation of Liberia, and FBI repression of Black religious movements in the twentieth century. By combining historical methods with theoretical analysis, Johnson explains the seeming contradictions that have shaped Black religions in the modern era.

African American Religion

African American Religion PDF

Author: Eddie S. Glaude (Jr.)

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0195182898

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African American Religion offers a provocative historical and philosophical treatment of the religious life of African Americans. Glaude argues that the phrase, African American religion, is meaningful only insofar as it singles out the distinctive ways religion has been leveraged by African Americans to respond to different racial regimes in the United States. If it does not do this, he argues, then it is time we got rid of the phrase.

Pluralism Comes of Age

Pluralism Comes of Age PDF

Author: Charles H. Lippy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-05-20

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1317462742

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This acclaimed work surveys the varied course of religious life in modern America. Beginning with the close of the Victorian Age, it moves through the shifting power of Protestantism and American Catholicism and into the intense period of immigration and pluralism that has characterized our nation's religious experience.

African American Religious Experiences

African American Religious Experiences PDF

Author: Gloria Robinson Boyd

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2010-02-19

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1443820326

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African Americans encountered many challenges throughout history facing slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and other forms of racism. Many relied on religion as their source of strength and endurance. The African American religious experience is a story of survival that demonstrates how religion became the key ingredient that allowed a race to adapt and survive the harshest systems of injustice and prejudice in America. Religion became the greatest universal and dynamic tool of survival adopted by enslaved individuals and the utmost weapon known to the black race. African American religious practices, a blend of African and European traditions, are distinctively unique because of worship styles and contemplative practices; all reflective of the vital role religion played in the lives of blacks during slavery and beyond.

Lift Every Voice and Swing

Lift Every Voice and Swing PDF

Author: Vaughn A. Booker

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2020-07-21

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 1479890804

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Explores the role of jazz celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Mary Lou Williams as representatives of African American religion in the twentieth century Beginning in the 1920s, the Jazz Age propelled Black swing artists into national celebrity. Many took on the role of race representatives, and were able to leverage their popularity toward achieving social progress for other African Americans. In Lift Every Voice and Swing, Vaughn A. Booker argues that with the emergence of these popular jazz figures, who came from a culture shaped by Black Protestantism, religious authority for African Americans found a place and spokespeople outside of traditional Afro-Protestant institutions and religious life. Popular Black jazz professionals—such as Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Mary Lou Williams—inherited religious authority though they were not official religious leaders. Some of these artists put forward a religious culture in the mid-twentieth century by releasing religious recordings and putting on religious concerts, and their work came to be seen as integral to the Black religious ethos. Booker documents this transformative era in religious expression, in which jazz musicians embodied religious beliefs and practices that echoed and diverged from the predominant African American religious culture. He draws on the heretofore unexamined private religious writings of Duke Ellington and Mary Lou Williams, and showcases the careers of female jazz artists alongside those of men, expanding our understanding of African American religious expression and decentering the Black church as the sole concept for understanding Black Protestant religiosity. Featuring gorgeous prose and insightful research, Lift Every Voice and Swing will change the way we understand the connections between jazz music and faith.

Black Miami in the Twentieth Century

Black Miami in the Twentieth Century PDF

Author: Marvin Dunn

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 1997-11-19

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0813059577

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The first book devoted to the history of African Americans in south Florida and their pivotal role in the growth and development of Miami, Black Miami in the Twentieth Century traces their triumphs, drudgery, horrors, and courage during the first 100 years of the city's history. Firsthand accounts and over 130 photographs, many of them never published before, bring to life the proud heritage of Miami's black community. Beginning with the legendary presence of black pirates on Biscayne Bay, Marvin Dunn sketches the streams of migration by which blacks came to account for nearly half the city’s voters at the turn of the century. From the birth of a new neighborhood known as "Colored Town," Dunn traces the blossoming of black businesses, churches, civic groups, and fraternal societies that made up the black community. He recounts the heyday of "Little Broadway" along Second Avenue, with photos and individual recollections that capture the richness and vitality of black Miami's golden age between the wars. A substantial portion of the book is devoted to the Miami civil rights movement, and Dunn traces the evolution of Colored Town to Overtown and the subsequent growth of Liberty City. He profiles voting rights, housing and school desegregation, and civil disturbances like the McDuffie and Lozano incidents, and analyzes the issues and leadership that molded an increasingly diverse community through decades of strife and violence. In concluding chapters, he assesses the current position of the community--its socioeconomic status, education issues, residential patterns, and business development--and considers the effect of recent waves of immigration from Latin America and the Caribbean. Dunn combines exhaustive research in regional media and archives with personal interviews of pioneer citizens and longtime residents in a work that documents as never before the life of one of the most important black communities in the United States.