AMHERST COLLEGE
Religion 238/Black Studies 238
AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Fall 2011
T,TH 2:00-3:20
Professor David W. Wills
Chapin 112
September 6: Introduction to the Course
September 8: Atlantic World Beginnings
Albert J. Raboteau, Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans, ch.1
(purchase).
Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion, Introduction & Chapter 1
(purchase).
Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience, 2nd ed., ch.1, pp. 11-23
(purchase).
September 13: Anglicans and Africans
Frey & Wood, CSZ, chs.2-3.
David W. Wills, gen. ed., Selections from Working Draft: African American Religion: a
Documentary History, 1650 (Ligon), 1680B (Godwyn), 1710 (Le Jau), and 1732
(Christian Slaves). (e-reserve)
September 15: The Evangelical Revivals
Frey & Wood, CSZ, ch4.
AARDOC Selections, 1740A (Whitefield’s Second Visit), 1740C (Whitefield
Philadelphia), 1740K (“New Negro”), 1740Q (“Preach Like Whitefield), 1741I
(Bryan Plantation), 1742A (Assemblies Investigated), 1745B (Moravian Slave),
1765-02 (London Report), 1770Z(Gronniosaw). (e-reserve)
September 20: Black Evangelicalism and the Black Church
Frey & Wood, CSZ, ch 5-6.
Richard Allen, The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, pp
5-24.(packet)
Jarena Lee, The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee, pp. 1-24 (e-reserve)
September 22: Black Protestantism/Black Islam
Frey & Wood, CSZ, ch.7 & afterword.
Raboteau, Canaan Land, chs 2-3.
Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience, 2nd ed., ch.1., pp. 2346.
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September 23: Paper Due
September 27: African Americans and the Protestant Missionary Movement
“Betsey Stockton’s Journal,” 1822-23, AARDOC (on-line)
<http://www3.amherst.edu/~aardoc/Betsey_Stockton_Journal.html>
Hugh Hawkins,” Edward Jones, Marginal Man,” in David W. Wills and Richard
Newman, Black Apostles at Home and Abroad, pp. 243-254. (packet)
September 29: The Black Churches: Leadership and Gender
Carter G. Woodson, History of the Negro Church, ch, 8 (e-reserve).
David W. Wills, “Womanhood and Domesticity in the A.M.E. Tradition: The Influence
of Daniel Alexander Payne,” in David W. Wills and Richard Newman, Black
Apostles at Home and Abroad, pp. 133-146 (e-reserve).
Daniel Alexander Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years, pp. 3-55, 64-65, 72-81, 92-99
(packet).
October 4: African American Christianity and the Civil War
Raboteau, Canaan Land, ch 4.
Payne, Recollections, pp.135-165 (packet)
AARDOC Selections, 1861-09 (“Prison House of Slavery”), 1865-01 (“Best Take Care of
Ourselves”), 1865-07 (Madame Julan). (e-reserve)
October 6: “Exodus Piety”/ Islam
David W. Wills, “Exodus Piety: African American Religion in an Age of Immigration,”
in Jonathan Sarna, ed., Minority Faiths and the American Protestant Mainstream,
pp. 136-188 (e-reserve)
AARDOC Selections, 1869-01 (Blyden), 1877-02 (William Henry Heard), 1877-05X
(Harrison Bouey), 1878-04 (Payne), 1887-07 (Fleming), 1889-01X (Special
Mission). (e-reserve)
Turner, Islam, ch. 2.
FALL BREAK
October 13: “Conservatives and Progressives”
David W. Wills, “The Double Crisis of Black Christianity,” (packet)
Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, ch. 12 (e-reserve)
Payne, Recollections, pp. 220-241, 253-257 (packet)
AARDOC Selections, 1872-06 (John Scott), 1873-08 (A. L. Bassett), 1878-01B
(Lewisburg, Arkansas), 1881-03 (New York Tribune), 1882-01 (A Yankee
Traveler), 1890-09 (Henry M. Turner), 1892-12 (Daniel Payne), 1895-08A
“Remarkable Powers”, 1895-08BX (Claretta Avery), 1895-08CX (Lawrence
Dennis), 1907-013 (“Chase Satan Home), 1907-021 (Florence Randolph), 1907022X (Annie Brown/Peerskill). (e-reserve)
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October 18: Holiness and Pentecostalism
Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism, pp. 25-35, 39-51 (e-reserve)
John Giggie, After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American
Religion in the Delta, 1875-1915, prologue and ch.5 (e-reserve).
AARDOC Selections, 1895-08D (Holiness Movement), 1905-10 (Alexander Dowie’s
Zion City), 1905-12 (Belleville of W. S. Crowdy), 1906-041 “Startling Claim”,
1906-042X (Bartleman), 1906-091 (Biracial Contacts), 1906-101 (Cape
Verdean); 1906-102 (Lucy Farrow), 1906-103 (Julia W. Hutchins), 1906-104X
(New York), 1907--031 (North Carolina), 1907-032 (C. H. Mason), 1907-081
(Rural Connecticut Mob). (e-reserve)
October 20: “Progress”, Protest, and Politics
David W. Wills, “Reverdy C. Ranson: The Making of a Black Bishop,” in Randall
K. Burkett and Richard Newman, Black Apostles, pp.181-212 (e-reserve).
AARDOC Selections, 1889-09A (Black Baptists), 1899-11 (Lucy Thurman), 1905-08A
(Emma Ranson), 1906-043 (Reverdy Ransom), 1906-044 (Voice of the Negro),
1906-045 (Black Congregationalist Pastor), 1910-03 (“To Hell”), 1910-05
(Sunday School Convention), 1910-073 (James Morris Webb), 1911-08 (National
Negro Doll Company), 1918-11 (Grimké). (e-reserve)
October 21: Paper Due
October 25: Black Judaism and Islam
Raboteau, Canaan Land, ch.5.
Merrill Singer, “Symbolic Identity Formation in an African American Religious Sect:
The Black Hebrew Israelites,” in Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutch, eds.,
Black Zion: African American Encounters with Judaism, pp. 55-72 (e-reserve]
Turner, Islam, ch. 3.
AARDOC Selections, 1928-08 (Moorish Americans), 1929-01 (Commandment
Keepers). (e-reserve)
October 27: The Nation of Islam
Turner, Islam, ch.4, pp. 109-137, and ch.5.
November 1: Black Catholics/COGIC
Cyprian Davis, The History of Black Catholics in the United States, ch. 9 (e-reserve)
Anthea Butler, Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World, ch.3
(e-reserve)
AARDOC Selections, 1906-051 (“Try the Catholic Church”), 1906-052X (Roman
Catholic Negro Bureau), 1921-11 (Society of the Divine Word), 1923-040 (Pius
XI), 1933-03 (Du Bois). (e-reserve)
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November 3: Film, Records, and Preaching
Judith Weisenfeld, Hollywood Be Thy Name, ch.1 (e-reserve).
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “Rethinking Vernacular Culture: Black Religion and
Race Records in the 1920s and 1930s,” in Wahneedma Lubiano, ed., The House
That Race Built, Cornel West and Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., African American
Religious Thought, pp. 187-208 (e-reserve).
Albert J. Raboteau, ”The Chanted Sermon,” in A. Raboteau, Fire in the Bones, pp.141151 (e-reserve).
November 8: The Civil Rights Era: Antecedents
David W. Wills, “An Enduring Distance: Black Americans and the Protestant
Establishment,’ in William R. Hutchison, Between the Times: The Travail of the
Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960, pp.168-192 (e-reserve)
Dennis Dickerson, “African American Religious Intellectuals and the Theological
Foundations of the Civil Rights Movement, 1930-55,” Church History,74:2
(June 2005): 217-235 (on-line) <http://www.jstor.org/stable/27644548>
AARDOC Selections, 1924-100 (R. R. Wright), 1924-120 (Theatre/Wright), 1927-091
(“Orthodox Religion”), 1927-092X (Grimké), 1930-121 (Nannie Burroughs),
1930-122 (Adam Clayton Powell), 1931-012 (New York Preachers), 1931-013
(Burroughs on Powell), 1933-06 (Hancock on Gandhi), 1935-02 (Kester), 193503 (Terror), 1935-04 (Crisis debate), 1936-012 (James Robinson), 1936-032
(Thurmans/Gandhi), 1937-033X (Tobias and Mays meet Gandhi). (e-reserve)
“Thank God That He Is Not of This Great White Race”: Francis Grimké Praises
Toyohiko Kagawa, AARDOC (on-line)
<http://www3.amherst.edu/~aardoc/Grimke_Kagawa_1936.html>
November 10: Civil Rights Era/Martin Luther King, Jr.
Raboteau, Canaan Land, ch. 6 [20]
Clayborne Carson, “Martin Luther King, Jr., and the African American Social Gospel,”
in Paul E. Johnson, ed., African American Christianity: Essays in History, pp.159177 (e-reserve).
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Autobiography of Religious Development,” in Clayborne
Carson, The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Vol. 1, pp. 359-363 (packet)
Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom, pp.90-107 (packet)”
David Levering Lewis, “Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Promise of Nonviolent
Populism,” in John Hope Franklin and August Meier, eds., Black Leaders of the
Twentieth Century, pp. 277-303 (packet).
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here,” James Washington, ed.,
Testament of Hope, pp. 245-252 (packet).
November 15: Malcolm X
Turner, Islam, ch. 6, pp. 174-223.
Malcolm X, “Twenty Million Black People in a Political, Economic, and Mental Prison,”
in Bruce Perry, ed., Malcolm X: The Last Speeches, pp. 25-57 (packet).
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November 17: Black Power and Black Theology
James Cone, Black Theology and Black Power, ch.2 (packet).
November 18: Paper Due
THANKSGIVING VACATION
November 29: Obama, Jeremiah Wright, & the Black Church
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father, ch.14 (packet).
Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, ch.6 (packet).
Kelefa Sanneh, “Project Trinity: The Perilous Mission of Obama’s Church,” New Yorker,
April 7, 2008, pp. 30-36 (packet).
Jeremiah Wright, Jr., “Doing Black Theology in the Black Church,” in Linda E. Thomas,
ed., Living Stones in the Household of God, pp. 13-23 (packet)
Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union, (packet).
Michael Powell and Jodi Kantor, “A Strained Wright-Obama Bond Finally Snaps,”
New York Times, May 1, 2008 (packet).
December 1: Beyond the Civil Rights Era
Raboteau, Canaan Land, ch.7.
Turner, Islam, pp. 223-241.
George Brandon, Santeria from Africa to the New World, ch 5 (e-reserve)
Elizabeth McAlister, “The Madonna of 115th Street Revised: Vodou and Haitian
Catholicism in the Age of Transnationalism,” in Cornel West and Eddie S.
Glaude, Jr., African American Religious Thought, pp. 942-977 (e-reserve).
December 6: To Be Announced
December 8: To Be Announced
December 13: To Be Announced
December 16: Final Paper Due
Books for Purchase (Amherst Books)
Albert J. Raboteau, Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans.
Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion.
Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience, 2nd ed.
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