Down by the Riverside: Readings in African American Religion (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity)

Rating:
Summary: African American spirituality revealed
Review: An introduction to the variety of African American religious thought spanning from the time of slavery up to the present. From Protestant Christianity to Conjure, Orisa & Black Judaism, from Islam, Catholicism & humanism.

A learned, footnoted & occasionally anecdotal, absorbing immersion into the roots of African American faith & its everyday practices, how the mixtures were blended, who stirred them.

Rating:
Summary: African American spirituality revealed
Review: An introduction to the variety of African American religious thought spanning from the time of slavery up to the present. From Protestant Christianity to Conjure, Orisa & Black Judaism, from Islam, Catholicism & humanism.

A learned, footnoted & occasionally anecdotal, absorbing immersion into the roots of African American faith & its everyday practices, how the mixtures were blended, who stirred them.

Rating:
Summary: Wade in...
Review: One gets the sense that African American religion and spirituality is far more diverse than popularly conceived from the very outset of this book, `Down by the Riverside: Readings in African American Religion,' edited by Larry Murphy. Murphy, a professor of the History of Christianity at Garrett-Evangelical/Northwestern, has put together a rich and varied collection of texts that go far beyond the `traditional' confines of African American religion being an exclusive province of the Protestant realm. The list of contributors is impressive: Albert Raboteau (whose own `Slave Religion' is a classic in the field), M. Shawn Copeland, Mary R. Sawyer, Charles H. Long and Gayraud Wilmore (just to name a few). The range of topics is also impressive - in addition to the tradition coverage of African American experience in Protestant circles, Murphy's collection includes pieces regarding African American experiences in Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, religions that survived the Middle Passage in variant forms, and humanist/secular ideas.

Murphy's introductory essay and Charles Long's first article set the tone for the rest of the volume, which is divided into nine sections. Murphy describes African American religion in North America as a mosaic, and Long challenges the long-standing tradition of seeing Christianity as a normative standard against which all other religious experiences must be judged. Long presents three ideas that are interrelated, which for him `constitute symbolic images as well as methodological principles.' These are the religious image and historical reality of Africa, the involuntary nature of the presence and existence of an African American community, and the symbol and experience of God in black religious experience. Through stories, songs, poems, and biblical imagery, Long highlights important principles, picked up by further essayists Raboteau (the image of the exodus is primary for him), Wilmore (who adds further clarifications of his own), and Lincoln and Mamiya (who discuss the black sacred cosmos, contending that many researchers and observers are too quick to apply a sacred/secular division inappropriately to black culture).

The remaining sections of the book get to the heart of experience of African American religion in important segments - some concentrate on particular groups (Richard Brent Turner looks at Islam as an African inheritance whose practice was continued by slaves brought over, whose influence continues into the present; Merrill Singer looks at the phenomenon of Black Judaism in the United States, which includes efforts by some at immigration to the state of Israel under conditions of the Law of Return), some look at at particular theological movements (James Cone's article on Black Theology as Liberation Theology highlights the beginning for this kind of formal theological school; Toinette M. Eugene looks at Womanist theology, one of the latest branches in this developing tradition; M. Shawn Copeland looks at the Catholic/Black Theology relationship). None of the articles tend to highlight a particular man or woman in isolation (with two exceptions), but the key figures in African American history (which cannot realistically be separated from the attendant religious history) are all represented in the essays and narrative historical strands. The two exceptions to this rule are W.E.B. Du Bois, and the enigmatic Father Major Jealous Divine.

Attention is paid to issues of men and women, of geographic differences, and of different religious underpinnings. The experience of those following the Santeria groups is vastly different from those who work in the Christian denominations, be they from within the mainline, white-dominated sects or the African American denominations (CME, AME, etc.). This book is very valuable in this respect - it gives a strong hearing to a diversity of religious experience, relating these to the overall history of the development of the country as well as the African American community generally, while holding on to the important historical differences each group exhibits.

The African American Christian experience is nonetheless well represented in all its many forms. These include descriptive/narrative essays as well as analytical essays, such as Lincoln and Mamiya's article on the dialectical model of the Black Church. While this dialectical model is based on the tensions present in the church (the authors identify six key polar pairings showing this dialectical movement), these tensions are ultimately unresolved, and perhaps destined to never be resolved. However, it does provide for the dynamic of change and growth within the Black Church, and could probably be applied beyond this context very easily.

The appendices give interesting detail in summary/snapshot form of the timeline of African American religious history, as well as a list of films that might be used for further study. These are lesser known film documentaries (popular Hollywood cinematic releases are not incorporated here). The index is useful if incomplete (the first two references I went to check were not included in the index; for example, despite being a key figure in Black Theology and a contributor to this volume, the name of James Cone does not appear in the index).

The final essays by Wilmore and Harding each look at the overall direction of African American religious history and experience. Wilmore sees religion, in all its diversity and complexity, as still remaining `the essential thread interweaving the fabric of black culture', with three primary traditions (survival, elevation, and liberation) as working in interrelationship. Harding looks at the freedom movement and its relationship with religious experience, ending with a series of open-ended questions meant to provoke further conversation and reflection.

This is an important book for anyone interested in the development of religious traditions in America.