African Americans and the Abrahamic Religions Symposium

Schedule
Boston University Photonics Center
April 19 – 20, 2012

Thursday, April 19:

9:00 AM – 9:45 AM- Registration

9:45 AM– 10:00 AM- Welcome remarks by Linda Heywood

10:00 AM – 11:30 AM- Session I: Africa to Pre-Emancipation U. S.

Linda Heywood and John Thornton, “The Abrahamic Religions in Pre-Colonial Atlantic Africa”
Ras Michael Brown, “Beyond Conversion: Reconceptualizing Engagements with Christianity in African American Religion”
Margaret Washington, “Movin’ with Spirit: The Sea Island Gullahs and the St. Vincent Shakers”
Moderator Sylvia Frey
11:30 AM – 12:15PM- Lunch

12:15 PM – 2:15 PM- Session II: Emancipation to Civil Rights

Sylvester Johnson, “African Americans, Anticolonialism, and the Civilizationist Problem of Abrahamic Religions”
Robert Hill, “Adam-Abraham-Anglo-Saxon, The Indomitable Lepor’ in the Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy: The Religious Challenge of Revival and the Religion of Ras Tafari in Jamaica”
Mechal Sobel, “A fire in the belly: Bill Traylor’s hegira from African Baptist to Black Catholic”
Bettye Collier-Thomas, “The Nexus: Women, Religion, Race, and Civil Rights”
Moderator Walter Fluker
2:15 PM – 3:15 PM- Keynote Address by Lamin Sanneh

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM- Speaker Dinner at the Castle: Keynote address by Tudor Parfitt “1930: Annus mirabilis for Black Judaism”

Friday, April 20:

8:45 AM – 9:00 AM- Registration

9:00 AM – 9:15 AM- Call to Order: Welcome remarks by Linda Heywood

9:15 AM – 10:45 AM- Session III: Civil Rights to the Present

Nimi Wariboko, “Spirituality and the Weight of Blackness in Nigerian Pentecostalism”
Laurence Mamiya, “Is the Black Church Dead?: An Assessment of the Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era”
Edward Curtis, “A Transnational History of African American Islam”
Moderator Eva Illouz
10:45 AM – 11:00 AM- Break

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM- Session IV: The Abrahamic Religions and the Atlantic World

Patrick Sylvain, “Vodun: In the Crossfire of Christian Hegemony”
Ivor Miller, “Coded Communication between the Catholic Church and African derived institutions in 19th century Cuba”
Denize de Almeida Ribeiro, “Candomble of Brazil and Religious Intolerance.”
Moderator Kim Butler
12:30 PM – 1:00 PM- Break

1:00 PM – 3:00 PM- Session V: African American Pastors, the Abrahamic Religions and Social Justice Campaigns

– Bag Lunch and Roundtable Discussion

Rabbi Caper Funnye
Reverend Pamela Lightsey
Moderator Ambassador Charles Stith
3:00 PM – 3:45- Closing remarks by Albert Raboteau