Beyond the Black Church, Or, African American Religious Studies: The Next Generation

I study, among other subjects, black Catholics. When I tell people I study black Catholics, I am often met with blank stares. If black Catholics occupy any space in the American religious imagination, they conjure images of Catholic Masses with Gospel choirs and the politics of parishes like St. Sabina’s on the South Side of Chicago. Black Catholics sometimes baffle because they pose a problem for scholars and laypeople alike. African American religious studies, until relatively recently, may be one of the few instances in which popular imagination and scholarly interpretation align quite neatly. When African Americans and religion are invoked a specific image usually comes to mind, and black Catholics don’t quite fit.

Lucky for me, while working on this dissertation about black Catholics in Chicago, a number of books have interrupted popular and scholarly assumptions. What I have realized over the past few years, with equal parts gratitude and relief, is that we have not simply witnessed a number of great books. Rather, we stand in the midst of a new generation of African American religious studies. African American Religious Studies: The Next Generation, as I’m thinking of them, challenge at least three persistent theses about African American religion.

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