The Rise of Black Ethnics: The Ethnic Turn in African American Religions, 1916–1945

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvester A. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Consciousness ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
American Jews ◽  
World War ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Racial Biases ◽  
The World ◽  
Moorish Science

AbstractDuring the world war years of the early twentieth century, new African American religious movements emerged that emphasized black heritage identities. Among these were Rabbi Wentworth Arthur Matthew's Congregation of Commandment Keepers (Jewish) and “Noble” Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple of America (Islamic). Unlike African American religions of the previous century, these religious communities distinctly captured the ethos of ethnicity (cultural heritage) that pervaded American social consciousness at the time. Their central message of salvation asserted that blacks were an ethnic people distinguished not by superficial phenotype but by membership in a heritage that reached far beyond the bounds of American history and geography. The academic study of these religions has largely moved from dismissal and cynicism to serious engagement with African American Jews and Muslims as veritable forms of religion. Despite this progress among scholars, some recent studies continue todenythat Matthew’s and Ali's communities were authentically Jewish and Islamic (respectively). When scholars dispense with theological or racial biases that bifurcate religions into ‘true’ and ‘false’ forms, the study of these black ethnic religions might best yield important insights for understanding the linkage among ethnicity, the nation-state, and religion. The religious reasoning of Matthew and Ali produced resourceful, complicated challenges to dominant colonial and racist paradigms for understanding agency and history. Their theology is appropriately discerned not as illusion, hybridity, or confusion but as thoughtful anticolonial expressions of Judaism and Islam that sought inclusion and honor through black ethnicity. At a time when African Americans were viewed as cultureless and without any legacy of inheritance except the deformities of slavery, the rise of black ethnics introduced religious traditions that demonstrated blacks were indeed a people with heritage.

World War I and the Roaring Twenties, 1915–1929

2020 ◽  
pp. 150-171
Author(s):  
Robert G. Spinney
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War I ◽  
German Population ◽  
World War ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The World ◽  
Indirect Impact ◽  
The City

This chapter explores the effects and significant indirect impact of World War I on Chicago. It points out how America was only a combatant in the war for slightly longer than a year, which is a period of time insufficient for the nation to mobilize fully for the war. It also discusses how the World War unleashed anti-German sentiments that severely affected the Chicago's sizeable German population. The chapter analyzes how the war drove Chicago employers to hire large numbers of African American laborers, which triggered a historic migration of southern blacks to the city. It also specifies how the war convinced politicians for ethnic and national allegiances to remain strong among the city's numerous immigrants.

Measuring Innovation

2020 ◽  
pp. 141-176
Author(s):  
Natalia Lidova
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
Indian Form

Pūjā is often perceived as a predominantly Hindu form of veneration of gods, as it is currently the main ritual for almost one billion followers of Hinduism (about 15 per cent of the world’s population), with approximately 800 million of them living in India. It is less known that pūjā is also used as the main ritual in other religious communities, specifically different groups of contemporary Buddhists and Jains, as well as of Sikhs and various India-orientated spiritual practices and religious movements such as ISKCON. This makes pūjā not only a pan-Indian form of worship but the worldwide ritual that crossed the borders of its native country and gained many adepts all over the world. This chapter examines the genesis and development of this religious practice.

scholarly journals Divine Intersections: Hindu Ritual and the Incorporation of Religious Others

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Kathinka Frøystad
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Accurate Description ◽  
Personal Choice ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Religious Others

This article throws the study of multireligious sociality in Western contexts into sharp relief by examining the case of India. Much of the current scholarship of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism tends to assume that religious beliefs, practices and spaces make the respective religious communities close entirely in upon themselves. While this assumption may hold true for most of the Western settings we study, it does not necessarily give an accurate description of the conditions for multireligious sociality in other parts of the world. In India, for instance, religious boundaries still display signs of malleability despite the religious politicization and occasional interreligious violence of the past decades. Drawing on recent anthropological research, this article shows that people of different religious denominations still visit Sufi shrines, that Hindus still incorporate ritual elements and divine beings from the religious traditions of their Others and that they exercise a wide personal choice in terms of spiritual activities, thus enabling spiritual paths that cross in and out of Hinduism. In a Hindu context rituals do not necessarily have an insulating effect; they may also provide points of intersection that open up toward the Other, thus fostering familiarity and recognition. Similar arguments have been made for Buddhist settings. The question is thus whether the current scholarship of cosmopolitanism may entail a certain monotheistic bias that needs to accounted for, something that is of particular importance when theorizing in ways that make universal claims.

“Unnecessary and Artificial Divisions:” Franklin Roosevelt's Quest for Religious and National Unity Leading Up to the Second World War

2013 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 667-677
Author(s):  
Andrew Polk
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
American Jews ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
To Come ◽  
Franklin Roosevelt

The letters were portrayed as a goodwill gesture toward the three more dominant religious traditions in America and, as far as President Franklin Roosevelt was concerned, the world. After being carefully constructed over the preceding weeks, they were held in strict secrecy until they were released to the media on December 24, 1939. Each was written to the leader of his respective religion: as president of Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Cyrus Adler represented American Jews and George A. Buttrick, president of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (FCC), received a letter on behalf of American Protestants, with the last letter going to Pope Pius XII, head of the Roman Catholic Church. Each letter was, at least ostensibly, a Christmas greeting. Roosevelt offered each man warm wishes and his hearty thanks for all that he had done for his people and the world. Yet Roosevelt also noted the fear and uncertainty of the time. War had again come to Europe and threatened to envelop the globe. It was the responsibility of all people of goodwill, Roosevelt argued, to come together in any way they could for the cause of peace. He hoped the three men, and those they represented, would put aside religious differences and join together for the common good.

Bridging the Gaps: Methodological Challenges in the Study of Taiwanese Popular Religion

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-63
Author(s):  
Paul R. Katz
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Chinese History ◽  
The World ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

This paper critically assesses leading research on Taiwanese popular religion published during the past two decades, including by historians of religion and social scientists. It pays special attention to the challenges (and opportunities) provided by the study of Taiwan’s vibrant religious traditions, which have produced a wealth of textual materials yet can also be researched by using ethnographic methods and collecting survey data. Another conundrum that Taiwanese scholars face involves how to effectively utilise the ever-increasing body of data about religious life in modern Chinese history and among Chinese communities throughout the world. The review’s scope centres on research results from the past 20 years that examine temple cults and festivals; it will not discuss Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity, and other foreign religions, as well as the religions practiced by Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. However, it will occasionally mention scholarship on voluntary religious movements, especially those that perform spirit-writing rituals.

Africa in the World: History and Historiography

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Far East ◽  
Western World ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Modern Era

Since antiquity and through the modern era African societies maintained contacts with peoples in Europe, the Near and Far East, and the Americas. Among other things, African peoples developed local forms of Christianity and Islam, contributed large amounts of gold to European medieval economies, and exported millions of slaves through the Sahara, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Despite this, by the 19th century historians and philosophers of history thought Africa was a continent without major civilizations, whose peoples passively rested at the margins of history. These ideas persisted into the 20th century when historians undertook the challenge of writing histories that explained how communities around the world were connected to one another. In their early iterations, however, these “world narratives” were little more than histories of the Western world; Africa continued to be largely absent from these stories. After World War II, increasing interest in the history of African societies and a more generalized concern with the study of communities that were both mis- and under-represented by historical scholarship called for a revision of the goals and methods of world historians. Among the most important critiques were those from Afrocentric, African American, and Africanist scholars. Afrocentric writers argued that Africa had in fact developed an important civilization in the form of Egypt and that Egypt was the foundation of the classical world. African American and Africanist writers highlighted the contributions that peoples of African descent had made to the world economy and many cultures around the globe. Africanists also questioned whether world historical narratives, which meaningfully accounted for the richness and complexity of African experiences, could be achieved in the form of a single universal narrative. Instead, historians have suggested and produced new frameworks that could best explain the many ways in which Africa has been part of the world and its history.

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