Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace, co-authored with Shayne Lee (New York University Press, 2009).
Joel Osteen, Paula White, T. D. Jakes, Rick Warren, and Brian McLaren pastor some the largest churches in the nation, lead vast spiritual networks, write best-selling books, and are among the most influential preachers in American Protestantism today. Spurred by the phenomenal appeal of these religious innovators, sociologist Shayne Lee and historian Phillip Luke Sinitiere investigate how they operate and how their style of religious expression fits into America’s cultural landscape. Drawing from the theory of religious economy, the authors offer new perspectives on evangelical leadership and key insights into why some religious movements thrive while others decline.
Holy Mavericks provides a useful overview of contemporary evangelicalism while emphasizing the importance of "supply-side thinking" in understanding shifts in American religion. It reveals how the Christian world hosts a culture of celebrity very similar to the secular realm, particularly in terms of marketing, branding, and publicity. Holy Mavericks reaffirms that religion is always in conversation with the larger society in which it is embedded, and that it is imperative to understand how those religious suppliers who are able to change with the times will outlast those who are not.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Smiling Preacher: Joel Osteen and the Happy Church
Chapter 2: Great Jazz: T.D. Jakes and the New Black Church
Chapter 3: A New Kind of Christian: Brian McLaren and the Emerging Church
Chapter 4: Messed-Up Mississippi Girl: Paula White and the Imperfect Church
Chapter 5: Surfing Spiritual Waves: Rick Warren and the Purpose-Driven Church
Epilogue
Bibliographic Essay: Theory of Religious Economy
Purchase Holy Mavericks from NYU Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Reviews: Contemporary Sociology 39/1 (January 2010): 106-107; Religious Studies Review 36/1 (March 2010): 94; Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49/2 (June 2010); 383-384; Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 39/3 (August 2010): 471-473; The Chronicle of Higher Education (December 12, 2010); Pneuma 32/2 (2010): 287-288; Reviews in American History 39/1 (March 2011): 175-184
Joel Osteen, Paula White, T. D. Jakes, Rick Warren, and Brian McLaren pastor some the largest churches in the nation, lead vast spiritual networks, write best-selling books, and are among the most influential preachers in American Protestantism today. Spurred by the phenomenal appeal of these religious innovators, sociologist Shayne Lee and historian Phillip Luke Sinitiere investigate how they operate and how their style of religious expression fits into America’s cultural landscape. Drawing from the theory of religious economy, the authors offer new perspectives on evangelical leadership and key insights into why some religious movements thrive while others decline.
Holy Mavericks provides a useful overview of contemporary evangelicalism while emphasizing the importance of "supply-side thinking" in understanding shifts in American religion. It reveals how the Christian world hosts a culture of celebrity very similar to the secular realm, particularly in terms of marketing, branding, and publicity. Holy Mavericks reaffirms that religion is always in conversation with the larger society in which it is embedded, and that it is imperative to understand how those religious suppliers who are able to change with the times will outlast those who are not.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Smiling Preacher: Joel Osteen and the Happy Church
Chapter 2: Great Jazz: T.D. Jakes and the New Black Church
Chapter 3: A New Kind of Christian: Brian McLaren and the Emerging Church
Chapter 4: Messed-Up Mississippi Girl: Paula White and the Imperfect Church
Chapter 5: Surfing Spiritual Waves: Rick Warren and the Purpose-Driven Church
Epilogue
Bibliographic Essay: Theory of Religious Economy
Purchase Holy Mavericks from NYU Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Reviews: Contemporary Sociology 39/1 (January 2010): 106-107; Religious Studies Review 36/1 (March 2010): 94; Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49/2 (June 2010); 383-384; Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 39/3 (August 2010): 471-473; The Chronicle of Higher Education (December 12, 2010); Pneuma 32/2 (2010): 287-288; Reviews in American History 39/1 (March 2011): 175-184
Christians and the Color Line: Race and Religion after Divided by Faith, co-edited with J. Russell Hawkins (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Christians and the Color Line analyzes the complex entanglement of race and religion in the United States. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples of racialized religion, the essays in this volume consider the problem of race both in Christian congregations and in American society as a whole. Belying the notion that a post-racial America has arrived, congregations in the US are showing an unprecedented degree of interest in overcoming the deep racial divisions that exist within American Protestantism. In one recent poll, for instance, nearly 70 percent of church leaders expressed a strong desire for their congregations to become racially and culturally diverse. To date, reality has eluded this professed desire as fewer than 10 percent of American Protestant churches have actually achieved multiracial status.
Employing innovative research from sociology, history, philosophy, and religious studies, the contributors to this volume use Michael Emerson and Christian Smith's groundbreaking study Divided by Faith (Oxford, 2000) as their starting point to acknowledge important historical, sociological, and theological causations for racial divisions in Christian communities. Collectively, however, these scholars also offer constructive steps that Christians of all races might take to overcome the color line and usher in a new era of cross-racial engagement.
Table of Contents
Foreword, Michael O. Emerson
Introduction, Phillip Luke Sinitiere and J. Russell Hawkins
Section 1: Looking Back--Failures and Successes in Erasing the Color Line
Chapter 1: Miles S. Mullin, II, Neoevangelicalism and the Problem of Race in Postwar America
Chapter 2: Karen Joy Johnson, Healing the Mystical Body: Catholic Attempts to Overcome the Radical Divide in Chicago, 1930-1948
Chapter 3: Brantley Gasaway, "Glimmers of Hope": Progressive Evangelicals and Racism, 1965-2000
Chapter 4: Tobin Miller Shearer, "Buttcheek to Buttcheek in the Pew": Interracial Relationalism in a Mennonite Congregation, 1957-2010
Chapter 5: Ryon Cobb, Still Divided by Faith?: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, 1977-2010
Section 2: Looking Forward--Possibilities for Overcoming the Color Line
Chapter 6: Mark T. Mulder, Worshipping to Stay the Same: Avoiding the Local to Maintain Solidarity
Chapter 7: Edward J. Blum, Beyond Body Counts: Sex, Individualism, and the Segregated Shape of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism
Chapter 8: Jerry Z. Park, Color-Conscious Structure-Blind Assimilation: How Asian American Christians Can Unintentionally Maintain the Racial Divide
Chapter 9: Erica Ryu Wong, Knotted Together: Identity and Community in a Multiracial Church
Chapter 10: Korie L. Edwards, Much Ado About Nothing?: Rethinking the Efficacy of Multiracial Churches for Racial Reconciliation
Theological Afterword: The Call to Blackness in American Christianity, Darryl Scriven
Purchase Christians and the Color Line from Oxford University Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Reviews: Sociology of Religion 75/2 (Summer 2014): 343-344; Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 53/2 (June 2014): 449-451; The Journal of Southern Religion 16 (2014); Religion & Theology 23 (2016): 213-230.
Interview: Religion in American History (October 18, 2013)
Christians and the Color Line analyzes the complex entanglement of race and religion in the United States. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples of racialized religion, the essays in this volume consider the problem of race both in Christian congregations and in American society as a whole. Belying the notion that a post-racial America has arrived, congregations in the US are showing an unprecedented degree of interest in overcoming the deep racial divisions that exist within American Protestantism. In one recent poll, for instance, nearly 70 percent of church leaders expressed a strong desire for their congregations to become racially and culturally diverse. To date, reality has eluded this professed desire as fewer than 10 percent of American Protestant churches have actually achieved multiracial status.
Employing innovative research from sociology, history, philosophy, and religious studies, the contributors to this volume use Michael Emerson and Christian Smith's groundbreaking study Divided by Faith (Oxford, 2000) as their starting point to acknowledge important historical, sociological, and theological causations for racial divisions in Christian communities. Collectively, however, these scholars also offer constructive steps that Christians of all races might take to overcome the color line and usher in a new era of cross-racial engagement.
Table of Contents
Foreword, Michael O. Emerson
Introduction, Phillip Luke Sinitiere and J. Russell Hawkins
Section 1: Looking Back--Failures and Successes in Erasing the Color Line
Chapter 1: Miles S. Mullin, II, Neoevangelicalism and the Problem of Race in Postwar America
Chapter 2: Karen Joy Johnson, Healing the Mystical Body: Catholic Attempts to Overcome the Radical Divide in Chicago, 1930-1948
Chapter 3: Brantley Gasaway, "Glimmers of Hope": Progressive Evangelicals and Racism, 1965-2000
Chapter 4: Tobin Miller Shearer, "Buttcheek to Buttcheek in the Pew": Interracial Relationalism in a Mennonite Congregation, 1957-2010
Chapter 5: Ryon Cobb, Still Divided by Faith?: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, 1977-2010
Section 2: Looking Forward--Possibilities for Overcoming the Color Line
Chapter 6: Mark T. Mulder, Worshipping to Stay the Same: Avoiding the Local to Maintain Solidarity
Chapter 7: Edward J. Blum, Beyond Body Counts: Sex, Individualism, and the Segregated Shape of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism
Chapter 8: Jerry Z. Park, Color-Conscious Structure-Blind Assimilation: How Asian American Christians Can Unintentionally Maintain the Racial Divide
Chapter 9: Erica Ryu Wong, Knotted Together: Identity and Community in a Multiracial Church
Chapter 10: Korie L. Edwards, Much Ado About Nothing?: Rethinking the Efficacy of Multiracial Churches for Racial Reconciliation
Theological Afterword: The Call to Blackness in American Christianity, Darryl Scriven
Purchase Christians and the Color Line from Oxford University Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Reviews: Sociology of Religion 75/2 (Summer 2014): 343-344; Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 53/2 (June 2014): 449-451; The Journal of Southern Religion 16 (2014); Religion & Theology 23 (2016): 213-230.
Interview: Religion in American History (October 18, 2013)
Protest and Propaganda: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis and American History, co-
edited with Amy Helene Kirschke (University of Missouri Press, 2014).
In looking back on his editorship of Crisis magazine, W. E. B. Du Bois said, “We
condensed more news about Negroes and their problems in a month than most
colored papers before this had published in a year.” Since its founding by Du Bois
in 1910, Crisis has been the primary published voice of the NAACP. Born in an age
of Jim Crow racism, often strapped for funds, the magazine struggled and
endured, all the while providing a forum for people of color to document their
inherent dignity and proclaim their definitive worth as human beings.
As the magazine’s editor from 1910 until 1934, Du Bois guided the content and the
aim of Crisis with a decisive hand. He ensured that each issue argued for civil
rights, economic justice, and social equality, always framing America’s intractable
color line in an international perspective. Du Bois benefited from a deep pool of
black literary and artistic genius, whether by commissioning the visual creativity
of Harlem Renaissance artists for Crisis covers or by publishing poems and short
stories from New Negro writers. From North to South, from East to West, and
even reaching across the globe, Crisis circulated its ideas and marshaled its impact far and wide.
Building on the solid foundation Du Bois laid, subsequent editors and contributors covered issues vital to communities of color, such as access to resources during the New Deal era, educational opportunities related to the historic Brown decision, the realization of basic civil rights at midcentury, American aid to Africa and Caribbean nations, and the persistent economic inequalities of today’s global era.
Despite its importance, little has been written about the historical and cultural significance of this seminal magazine. By exploring how Crisis responded to critical issues, the essays in Protest and Propaganda provide the first well-rounded, in-depth look at the magazine's role and influence. The authors show how the essays, columns, and visuals published in Crisis changed conversations, perceptions, and even laws in the United States, thereby calling a fractured nation to more fully live up to its democratic creed. They explain how the magazine survived tremendous odds, document how the voices of justice rose above the clamor of injustice, and demonstrate how relevant such literary, journalistic, and artistic postures remain in a twenty-first-century world still in crisis.
Table of Contents
Preface, Gerald Horne
Introduction, Shawn Leigh Alexander
Chapter 1: Robert W. Williams, W. E. B. Du Bois and Positive Propaganda: A Philosophical Prelude to His Editorship of The Crisis
Chapter 2: Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere, W. E. B. Du Bois as Print Propagandist
Chapter 3: Amy Helene Kirschke, Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years
Chapter 4: Barbara McCaskill, "We Return Fighting": The Great War and African American Women's Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920
Chapter 5: Garth E. Pauley, W. E. B. Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage
Chapter 6: Katharine Capshaw Smith, The Crisis Page, The Brownies' Book, and the Fantastic
Chapter 7: Edward J. Blum, God in Crisis: Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance
Chapter 8: Phillip Luke Sinitiere, W. E. B. Du Bois's Prophetic Propaganda: Religion and The Crisis, 1910-1934
Chapter 9: Megan E. Williams, The Crisis Cover Girl: Lena Horne, Walter White, and the NAACP's Representation of African American Femininity
Chapter 10: Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, The Crisis Responds to Public School Desegregation
Epilogue, Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere
Purchase Protest and Propaganda from the University of Missouri Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Reviews: Columbia Journalism Review (May/June 2014); American Historical Review 120/3 (June 2015): 1047-1048; Journal of Southern History LXXXI/4 (November 2015): 1022-1024
edited with Amy Helene Kirschke (University of Missouri Press, 2014).
In looking back on his editorship of Crisis magazine, W. E. B. Du Bois said, “We
condensed more news about Negroes and their problems in a month than most
colored papers before this had published in a year.” Since its founding by Du Bois
in 1910, Crisis has been the primary published voice of the NAACP. Born in an age
of Jim Crow racism, often strapped for funds, the magazine struggled and
endured, all the while providing a forum for people of color to document their
inherent dignity and proclaim their definitive worth as human beings.
As the magazine’s editor from 1910 until 1934, Du Bois guided the content and the
aim of Crisis with a decisive hand. He ensured that each issue argued for civil
rights, economic justice, and social equality, always framing America’s intractable
color line in an international perspective. Du Bois benefited from a deep pool of
black literary and artistic genius, whether by commissioning the visual creativity
of Harlem Renaissance artists for Crisis covers or by publishing poems and short
stories from New Negro writers. From North to South, from East to West, and
even reaching across the globe, Crisis circulated its ideas and marshaled its impact far and wide.
Building on the solid foundation Du Bois laid, subsequent editors and contributors covered issues vital to communities of color, such as access to resources during the New Deal era, educational opportunities related to the historic Brown decision, the realization of basic civil rights at midcentury, American aid to Africa and Caribbean nations, and the persistent economic inequalities of today’s global era.
Despite its importance, little has been written about the historical and cultural significance of this seminal magazine. By exploring how Crisis responded to critical issues, the essays in Protest and Propaganda provide the first well-rounded, in-depth look at the magazine's role and influence. The authors show how the essays, columns, and visuals published in Crisis changed conversations, perceptions, and even laws in the United States, thereby calling a fractured nation to more fully live up to its democratic creed. They explain how the magazine survived tremendous odds, document how the voices of justice rose above the clamor of injustice, and demonstrate how relevant such literary, journalistic, and artistic postures remain in a twenty-first-century world still in crisis.
Table of Contents
Preface, Gerald Horne
Introduction, Shawn Leigh Alexander
Chapter 1: Robert W. Williams, W. E. B. Du Bois and Positive Propaganda: A Philosophical Prelude to His Editorship of The Crisis
Chapter 2: Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere, W. E. B. Du Bois as Print Propagandist
Chapter 3: Amy Helene Kirschke, Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years
Chapter 4: Barbara McCaskill, "We Return Fighting": The Great War and African American Women's Short Fiction in The Crisis, 1917-1920
Chapter 5: Garth E. Pauley, W. E. B. Du Bois and The Crisis of Woman Suffrage
Chapter 6: Katharine Capshaw Smith, The Crisis Page, The Brownies' Book, and the Fantastic
Chapter 7: Edward J. Blum, God in Crisis: Race, Class, and Religion in the Harlem Renaissance
Chapter 8: Phillip Luke Sinitiere, W. E. B. Du Bois's Prophetic Propaganda: Religion and The Crisis, 1910-1934
Chapter 9: Megan E. Williams, The Crisis Cover Girl: Lena Horne, Walter White, and the NAACP's Representation of African American Femininity
Chapter 10: Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, The Crisis Responds to Public School Desegregation
Epilogue, Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere
Purchase Protest and Propaganda from the University of Missouri Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Reviews: Columbia Journalism Review (May/June 2014); American Historical Review 120/3 (June 2015): 1047-1048; Journal of Southern History LXXXI/4 (November 2015): 1022-1024
Salvation with a Smile: Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church, and American Christianity (New York University Press, 2015).
Joel Osteen, the smiling preacher, has quickly emerged as one of the most recognizable Protestant leaders in the country. His megachurch, the Houston based Lakewood Church, hosts an average of over 40,000 worshipers each week. Osteen is the best-selling author of numerous books, and his sermons and inspirational talks appear regularly on mainstream cable and satellite radio. How did Joel Osteen become Joel Osteen? How did Lakewood become the largest megachurch in the
U. S.?
Salvation with a Smile, the first scholarly book devoted to Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen, offers a critical history of the congregation by linking its origins to post-World War II neopentecostalism, and connecting it to the exceptionally popular prosperity gospel movement and the enduring attraction of televangelism. In this richly documented book, historian Phillip Luke Sinitiere carefully excavates the life and times of Lakewood’s founder, John Osteen, to explain how his son Joel expanded his legacy and fashioned the congregation into America’s largest megachurch. As a popular preacher, Joel Osteen’s ministry has been a source of existential strength for many, but also the routine target of religious critics who vociferously contend that his teachings are theologically suspect and spiritually shallow. Sinitiere’s keen analysis shows how Osteen’s rebuttals have expressed a piety of resistance that demonstrates evangelicalism’s fractured, but persistent presence. Salvation with a Smile situates Lakewood Church in the context of American religious history and illuminates how Osteen has parlayed an understanding of American religious and political culture into vast popularity and success.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: John Osteen's Pentecost: The Origins of Lakewood Church
Chapter 2: John Osteen's Prosperity Gospel: Faith and Divine Healing at the Oasis of Love
Chapter 3: Joel Osteen's Prosperity Gospel, Part I: "We Believe in New Beginnings"
Chapter 4: Joel Osteen's Prosperity Gospel, Part II: The Mind, Mouth, and Body Becoming Better
Chapter 5: Joel Osteen's Tel-e-vangelism: The Message and Its Media
Chapter 6: Lakewood's Charismatic Core: Healing Hurts, Extending Hope
Chapter 7: The Redemptive Self: Finding and Forging Faith at Lakewood Church
Chapter 8: Joel Osteen's Piety of Resistance: New Calvinism and Evangelicalism's Crisis of Authority
Conclusion
Appendix A: Joel Osteen, "What the Resurrection Means to Us as Believers" (1999)
Appendix B: Joel Osteen, "Vision Sunday" (1999)
Purchase Salvation with a Smile from NYU Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Reviews: Publishers Weekly (Starred review; September 2015); Library Journal (Starred review; November 2015); Journal of Southern Religion 18 (2016); Choice (June 2016); Pneuma 38/3 (2016): 361-363; Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84/4 (2016): 1172-1175; Religious Studies Review 42/3 (September 2016): 216-217; The Christian Librarian 59/2 (2016): 305; Sociology of Religion 77/4 (2016): 446-447; Review of Religion Research 59 (2017): 101-103; Journal of American History 103/4 (March 2017): 1116; American Historical Review 122/2 (April 2017): 546; Journal of Contemporary Religion 32/2 (May 2017): 351-352; Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 8/1 (2017): 177-178
Interviews: Ken Chitwood (November 19, 2015); Religion in American History (January 28, 2016); Research on Religion (January 31, 2016); Religion in American History (April 18, 2016); Religion in American History (June 18, 2016); The Author’s Corner (November 14, 2016); Sowing the Seed Podcast (2017)
Awards: Best Book, Core Nonfiction (2015), Library Journal; finalist, Philip Schaff Prize, American Society of Church History (2017)
Joel Osteen, the smiling preacher, has quickly emerged as one of the most recognizable Protestant leaders in the country. His megachurch, the Houston based Lakewood Church, hosts an average of over 40,000 worshipers each week. Osteen is the best-selling author of numerous books, and his sermons and inspirational talks appear regularly on mainstream cable and satellite radio. How did Joel Osteen become Joel Osteen? How did Lakewood become the largest megachurch in the
U. S.?
Salvation with a Smile, the first scholarly book devoted to Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen, offers a critical history of the congregation by linking its origins to post-World War II neopentecostalism, and connecting it to the exceptionally popular prosperity gospel movement and the enduring attraction of televangelism. In this richly documented book, historian Phillip Luke Sinitiere carefully excavates the life and times of Lakewood’s founder, John Osteen, to explain how his son Joel expanded his legacy and fashioned the congregation into America’s largest megachurch. As a popular preacher, Joel Osteen’s ministry has been a source of existential strength for many, but also the routine target of religious critics who vociferously contend that his teachings are theologically suspect and spiritually shallow. Sinitiere’s keen analysis shows how Osteen’s rebuttals have expressed a piety of resistance that demonstrates evangelicalism’s fractured, but persistent presence. Salvation with a Smile situates Lakewood Church in the context of American religious history and illuminates how Osteen has parlayed an understanding of American religious and political culture into vast popularity and success.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: John Osteen's Pentecost: The Origins of Lakewood Church
Chapter 2: John Osteen's Prosperity Gospel: Faith and Divine Healing at the Oasis of Love
Chapter 3: Joel Osteen's Prosperity Gospel, Part I: "We Believe in New Beginnings"
Chapter 4: Joel Osteen's Prosperity Gospel, Part II: The Mind, Mouth, and Body Becoming Better
Chapter 5: Joel Osteen's Tel-e-vangelism: The Message and Its Media
Chapter 6: Lakewood's Charismatic Core: Healing Hurts, Extending Hope
Chapter 7: The Redemptive Self: Finding and Forging Faith at Lakewood Church
Chapter 8: Joel Osteen's Piety of Resistance: New Calvinism and Evangelicalism's Crisis of Authority
Conclusion
Appendix A: Joel Osteen, "What the Resurrection Means to Us as Believers" (1999)
Appendix B: Joel Osteen, "Vision Sunday" (1999)
Purchase Salvation with a Smile from NYU Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Reviews: Publishers Weekly (Starred review; September 2015); Library Journal (Starred review; November 2015); Journal of Southern Religion 18 (2016); Choice (June 2016); Pneuma 38/3 (2016): 361-363; Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84/4 (2016): 1172-1175; Religious Studies Review 42/3 (September 2016): 216-217; The Christian Librarian 59/2 (2016): 305; Sociology of Religion 77/4 (2016): 446-447; Review of Religion Research 59 (2017): 101-103; Journal of American History 103/4 (March 2017): 1116; American Historical Review 122/2 (April 2017): 546; Journal of Contemporary Religion 32/2 (May 2017): 351-352; Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 8/1 (2017): 177-178
Interviews: Ken Chitwood (November 19, 2015); Religion in American History (January 28, 2016); Research on Religion (January 31, 2016); Religion in American History (April 18, 2016); Religion in American History (June 18, 2016); The Author’s Corner (November 14, 2016); Sowing the Seed Podcast (2017)
Awards: Best Book, Core Nonfiction (2015), Library Journal; finalist, Philip Schaff Prize, American Society of Church History (2017)
Citizen of the World: The Late Career and Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois, Editor
(Northwestern University Press, 2019). Critical Insurgencies Series.
In his 1952 book In Battle for Peace, published when W. E. B. Du Bois was eighty-
three years old, the brilliant black scholar announced that he was a "citizen of the world." Citizen of the World chronicles selected chapters of Du Bois's final three decades between the 1930s and 1960s. It maps his extraordinarily active and productive latter years to social, cultural, and political transformations across the globe.
From his birth in 1868 until his death in 1963, Du Bois sought the liberation of
black people in the United States and across the world through intellectual and
political labor. His tireless efforts documented and demonstrated connections
between freedom for African-descended people abroad and black freedom at
home.
In concert with growing scholarship on his twilight years, the essays in this
volume assert the fundamental importance of considering Du Bois's later
decades not as a life in decline that descended into blind ideological allegiance to socialism and communism but as the life of a productive, generative intellectual who responded rationally, imaginatively, and radically to massive mid-century changes around the world, and who remained committed to freedom's realization until his final hour.
Table of Contents
Introduction: 'To Know and Think and Tell the Truth as I See It,' Phillip Luke Sinitiere
Part 1: A Global History of Race and Revolution
Chapter 1: Yuichiro Onishi and Toru Shinoda, The Paradigm of Refusal: W. E. B. Du Bois's Transpacific Political Imagination of the 1930s
Chapter 2: Derek Catsam, W. E. B. Du Bois, South Africa, and Phylon's "A Chronicle of Race Relations," 1940-1944
Chapter 3: Bill V. Mullen, Russia and America: An Interpretation of the Late W. E. B. Du Bois and the Case for World Revolution
Chapter 4: Erik S. McDuffie, A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of its First Century: The Black Radical Vision of The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois
Part 2: Gender and the Politics of Freedom
Chapter 5: Lauren Louise Anderson, Du Bois in Drag: Prevailing Women, Flailing Men, and the "Anne Du Bignon" Pseudonym
Chapter 6: Alys Eve Weinbaum, The Gender of the General Strike: W. E. B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction and Black Feminism's Philosophy of History
Chapter 7: Bettina Aptheker, W. E. B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois: Personal Memories, Political Reflections
Part 3: The Politics of Memory and Meaning
Chapter 8: David Levering Lewis, Exile in Brooklyn: W. E. B. Du Bois's Final Decade
Chapter 9: Gary Murrell, Herbert Aptheker's Struggle to Publish W. E. B. Du Bois
Chapter 10: Phillip Luke Sinitiere, 'A Legacy of Scholarship and Struggle': W. E. B. Du Bois's Life after Death
Chapter 11: Robert W. Williams, The Digital Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois in the Internet Age
Afterword, Gerald Horne
Purchase Citizen of the World from Northwestern University Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Reviews: Journal of African American History 105/4 (Fall 2020): 715-717; Journal of American History 108/2 (September 2021): 399-400
(Northwestern University Press, 2019). Critical Insurgencies Series.
In his 1952 book In Battle for Peace, published when W. E. B. Du Bois was eighty-
three years old, the brilliant black scholar announced that he was a "citizen of the world." Citizen of the World chronicles selected chapters of Du Bois's final three decades between the 1930s and 1960s. It maps his extraordinarily active and productive latter years to social, cultural, and political transformations across the globe.
From his birth in 1868 until his death in 1963, Du Bois sought the liberation of
black people in the United States and across the world through intellectual and
political labor. His tireless efforts documented and demonstrated connections
between freedom for African-descended people abroad and black freedom at
home.
In concert with growing scholarship on his twilight years, the essays in this
volume assert the fundamental importance of considering Du Bois's later
decades not as a life in decline that descended into blind ideological allegiance to socialism and communism but as the life of a productive, generative intellectual who responded rationally, imaginatively, and radically to massive mid-century changes around the world, and who remained committed to freedom's realization until his final hour.
Table of Contents
Introduction: 'To Know and Think and Tell the Truth as I See It,' Phillip Luke Sinitiere
Part 1: A Global History of Race and Revolution
Chapter 1: Yuichiro Onishi and Toru Shinoda, The Paradigm of Refusal: W. E. B. Du Bois's Transpacific Political Imagination of the 1930s
Chapter 2: Derek Catsam, W. E. B. Du Bois, South Africa, and Phylon's "A Chronicle of Race Relations," 1940-1944
Chapter 3: Bill V. Mullen, Russia and America: An Interpretation of the Late W. E. B. Du Bois and the Case for World Revolution
Chapter 4: Erik S. McDuffie, A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of its First Century: The Black Radical Vision of The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois
Part 2: Gender and the Politics of Freedom
Chapter 5: Lauren Louise Anderson, Du Bois in Drag: Prevailing Women, Flailing Men, and the "Anne Du Bignon" Pseudonym
Chapter 6: Alys Eve Weinbaum, The Gender of the General Strike: W. E. B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction and Black Feminism's Philosophy of History
Chapter 7: Bettina Aptheker, W. E. B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois: Personal Memories, Political Reflections
Part 3: The Politics of Memory and Meaning
Chapter 8: David Levering Lewis, Exile in Brooklyn: W. E. B. Du Bois's Final Decade
Chapter 9: Gary Murrell, Herbert Aptheker's Struggle to Publish W. E. B. Du Bois
Chapter 10: Phillip Luke Sinitiere, 'A Legacy of Scholarship and Struggle': W. E. B. Du Bois's Life after Death
Chapter 11: Robert W. Williams, The Digital Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois in the Internet Age
Afterword, Gerald Horne
Purchase Citizen of the World from Northwestern University Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Reviews: Journal of African American History 105/4 (Fall 2020): 715-717; Journal of American History 108/2 (September 2021): 399-400
Race, Religion, and Black Lives Matter: Essays on a Moment and a Movement, co-edited with Christopher Cameron (Vanderbilt University Press, 2021), Black Lives and Liberation Series.
Black Lives Matter, like its predecessor movements, embodies flesh and blood through local organizing, national and global protests, hunger strikes, and numerous acts of civil disobedience. Chants like “All night! All day! We’re gonna fight for Freddie Gray!” and “No justice, no fear! Sandra Bland is marching here!” give voice simultaneously to the rage, truth, hope, and insurgency that sustain BLM. While BLM has generously welcomed a broad group of individuals whom religious institutions have historically resisted or rejected, contrary to general perceptions, religion neither has been absent nor excluded from the movement’s activities.
This volume has a simple, but far-reaching argument: religion is an important thread in BLM. To advance this claim, Race, Religion, and Black Lives Matter examines religion’s place in the movement through the lenses of history, politics, and culture. While this collection is not exhaustive or comprehensive in its coverage of religion and BLM, it selectively anthologizes unique aspects of Black religious history, thought, and culture in relation to political struggle in the contemporary era. The chapters aim to document historical change in light of current trends and current events. The contributors analyze religion and BLM in a current historical moment fraught with aggressive, fascist, authoritarian tendencies and one shaped by profound ingenuity, creativity, and insightful perspectives on Black history and culture.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Christopher Cameron and Phillip Luke Sinitiere
Part 1: Historical Foundations
Chapter 1: Matthew J. Cressler, A Secular Civil Rights Movement?: How Black Power and Black Catholics Help Us Rethink the Religion in Black Lives Matter
Chapter 2: Kerry Pimblott, Beyond De-Christianization: Rethinking the Religious Landscapes and Legacies of Black Power in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter
Chapter 3: Richard Kent Evans, MOVE, Mourning, and Memory
Chapter 4: Carol Wayne White, Black Lives Matter and the New Materialism: Past Truths, Present Struggles, and Future Promises
Chapter 5: Christopher Cameron, The Faith of the Future: Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism
Part 2: Contemporary Connections
Chapter 6: Joseph Winters, Death, Spirituality, and the Matter of Blackness
Chapter 7: Marjorie Corbman, "A Song That Speaks the Language of the Times": Muslim and Christian Homiletic Responses to the Black Lives Matter Movement
Chapter 8: Iman AbdoulKarim, "Islam Is Black Lives Matter": The Role of Gender and Religion in Muslim Women's BLM Activism
Chapter 9: Alex Stucky, The Need for a Bulletproof Black Man: Luke Cage and the Negotiation of Race, Gender, and Religion in Black Communities
Chapter 10: Alexandra Hartmann, The Sounds of Hope: Black Humanism, Deep Democracy, and Black Lives Matter
Chapter 11: Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Black Lives Matter and American Evangelicalism: Conflict and Consonance in History and Culture
Purchase Race, Religion, and Black Lives Matter from Vanderbilt University Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Black Lives Matter, like its predecessor movements, embodies flesh and blood through local organizing, national and global protests, hunger strikes, and numerous acts of civil disobedience. Chants like “All night! All day! We’re gonna fight for Freddie Gray!” and “No justice, no fear! Sandra Bland is marching here!” give voice simultaneously to the rage, truth, hope, and insurgency that sustain BLM. While BLM has generously welcomed a broad group of individuals whom religious institutions have historically resisted or rejected, contrary to general perceptions, religion neither has been absent nor excluded from the movement’s activities.
This volume has a simple, but far-reaching argument: religion is an important thread in BLM. To advance this claim, Race, Religion, and Black Lives Matter examines religion’s place in the movement through the lenses of history, politics, and culture. While this collection is not exhaustive or comprehensive in its coverage of religion and BLM, it selectively anthologizes unique aspects of Black religious history, thought, and culture in relation to political struggle in the contemporary era. The chapters aim to document historical change in light of current trends and current events. The contributors analyze religion and BLM in a current historical moment fraught with aggressive, fascist, authoritarian tendencies and one shaped by profound ingenuity, creativity, and insightful perspectives on Black history and culture.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Christopher Cameron and Phillip Luke Sinitiere
Part 1: Historical Foundations
Chapter 1: Matthew J. Cressler, A Secular Civil Rights Movement?: How Black Power and Black Catholics Help Us Rethink the Religion in Black Lives Matter
Chapter 2: Kerry Pimblott, Beyond De-Christianization: Rethinking the Religious Landscapes and Legacies of Black Power in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter
Chapter 3: Richard Kent Evans, MOVE, Mourning, and Memory
Chapter 4: Carol Wayne White, Black Lives Matter and the New Materialism: Past Truths, Present Struggles, and Future Promises
Chapter 5: Christopher Cameron, The Faith of the Future: Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism
Part 2: Contemporary Connections
Chapter 6: Joseph Winters, Death, Spirituality, and the Matter of Blackness
Chapter 7: Marjorie Corbman, "A Song That Speaks the Language of the Times": Muslim and Christian Homiletic Responses to the Black Lives Matter Movement
Chapter 8: Iman AbdoulKarim, "Islam Is Black Lives Matter": The Role of Gender and Religion in Muslim Women's BLM Activism
Chapter 9: Alex Stucky, The Need for a Bulletproof Black Man: Luke Cage and the Negotiation of Race, Gender, and Religion in Black Communities
Chapter 10: Alexandra Hartmann, The Sounds of Hope: Black Humanism, Deep Democracy, and Black Lives Matter
Chapter 11: Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Black Lives Matter and American Evangelicalism: Conflict and Consonance in History and Culture
Purchase Race, Religion, and Black Lives Matter from Vanderbilt University Press, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
Forging Freedom in W.E.B. Du Bois's Twilight Years: No Deed but Memory, Editor (University Press of Mississippi, 2023), Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies
Although the career of W. E. B. Du Bois was remarkable in its entirety, a large majority of scholarship focuses on the first five or six decades. Overlooked and understudied, the closing three decades of Du Bois’s career reflect a generative period of his life in terms of teaching, travel, activism, and publications. Forging Freedom in W. E. B. Du Bois's Twilight Years: No Deed but Memory proposes to narrate the political, social, and cultural significance of Du Bois’s career during the controversial closing three decades of his life.
Du Bois’s twilight years were tremendously controversial: his persistent criticism of the collusion between capitalism and racism and his choice to join the Communist Party in late 1961 raised the ire of many. At the time, Du Bois’s strident advocacy of socialism and turn to communism during the Cold War oriented most scholars away from delving into his late career. While only a few scholars have engaged the productivity of Du Bois’s later years, the fact is that an anticommunist, antiradical animus has followed Du Bois in the half century since his death. As a result, Du Bois scholarship remains impoverished to the extent that academics neglect his later years.
The essays in Forging Freedom in W. E. B. Du Bois's Twilight Years detail selected aspects of Du Bois’s later decades and their particular connection to American social, political, and cultural history between the 1930s and the 1960s. While international concerns and a global perspective also fundamentally defined Du Bois’s latter years, chronicling his final decades in a US context presents fresh insight into his twilight years. Du Bois’s commitment to freedom’s flourishing during this period animated the Black freedom struggle’s war against white supremacy. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the durability of Du Bois’s intellectual achievements remains relevant to the twenty-first century.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Du Bois Has Left Us, But He Has Not Died, Phillip Luke Sinitiere
Part I: Politics and Protest
Chapter 1: Lisa J. McLeod, The Rational and the Irrational: W.E.B. Du Bois's Excavation of Whiteness, 1935-1960
Chapter 2: Carlton Dwayne Floyd and Thomas Ehrlich Reifer, Politics, Poetry, and Prose: W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, and the Origins of Our Times
Chapter 3: Werner Lange, In Pursuit of Peace Where Freedom Chokes: W.E.B. Du Bois Confronts the Cold War
Chapter 4: Reiland Rabaka, I Am Certainly Not a Conservative: W.E.B. Du Bois, Democratic Socialism, and Black Marxism
Part II: Identity and Culture
Chapter 5: Andre E. Johnson, Democracy in America Is Impossible: The Pessimistic Prophecy of W.E.B. Du Bois in "Why I Won't Vote"
Chapter 6: Murali Balaji, The Dharma of Socialism: How Hindu Thought Influenced W.E.B. Du Bois's Vision for Afro-Asian Solidarity
Chapter 7: Christopher Cameron, W.E.B. Du Bois and African American Humanism
Chapter 8: Blessed Are the Peacemakers, for They Shall Be Called Communists: W.E.B. Du Bois and American Religious Culture, 1935-1963
Part III: Literature and Legacy
Chapter 9: Charisse Burden-Stelly, The Mutual Comradeship of W.E.B. Du Bois and Radical Black Women, 1935-1963
Chapter 10: Robert Greene II, Martin Luther King, Jr and the Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois
Chapter 11: Jodi Melamed and Tyler Monson, W.E.B. Du Bois's UnAmerican End, Reconsidered
Chapter 12: Camesha Scruggs, Geography of Freedom: Partnership in Preservation and Public History at W.E.B. Du Bois's Boyhood Homesite
Afterword, Eric Porter
Purchase Forging Freedom in W.E.B. Du Bois's Twilight Years from the University Press of Mississippi, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
© Phillip Luke Sinitiere, 2023
Although the career of W. E. B. Du Bois was remarkable in its entirety, a large majority of scholarship focuses on the first five or six decades. Overlooked and understudied, the closing three decades of Du Bois’s career reflect a generative period of his life in terms of teaching, travel, activism, and publications. Forging Freedom in W. E. B. Du Bois's Twilight Years: No Deed but Memory proposes to narrate the political, social, and cultural significance of Du Bois’s career during the controversial closing three decades of his life.
Du Bois’s twilight years were tremendously controversial: his persistent criticism of the collusion between capitalism and racism and his choice to join the Communist Party in late 1961 raised the ire of many. At the time, Du Bois’s strident advocacy of socialism and turn to communism during the Cold War oriented most scholars away from delving into his late career. While only a few scholars have engaged the productivity of Du Bois’s later years, the fact is that an anticommunist, antiradical animus has followed Du Bois in the half century since his death. As a result, Du Bois scholarship remains impoverished to the extent that academics neglect his later years.
The essays in Forging Freedom in W. E. B. Du Bois's Twilight Years detail selected aspects of Du Bois’s later decades and their particular connection to American social, political, and cultural history between the 1930s and the 1960s. While international concerns and a global perspective also fundamentally defined Du Bois’s latter years, chronicling his final decades in a US context presents fresh insight into his twilight years. Du Bois’s commitment to freedom’s flourishing during this period animated the Black freedom struggle’s war against white supremacy. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the durability of Du Bois’s intellectual achievements remains relevant to the twenty-first century.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Du Bois Has Left Us, But He Has Not Died, Phillip Luke Sinitiere
Part I: Politics and Protest
Chapter 1: Lisa J. McLeod, The Rational and the Irrational: W.E.B. Du Bois's Excavation of Whiteness, 1935-1960
Chapter 2: Carlton Dwayne Floyd and Thomas Ehrlich Reifer, Politics, Poetry, and Prose: W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, and the Origins of Our Times
Chapter 3: Werner Lange, In Pursuit of Peace Where Freedom Chokes: W.E.B. Du Bois Confronts the Cold War
Chapter 4: Reiland Rabaka, I Am Certainly Not a Conservative: W.E.B. Du Bois, Democratic Socialism, and Black Marxism
Part II: Identity and Culture
Chapter 5: Andre E. Johnson, Democracy in America Is Impossible: The Pessimistic Prophecy of W.E.B. Du Bois in "Why I Won't Vote"
Chapter 6: Murali Balaji, The Dharma of Socialism: How Hindu Thought Influenced W.E.B. Du Bois's Vision for Afro-Asian Solidarity
Chapter 7: Christopher Cameron, W.E.B. Du Bois and African American Humanism
Chapter 8: Blessed Are the Peacemakers, for They Shall Be Called Communists: W.E.B. Du Bois and American Religious Culture, 1935-1963
Part III: Literature and Legacy
Chapter 9: Charisse Burden-Stelly, The Mutual Comradeship of W.E.B. Du Bois and Radical Black Women, 1935-1963
Chapter 10: Robert Greene II, Martin Luther King, Jr and the Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois
Chapter 11: Jodi Melamed and Tyler Monson, W.E.B. Du Bois's UnAmerican End, Reconsidered
Chapter 12: Camesha Scruggs, Geography of Freedom: Partnership in Preservation and Public History at W.E.B. Du Bois's Boyhood Homesite
Afterword, Eric Porter
Purchase Forging Freedom in W.E.B. Du Bois's Twilight Years from the University Press of Mississippi, Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
© Phillip Luke Sinitiere, 2023
