African American Civil Religion

A testament to the implicit doctrines of Americanism from various African American perspectives, this book combines social theory and ’black theology’ to examine the importance, both present and future, of ’African American civil religion’ and its role in public discourse, African American religious life and civic engagement. Beginning with the failure in Weber’s work on the ’Protestant Ethic’ to take Black Protestants into account, the author examines the engagement - or lack of engagement - with African American civil religion in social scientific research, together with the often exclusionary use of religious symbols, language, and appeals to religiosity in civil society. The book explores the continuance of black patriotism in the face of the exclusion of African Americans from the role of protagonists in the American narrative, alongside the role of African American civil religion both in maintaining a distinct cultural identity and in confronting the decline of the ’sacred’ and the ’moral community’ across American society, through the preservation of the sense that symbols and institutions are deserving of respect. With attention to the various eschatological trajectories in African American civil religion as expressed in literature, the arts and religious life, the author sheds light on the enduring belief in a ’Promised Land’, in spite of the disappointment occasioned by unfulfilled hopes. Addressing a glaring omission in scholarly research on civil religion, this book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, social theory, religion and law and legal theory.