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"Judith Weisenfeld"
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New World A-Coming
Demonstrates that the efforts to contest conventional racial categorization contributed to broader discussions in black America that still resonate today.
When Joseph Nathaniel Beckles registered for the draft in the 1942, he rejected the racial categories presented to him and persuaded the registrar to cross out the check mark she had placed next to Negro and substitute \"Ethiopian Hebrew.\" \"God did not make us Negroes,\" declared religious leaders in black communities of the early twentieth-century urban North. They insisted that so-called Negroes are, in reality, Ethiopian Hebrews, Asiatic Muslims, or raceless children of God. Rejecting conventional American racial classification, many black southern migrants and immigrants from the Caribbean embraced these alternative visions of black history, racial identity, and collective future, thereby reshaping the black religious and racial landscape.
Focusing on the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement, and a number of congregations of Ethiopian Hebrews, Judith Weisenfeld argues that the appeal of these groups lay not only in the new religious opportunities membership provided, but also in the novel ways they formulated a religio-racial identity. Arguing that members of these groups understood their religious and racial identities as divinely-ordained and inseparable, the book examines how this sense of self shaped their conceptions of their bodies, families, religious and social communities, space and place, and political sensibilities. Weisenfeld draws on extensive archival research and incorporates a rich array of sources to highlight the experiences of average members. The book demonstrates that the efforts by members of these movements to contest conventional racial categorization contributed to broader discussions in black America about the nature of racial identity and the collective future of black people that still resonate today.
eBook
Invisible Women
In this essay I consider major themes in the scholarly treatment of African American women's religious history and explore how particular emphases in the broader field of African American religious history have marginalized women's experiences and contributions. I argue that mobilizing African American women's religious history and placing it at the center of our historical inquiry allows us to interrogate themes and foci that structure the accepted narrative of African American religious history. Moving beyond an approach that simply adds women to that accepted story, I suggest ways in which examining African American women's religious experiences might open up rich areas for research and new ways of conceiving the very shape of the field.
Journal Article
Hollywood Be Thy Name
From the earliest years of sound film in America, Hollywood studios and independent producers of \"race films\" for black audiences created stories featuring African American religious practices. In the first book to examine how the movies constructed images of African American religion, Judith Weisenfeld explores these cinematic representations and how they reflected and contributed to complicated discourses about race, the social and moral requirements of American citizenship, and the very nature of American identity. Drawing on such textual sources as studio production files, censorship records, and discussions and debates about religion and film in the black press, as well as providing close readings of films, this richly illustrated and meticulously researched book brings religious studies and film history together in innovative ways.
eBook
“A Rare Human Document”: LoBagola's African American Humbug Religion
In this essay I present the case of Baltimore native Joseph Howard Lee, whose self-presentation in the 1920s and 1930s as the West African Jew Bata Kindai Amgoza ibn LoBagola, captured the attention of white American consumers of his lectures and writings that purported to offer insight into African religions, culture, and history. I propose that viewing his career not only as one of imposture, but also as involving religious humbug, brings his performative critique of white Christian America to the fore. Locating such religious humbug within the bounds of the study of religion in America challenges scholars to engage African American religious history in more complex ways than the conventional deployment of Black religion as moral prod to the conscience of white America.
Journal Article
Hollywood Be Thy Name
From the earliest years of sound film in America, Hollywood studios and independent producers of \"race films\" for black audiences created stories featuring African American religious practices. In the first book to examine how the movies constructed images of African American religion, Judith Weisenfeld explores these cinematic representations and how they reflected and contributed to complicated discourses about race, the social and moral requirements of American citizenship, and the very nature of American identity. Drawing on such textual sources as studio production files, censorship records, and discussions and debates about religion and film in the black press, as well as providing close readings of films, this richly illustrated and meticulously researched book brings religious studies and film history together in innovative ways.
eBook
\A RARE HUMAN DOCUMENT\: LOBAGOLA'S AFRICAN AMERICAN HUMBUG RELIGION 1
In this essay I present the case of Baltimore native Joseph Howard Lee, whose self-presentation in the 1920s and 1930s as the West African Jew Bata Kindai Amgoza ibn LoBagola, captured the attention of white American consumers of his lectures and writings that purported to offer insight into African religions, culture, and history. I propose that viewing his career not only as one of imposture, but also as involving religious humbug, brings his performative critique of white Christian America to the fore. Locating such religious humbug within the bounds of the study of religion in America challenges scholars to engage African American religious history in more complex ways than the conventional deployment of Black religion as moral prod to the conscience of white America.
Journal Article
