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Historians of religion and Reconstruction, particularly those who have centered African Americans in the post-emancipation South, have sharpened and enriched interpretations of the Reconstruction period by demonstrating churches centrality to the larger struggles of the period. Since these scholars have focused largely on religious institutions in the aftermath of the end of slavery, they have necessarily examined the issues of racism, interracial interactions, and racial identity formation. Scholarship on religion and race after emancipation has centered religious institutions in ways that have allowed the important theme of racial power to come to the forefront. [...]of Days (2016), Matthew Harper explores how Black Protestant Christians in North Carolina used their eschatological thoughts about the end times to interpret their political landscape and opportunities after emancipation.4 While the book focuses primarily on ideas, its key intervention lies in carefully examining biblical interpretation as a source of political inspiration, thereby bringing greater specificity to how Black religion influenced post-emancipation politics. [...]given that these organizations and opportunities long predated Reconstruction, the skills and political participation practices freedpeople demonstrated were longstanding. [...]these more recent examinations of religious spaces as political grounds build on earlier works that centered denominational missionary organizations' efforts to help freedpeople after emancipation.

  [Mary Johnson]'s denomination, though, the Church of God in Christ, takes the role to the next level, said [Anthea D. Butler], who has a book coming out on the subject. \"This is power without licensure.\" \"They have to live a holy, clean life,\" said Elzierine Hardy, who lives in Owensboro but attends the Power House Church of God in Christ in Greenville. \"A church mother is one who is prayerful, one who is a natural mother,\" said Debra Little, who attends the Church of God in Christ in Owensboro but sees the church mother concept in other congregations she visits to sing or speak. \"She treats her congregation like her children, and she nurtures them.\"

The Church of God in Christ (COGIC), a major African American denomination, emerged in the 1890s from Holiness and Pentecostal roots. The revered founder Charles Mason authorized a women's department in 1911, and Butler (Univ. of Rochester) traces the leadership of the first two overseers, Elizabeth Robinson and Lillian Coffey, to 1964.