Down by the Riverside
 Larry G. Murphy, Editor
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2000 New York University Press
 ISBN: 081475581X
  Paperback
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Readings in African American Religion.

An introduction to the variety of African American religious thought spanning from the time of slavery up to the present. From Protestant Christianity to Conjure, Orisa & Black Judaism, from Islam, Catholicism & Humanism.

“This...volume offers a vista onto the religious mosaic of African America...provides a thematic overview of the unfolding religious life...with emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. it does not intend to be a religious history, as such, but rather to set forth a representative sampling of major institutional, theological, and social/religious developments in historical sweep.” Page 3.

& that it does, in learned, footnoted & occasionally, anecdotal ways. An absorbing immersion into the roots of African American faith & its everyday practices, how the mixtures were blended, who stirred them.

“A good way to understand a people is to study their religion...” -- C. Eric Lincoln & Lawrence H. Mamiya (Page 1). This sums up this scholarly study of the Thematic, Contextual Prisms for Understanding African American Religions.

Part II: From the Motherland to Another land: The Emergence of African American Religion in the Antebellum United States includes Black Religion: The African Model; “The Rule of Gospel Order”: Religious Life in the Slave Community; Sources of Black Denominationalism; Pre-Twentieth Century Islam; Memoir of Abraham; The Idea of Missions; Black women in Religious Institutions: A Historical Summary from Slavery to the 1960s.

Part III: “Slavery's Chains Done Broke At Las'”: African American Religion in the Aftermath of Slavery includes The Gospel and the Primer; The Black Faith of W. E. B. Du Bois: Sociocultural and Political Dimensions of Black Religion; ;“All Things to All People”: The Functions of the Black Church in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century; The Redemption of Africa and Black Religion.

Part IV: A Shift of Locus and Focus: African American Religion and the Transition into the Twentieth Century which includes “Everyone Is Welcome”: North to the Promised Land; The Grip of the Negro Church; The Development of Gospel song; The Black Roots of Pentecostalism.

Part V: Expanding the Options: Diversification in African American Religious Expression offers The Second Emergence of Islam; The Voodoo Cult among Negro Migrants in Detroit; Father Major Jealous Divine; Black Judaism in the United States; The Historical Development of Black Spiritual Churches; Orisha Worship in the United States; African American Yorubas in Harlem and the Transition to Oyotunji Village; The Other Kind of Doctor: Conjure and Magic in Black American Folk Medicine; African American and Humanism.

Part VI: “Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?”: African American Religion and Social Advocacy -- In Search of the Promised Land; The Black Church and Black Politics: Models of Ministerial Activism; Black Religion and Social Change: Women in Leadership Roles; Black Religious Nationalism and the Politics of Transcendence; The Dialectical Model of the Black Church.

Part VII: Profiles of the Contemporary African American Church -- Rural, Urban Clergy and Churches; The Black Denominations and the Ordination of Women; The Churches and Broader Developments in Black Religion: Two Congregational Case Studies.

Part VIII: Claiming a Theological Voice: Black and Womanist Theologies in the Twentieth Century -- Black Theology as Liberation Theology; Statement by the National Committee of Black Churchmen; African American Catholics and Black Theology; “Lifting as We Climb”: Womanist Theorizing about Religion and the Family.

Part IX: Looking Back to the Future -- Survival, Elevation, and Liberation in Black Religion; Fighting for Freedom with Church Fans: To Know What Religion Means.

With a Timeline of African American Religious Experience as well as a Filmography of the same.

Larry G. Murphy is Professor of the History of Christianity at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary/Northwestern University. He is also Senior Researcher, Religion in Urban American Project at the University of Illinois, & an editor of The Encyclopedia of African American Religions.
(07/20/03)

Rebecca