Educational resources for:
Religion and Spiritual Life
Thematic Overview
Religious communities provided a powerful element of continuity and stability in the African-American experience. These ABJ shows examine the ongoing faith of African-American denominations at the same time that Islam became a controversial and increasingly attractive alternative for black youth.
Featured Show Segments
Comprehension Questions
Questions:
How do members of Witness respond to suggestions that their style of singing gospel music might be too non-traditional?
Questions:
What does Keith Staten hope will be the impact of his music?
Questions:
What does Baba Ishangi say about family life?
Questions:
Why does Katherine Blackwell say that she presents folk tales to children?
Questions:
How does Louis Farrakhan explain the self-destructiveness he sees in African American communities?
Questions:
What does Minister Rasul Muhammad say is the purpose of the halfway houses that the Nation of Islam is setting up in Detroit?
Questions:
Why does Farrakhan say his words have been distorted by the media?
Thematic questions
What connections do you see between the presentations on the Afrocentric Education program and the Holiday Show?
How do these featured programs reflect concerns with spiritual values?
What do these programs tell you about the range of spiritual expression within the African American community?
Websites
Speak to My Heart: Communities of Faith and Contemporary African American Life
http://anacostia.si.edu/exhibits/online_exhibitions/Speak_to_My_Heart/start.htm
Virtual exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture. It covers the “faith and spiritual traditions in the African American community.” While the exhibit’s emphasis is on Christianity, it does include Islam, Black Hebrew and African based religions.
The Church in the Southern Black Community
http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/index.html
A Documenting the American South digital collection. It examines the way in which “Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life.” The collection contains autobiographies, biographies, sermons, church histories and other materials.
Malcolm X Project at Columbia University
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/mxp/
A multimedia web-based version of The Autobiography of Malcolm X coupled with related biographical research. The extremely comprehensive section, “The Life of Malcolm X” provides recommended readings as well as video interviews with scholars.
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/index_flash.html
The online partner to the PBS weekly program of the same name. The keyword search allows for research into past programs on numerous topics, including those of African and African American religion and related interests.
FBI Record of Elijah Muhammad
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/muhammad.htm
A .pdf document of the FBI’s 1973 investigative report on Elijah Muhammad, former leader of the Nation of Islam. The FBI’s FOIA Electronic Reading Room index contains information on numerous subjects and individuals of interest.
This Far By Faith
http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/
The companion site to the PBS documentary of African-American spiritual journeys.
Related Films
This Far By Faith: Inheritors of the Faith
VHS/DVD. 360 Minutes.
San Francisco, California: Independent Television Service, 2003.
A documentary series exploring 300 years of the African-American religious experience, beginning with the arrival of African slaves into the twenty-first century.
Let the Church Say Amen
DVD. 87 minutes.
Directed by David Petersen. New York: Film Movement, 2004.
A documentary following the lives of four parishioners of the World Missions for Christ store-front church in Washington, D.C. Examines how these individuals look to the church for both guidance as well as a source of strength.
The Spirituals
DVD. 27 minutes.
Directed by Ari Palos. San Francisco, California: Independent Television Service, 2007.
An examination of the musical artform of the American Spiritual from its origins as slave folk song to its influence the world over. Features the American Spiritual Ensemble.
Books
Andrews, William L. Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women’s Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
A collection of spiritual autobiographies of Christian Gospel female preachers from 1836 to 1879. The authors discuss their trying childhoods, religious conversion, and dedication to evangelization regardless of color. These works are significant readings of feminist and racial religious radicalism.
Billingsley, Andrew. Mighty Like A River: The Black Church and Social Reform. New York:Oxford University Press, 1999.
An examination of black churches’ influence in the African American community from the antebellum period and its fight to end slavery to the modern church’s pursuit of social and economic justice.
Chireau, Yvonne and Nathaniel Deutsch. Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters With Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
A collection of essays by journalists and scholars broken into three parts: African American Jews and Israelites; African American Muslims and Judaism; and, African American Christianity and Judaism.
Dannin, Robert. Black Pilgrimage to Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
A “comprehensive ethnographic study of African-American Muslims.” This work demonstrates the complexity and multiplicity of African-American Muslims in the United States.
Williams, Juan. This Far By Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience. New York: W. Morrow, 2003.
The companion book to the six-part documentary series exploring 300 years of the African-American religious experience, beginning with the arrival of African slaves into the twenty-first century.
