The African American Religious Experience in America (The American Religious Experience)

"An excellent resource for high school and college students studying African- American religion, American religions, and American studies." "Presents an.
Table of contents

• The African American Religious Experience in America
• Esotericism in African American Religious Experience
• "There Is a Mystery"...
• The African American religious experience in America

Black Oragean Modernism By: On the Knowledge of Self and Others: Embodiment and African American Mystics By: An Analysis of Malachi Z. The Poetry of Sun Ra By: Margarita Simon Guillory and Aundrea Matthews. Those Mysteries, Our Mysteries: Pole Dancing for Jesus: Biographical Note Stephen C. Material and Extraterrestrial Bodies in the Nation of Islam.

Margarita Simon Guillory is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Rochester. Her research interests include American Spiritualism, identity construction in African American religion, and social scientific approaches to religion. In addition to contributing essays to several edited volumes, she has published articles in Culture and Religion and Pastoral Psychology. He is general editor of The Africana Bible: For one, its transdisciplinary nature makes it appealing to scholars in the fields of visual and performing arts, history, anthropology, religious studies, African American studies, and business.

"There Is a Mystery"...

Moreover, while it does not quite succeed in decentering Christianity, it certainly shows the importance of esoteric traditions alongside and within the religion. Perhaps most importantly, it refuses to reduce the African American experience to a simple narrative of the struggle for political equality. This error from a scholar with such high and correct aspirations can only repeat and perpetuate the paradigmatic arrogance of western European American hegemonic attitudes.

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3. Esotericism in African American Religious Experience.

Nevertheless, Anthony Pinn is correct to be troubled by "the narrow agenda and resource base of contemporary African American theological reflection. In effect, theologians have relegated as something less than legitimate the religious lives of millions of African descendants living throughout the Americas. As Pinn accurately contends, African American theological reflection "limits itself to Christianity in ways that establish Christian doctrine and concerns as normative for all African Americans" 1.

Nothing could be further from an accurate picture of our realities.

Non-Christian religious traditions among U. Varieties is Professor Pinn's attempt to introduce and explore the diversity of religious experiences that exist among descendants of the African continent who now reside across the Atlantic Ocean; or at least I think he is referring to all of us. Pinn says that Varieties is his first of two volumes on the topic and he intends that the combination will "provide an initial exploration of four traditions; Voodoo, Yoruba religion, the Nation of Islam, and Humanism. He proposes that these traditions are but a few of the religions alive in the contemporary African American U.

He also sees a common linkage between the cosmological structure of the four selected traditions, which in turn has produced their social marginality among those who do theological reflection and writing. Pinn further suggests that within African American communities there is a common historical link in the U.

From this premise and within the parameters of the traditions, Pinn proceeds to his exploratory descriptions. Chapter 1 covers "Serving the Loa: Vodou, Voodoo, and the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. Religious Experience, Cultural Memory, and Theological Method," Pinn takes less than ten pages to discuss those issues he considers important that are raised when one seriously engages the alternative perspectives of African based and other non-Christian religious traditions of African Americans.

There is integrity to Anthony Pinn's challenge to the academic community.

We definitely need to break the hegemonic nature of the Christian paradigm in order to more fully comprehend religious experiences and practices of African peoples worldwide. However, this book falls victim to the autho'rs stated task and may not serve us as well as even he might wish.