Religion and Politics among African Americans
A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Health/Psychology/Social Sciences".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 August 2021) | Viewed by 9036
Special Issue Editors
2. Adjunct Faculty Associate in the Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248, USA
Interests: religion; African Americans; politics; social justice; racial justice; social movements
Special Issue Information
Dear colleagues,
There is a long history of African American religious bodies framing and pursuing human rights as religious/ethical issues that they are called to pursue. In the current era, Rev. William Barber, senior pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Goldsboro, North Carolina, is perhaps the most well-known social justice oriented African American clergy in the United States. Since the summer of 2018, Rev. Barber and colleagues have led the modern day Poor People’s Campaign modeled after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1968 Campaign. As in 1968, in today’s Poor People’s Campaign, clergy and laity frame poverty, racism, war, xenophobia, environmental degradation and other forms of social and global inequalities and sufferings as sins that separate people from God. In doing so, they call religious and all people of good will to push government and corporate bodies to support leaders and legislation aimed at strengthening human well-being and reducing exploitation and suffering. In this light, this special edition aims to explore three central questions:
- How do the social-economic and racialized experiences of African Americans shape their perceptions about the appropriateness of religious bodies taking positions on social-justice issues, like police brutality, environmental justice, concentrated poverty and racial segregations, health care, and the like?
- How does the social-economic and racialized experiences of African Americans associate with their likelihood of attending politically engaged and social justice oriented worship settings?
- Finally, to what extent does religion associate, inform, and/or frame African American political behavior, public policy attitudes, and perceptions of and willingness to join social movements?
We welcome a diversity of methodological approaches, including but not limited to survey research, ethnographic, and archival methods, to address these and other relevant questions. The ideal submissions ground their work in the religion and politics and/or social movement literatures.
Keywords
- religion
- African Americans
- politics
- social justice
- racial justice
- social movements
