Promotional Information

This book is truly groundbreaking. Future scholars will view it as a pioneering effort to develop an interdisciplinary, transnational approach to understanding women and religion. Griffith and Savage have assembled a talented group of scholars to herald the creation of a new field within the study of women and religion. -- Catherine Brekus, University of Chicago This monumental text is the definitive examination of the rich and complex doings and sufferings of religious women of African descent. It brings together the most sophisticated thinkers-with diverse methodologies and perspectives-on the crucial reflections and lived experiences of Black religious women. -- Cornel West, Princeton University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Diasporic Knowledge
Chapter 1. É a Senzala: Slavery, Women, and Embodied Knowledge in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé
Chapter 2. "I Smoothed the Way, I Opened Doors": Women in the Yoruba-Orisha Tradition of Trinidad
Chapter 3. Joining the African Diaspora: Migration and Diasporic Religious Culture among the Garífuna in Honduras and New York
Chapter 4. Women of the African Diaspora Within: The Masowe Apostles, an African Initiated Church
Chapter 5. "Power in the Blood": Menstrual Taboos and Women's Power in an African Instituted Church
Part II: Power, Authority, and Subversion
Chapter 6. "The Spirit of the Holy Ghost is a Male Spirit": African American Preaching Women and the Paradoxes of Gender
Chapter 7. "Make Us a Power": African American Methodists Debate the "Woman Question," 1870–1900
Chapter 8. "Only a Woman Would Do": Bible Reading and African American Women's Organizing Work
Chapter 9. Exploring the Religious Connection: Black Women Community Workers, Religious Agency, and the Force of Faith
Part III: Performing Religion
Chapter 10. The Arts of Loving
Chapter 11. "Truths that Liberate the Soul": Eva Jessye and the Politics of Religious Performance
Chapter 12. Shopping with Sister Zubayda: African American Sunni Muslim Rituals of Consumption and Belonging
Chapter 13. "But, It's Bible": African American Women and Television Preachers
Notes
About the Contributors
Index

About the Author

R. Marie Griffith is a professor of religion at Princeton University. Barbara Dianne Savage is Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews

An excellent resource for students in religious studies and scholars of the various religious movements examined. -- Ida Jones Journal of African American History Women and Religion in the African Diaspora both preserves and lovingly encompasses a multiplicity of black women's religious experiences. -- Stephen D. Glazier Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion