2. Brothers from Another Mother

Abstract

This chapter examines the strategy of replacing race with religion, an ostensibly more legitimate collective identity. It highlights specialty conservative Christian media created to reach out to African Americans. These media appeals to black voters often attempt to rewrite black Civil Rights movements as primarily spiritual and Christian-oriented, thereby suggesting an impetus for Christian fellowship with whites in the present. Displacing the political and racial elements of these movements is suspect, however, and requires significant forgetting and forgiveness on the part of African Americans, who are encouraged to overlook the racially divisive strategies employed in the recent past by the same organizations and individuals authoring these media appeals. The chapter specifically analyzes one such appeal, the program Justice Sunday III, and concludes with a study of African American Christians who watched segments of the program.