Abstract
“The Canonical Black Body” argues that central to the study of African American religions is a focus on the black body and the production and engagement of canons on the sacred black body within the black public sphere. Furthermore, this essay suggests that, by paying attention to alternative African American religions in the twentieth century, we can better engage the relationship between African American religion and the long history of creating these canons on the black body, debating their relationship to black freedom, and circulating the canons to contest the oppressive, exclusive practices of modern democracy. Through a critical engagement of the fields of Black Theology and New Religious Movements and using the resources offered by Delores Williams’ accounts of variety and experience and Vincent Wimbush’s category of signifying, this essay will argue for how a return to the body provides resources and tools for not only theorizing African American religions but thinking about the production and creation of competing black publics, including the important role of alternative black sacred publics.
Highlights
A number of recent studies engaging African American religions have focused primarily on what has traditionally been called “new” African American religions
From Sylvester Johnson’s magisterial work on the long-range impact of empire to Judith Weisenfeld’s critical reappraisal of black migration in the twentieth century, central to their analysis is the appearance and practice of new religions.1. This focus on new or alternative religious movements is important because of the ways in which the studies destabilize the emphasis or focus on black Christianity or the Biblical scripture as the normative text for African Americans in place of what Weisenfeld calls a renewed focus on the adherents’ construction of a “racial-religious” identity.2. In these works, there is a call to delve more fully into the ways in which African American religion is about the black body and how a meditation on that body is crucial to the negotiation of empire, democracy, citizenship and belonging
This essay is not calling for the jettisoning of the black theological method, but rather it is calling for the expansion of its method to include variety, dissonance and variability as central to its method. It is following in the admonition of theorists of black theology and black religion such as Anthony Pinn, Charles Long, Emilie Towne, Delores Williams, and other theorists to move beyond Christian orthodoxy and a limited view of the black public and its inevitable recourse to the black church
Summary
A number of recent studies engaging African American religions have focused primarily on what has traditionally been called “new” African American religions. From Sylvester Johnson’s magisterial work on the long-range impact of empire to Judith Weisenfeld’s critical reappraisal of black migration in the twentieth century, central to their analysis is the appearance and practice of new religions.1 This focus on new or alternative religious movements is important because of the ways in which the studies destabilize the emphasis or focus on black Christianity or the Biblical scripture as the normative text for African Americans in place of what Weisenfeld calls a renewed focus on the adherents’ construction of a “racial-religious” identity.. As empire and modernity become more adept at its body-shaming, body-excluding practices, African American religions must create counter scripts that imagine worlds and spaces where black bodies can be recognized as sacred and have the capacity and opportunity to flourish.9 This attention to new religions is to follow the ever-changing shape and discourse on black bodies as a way to chart the black publics’ demands for visibility and participation.
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