“There Is No God in Heaven”: Black Religion, Resistance, and the Police Power in Jim Crow New Orleans

Abstract

In late October 1907, members of an African American religious order called the Council of God killed a White police officer outside their house of worship in New Orleans. This article recovers and analyzes the radical theology of the Council of God, situating it in the vibrant intellectual world of turn-of-the-century Black spirituality. The Council of God’s belief system was structured around resistance to white supremacy in general and resistance to police violence in particular. If the violence of Jim Crow policing shaped the Council of God’s theology, however, the reverse was equally true, as the New Orleans Police Department consistently used the specter of Black religious radicalism to call for increased funding and popular support. This article probes the relationship between religion, race, violence, and policing, offering new perspectives on the police power, Black religion, and African American armed self-defense in the era of Jim Crow.