For God and race : the religious and political leadership of AMEZ Bishop James Walker Hood / Sandy Dwayne Martin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Martin, Sandy Dwayne.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hood, J. W. (James Walker), 1831-1918.

Hood, J. W.

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

African American clergy--Biography.

African American clergy.

History.

African American clergy--Political activity.

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church--History.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 248 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Columbia : University of South Carolina, [1999]

Summary:

Until now, the public life of James Walker Hood (1831-1918), bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church and a major political and religious leader of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has gone largely unexamined. For God and Race recovers the career of Hood as a representative of the builders of independent black Christianity who understood faithfulness to God as inseparable from the quest for racial justice, and it explores Hood's role in the AMEZ Church, a denomination known for its singular success in promoting leadership for the abolitionist movement.

Placing Hood in the setting of American and African American history and the black church and using a wealth of primary documents, Sandy Dwayne Martin examines Hood's early life in Pennsylvania; his ministry in the northeastern United States and Nova Scotia; his church organizing, mission work, and political activities in the South during the Civil War and Reconstruction; and his forty-four-year active episcopacy in the Zion Church.

Hood had a tremendous impact on Reconstruction politics in North Carolina, serving in the state constitutional convention of 1867-68 and holding a number of governmental positions. During his public career as a minister, public official, and spokesman for racial equality, Hood expressed his views on issues such as slavery, lynching, and education.

Martin also illuminates the struggles of the era's black ministers and the demands of the AMEZ episcopacy. He demonstrates that during Hood's ministry the black church dealt with theological matters of interest to the wider American religious community, such as the nature of the episcopacy, qualifications for ministry, and theordination of women.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [232]-244) and index.

ISBN:

1570032610

OCLC:

39455836