Sacred mission, worldly ambition : Black Christian nationalism in the age of Jim Crow / Adele Oltman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Oltman, Adele, 1957-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Religion.

African Americans.

Black nationalism--United States.

Black nationalism.

Black power--United States.

Black power.

Savannah (Ga.)--Church history.

Savannah (Ga.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (263 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Using Savannah, Georgia, as a case study, Sacred Mission, Worldly Ambition tells the story of the rise and decline of Black Christian Nationalism. This nationalism emerged from the experiences of segregation, as an intersection between the sacred world of religion and church and the secular world of business. The premise of Black Christian Nationalism was a belief in a dual understanding of redemption, at the same time earthly and otherworldly, and the conviction that black Christians, once delivered from psychic, spiritual, and material want, would release all of America from the suffering that prevented it from achieving its noble ideals. The study's use of local sources in Savannah, especially behind-the-scenes church records, provides a rare glimpse into church life and ritual, depicting scenes never before described. Blending history, ethnography, and Geertzian dramaturgy, it traces the evolution of black southern society from a communitarian, nationalist system of hierarchy, patriarchy, and interclass fellowship to an individualistic one that accompanied the appearance of a new black civil society. Although not a study of the civil rights movement, Sacred Mission, Worldly Ambition advances a bold, revisionist interpretation of black religion at the eve of the movement. It shows that the institutional primacy of the churches had to give way to a more diversified secular sphere before an overtly politicized struggle for freedom could take place. The unambiguously political movement of the 1950s and 1960s that drew on black Christianity and radiated from many black churches was possible only when the churches came to exert less control over members' quotidian lives. A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund Publication.

Contents:

Mapping Black Savannah : nation and religion

Holding the line for the Word : Black evangelicals below the Mason-Dixon

"Even if He is a woman" : Savannah's talented tenth and Black suffrage

"Have hardly had straw" : Black Christian nation building and White Christian philanthropy

"Peace and harmony of the church" : the secularization of Black Savannah

Epilogue: From Black Christian nationalism to civil rights.

Notes:

"A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund Publication"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-240) and index.

ISBN:

9786612552922

9781282552920

1282552929

9780820336619

0820336610

OCLC:

593297242