The story of religion in America is one of unparalleled diversity and protection of the religious rights of individuals. But that story is a muddied one. This new and expanded edition of a classroom favorite tells a jolting history--illuminated by historical texts, pictures, songs, cartoons, letters, and even t-shirts--of how our society has been and continues to be replete with religious intolerance. It powerfully reveals the narrow gap between intolerance and violence in America. The second edition contains a new chapter on Islamophobia and adds fresh material on the Christian persecution complex, white supremacy and other race-related issues, sexuality, and the role played by social media. John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal's overarching narrative weaves together a rich, compelling array of textual and visual materials. Arranged thematically, each chapter provides a broad historical background, and each document or cluster of related documents is entwined in context as a discussion of the issues unfolds. The need for this book has only increased in the midst of today's raging conflicts about immigration, terrorism, race, religious freedom, and patriotism.
This widely-heralded collection of remarkable documents offers a view of African American religious history from Africa and early America through Reconstruction to the rise of black nationalism, civil rights, and black theology of today. The documents--many of them rare, out-of-print, or difficult to find--include personal narratives, sermons, letters, protest pamphlets, early denominational histories, journalistic accounts, and theological statements. In this volume Olaudah Equiano describes Ibo religion. Lemuel Haynes gives a black Puritan's farewell. Nat Turner confesses. Jarena Lee becomes a female preacher among the African Methodists. Frederick Douglass discusses Christianity and slavery. Isaac Lane preaches among the freedmen. Nannie Helen Burroughs reports on the work of Baptist women. African Methodist bishops deliberate on the Great Migration. Bishop C. H. Mason tells of the Pentecostal experience. Mahalia Jackson recalls the glory of singing at the 1963 March on Washington. Martin Luther King, Jr. writes from the Birmingham jail. Originally published in 1985, this expanded second edition includes new sources on women, African missions, and the Great Migration. Milton C. Sernett provides a general introduction as well as historical context and comment for each document.
There are two documents on Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement in this larger collection (use CTL+F or command+F to search for "Father Divine" if you're having trouble finding it).
Time Period: 1715-1950
Location: North America
Searchable text of 150,000 pages of diaries and letters from 1,325 American and Canadian women from colonial times to 1950.
Time Period: 1690-1922
Location: North America
Search or browse early American newspapers including titles from all 50 present states. Includes the following collections: Early American Newspapers, Series 1 (1690 - 1876), From Colonies to Nation
Early American Newspapers, Series 2 (1758 - 1900), The New Republic
Early American Newspapers, Series 3 (1829 - 1922), From Farm to City
Early American Newspapers, Series 4 (1756 - 1922), The Rise of Industry
Early American Newspapers, Series 5 (1777 - 1922), An Emerging World Power
Early American Newspapers, Series 18 (1825 - 1879), Racial Awakening in the Northeast
Early American Newspapers, Series 19 (1766 - 1877), The Politics of Race in the South
The Moorish Science Temple of America collection consists of letters, certificates, legal documents, illustrations, pamphlets, programs, newspapers, posters, and other printed material.
In 1911, Edward E. Ayer (1841-1927) donated more than 17,000 pieces on the early contacts between American Indians and Europeans. Since then, the Ayer endowment fund has enabled the library to collect in excess of 130,000 volumes, over 1 million manuscript pages, 2,000 maps, 500 atlases, 11,000 photographs, and 3,500 drawings and paintings on the subject. Featured here is a selection of more than 65,000 digitized images and texts from the Ayer materials. This digital collection will grow as we continue to make these primary source documents freely available online.
The websites run by alternative religious movements themselves can also provide primary sources including testimonials, videos, statements, and other documents.
Responding to the rapid spread of the Ghost Dance among tribes of the western United States in the early 1890s, James Mooney set out to describe and understand the phenomenon. He visited Wovoka, the Ghost Dance prophet, at his home in Nevada and traced the progress of the Ghost Dance from place to place, describing the ritual and recording the distinctive song lyrics of seven separate tribes. His classic work (first published in 1896 and here reprinted in its entirety for the first time) includes succinct cultural and historical introductions to each of those tribal groups and depicts the Ghost Dance among the Sioux, the fears it raised of an Indian outbreak, and the military occupation of the Sioux reservations culminating in the tragedy at Wounded Knee. Seeking to demonstrate that the Ghost Dance was a legitimate religious movement, Mooney prefaced his study with a historical survey of comparable millenarian movements among other American Indian groups. In addition to his work on the Ghost Dance, James Mooney is best remembered for his extraordinarily detailed studies of the Cherokee Indians of the Southeast and the Kiowa and other tribes of the southern plains, and for his advocacy of American Indian religious freedom.
Stemming from his anthropological field work among black religious groups in Philadelphia in the early 1940s, Arthur Huff Fauset believed it was possible to determine the likely direction that mainstream black religious leadership would take in the future, a direction that later indeed manifested itself in the civil rights movement. The American black church, according to Fauset and other contemporary researchers, provided the one place where blacks could experiment without hindrance in activities such as business, politics, social reform, and social expression. With detailed primary accounts of these early spiritual movements and their beliefs and practices, Black Gods of the Metropolis reveals the fascinating origins of such significant modern African American religious groups as the Nation of Islam as well as the role of lesser known and even forgotten churches in the history of the black community. In her new foreword, historian Barbara Dianne Savage discusses the relationship between black intellectuals and black religion, in particular the relationship between black social scientists and black religious practices during Fauset's time. She then explores the complexities of that relationship and its impact on the intellectual and political history of African American religion in general.
This platform provides information about alternative and emerging religious and spiritual groups. It was part of VCU but has since incorporated in the State of Virginia.
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