Saints in Exile studies, from an insider's perspective, the worship practices and social ethics of the African-American family of Holiness, Pentecostal, and apostolic churches known collectively as the Sanctified Church. Cheryl Sanders identifies the theme of exile, both as an idea and an experience, as the key to understanding the dialectical nature of African-American religious and intellectual life, that W. E. B. Du Bois called 'double-consciousness.' Sanders's 'saints in exile' are a people who see themselves as 'in the world but not of it'; their marginalized status is both self-imposed and involuntary, a consequence of racism, sexism and other forms of elitism.
