Believing that African American religious studies has reached a crossroads, Cornel West and Eddie Glaude seek, in this landmark anthology, to steer the discipline into the future. Arguing that the complexity of beliefs, choices, and actions of African Americans need not be reduced to expressions of black religion, West and Glaude call for more careful reflection on the complex relationships of African American religious studies to conceptions of class, gender, sexual orientation, race, empire, and other values that continue to challenge our democratic ideals.
Cornel West is Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion at Princeton University. A prolific scholar and prominent public figure, West is the author of sixteen books, including Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity, also published by Westminster John Knox Press. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is Associate Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University. Glaude is the author of Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America.