What Is African American Religion

Preface
1. Standard Mappings And Theorizing Of African American Experience
2. The Shape And Purpose Of African American Religion
3. Why Standard Mappings And Definitions Don’t Work
4. Remapping And Rethinking African American Religion
5. A New Theory Of African American Religion
Notes
For Further Reading

Additional Info
Is there really a monolithic “black church”? Distilling the arguments of Pinn’s important and provocative work in Terror and Triumph, this brief work asks the central question: What really is African American religion?

Sketching the religious landscape of African American communities today, Pinn makes explicit the tension in traditional conversations about black religion that privilege either Christianity in particular or organizations (with doctrines and creeds) in general. Discussing the misunderstandings and historical inaccuracies of such views, Pinn offers an alternate theory of black religion that begins with a basic push for embodied meaning as its core impulse.