Politics and Black Religions: A History of Engagement

2024 marks important anniversaries in Afro-American religious history, including Jessie Jackson’s historic first presidential campaign (40th, 1984), Freedom Summer and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and Malcolm X’s establishment of the Muslim Mosque, Inc. (60th, 1964). These moments reflect important examples of the varied expressions and interactions between Black religions and the political sphere through electioneering, organizing, and critique. The Afro-American Religious History Unit will host a special session that reflects on these various iterations at the institutional, individual, social, and communal levels. Of special concern will be both the expansive and limiting ways that intersections of Black religions and politics have been considered as opening spheres of influence, as generating political critique, and as sites of gendered power and struggle. Featuring an interdisciplinary set of leading, public-facing scholars, this roundtable will engage the historical and contemporary significances of the intersections of religion and politics for African Americans.