Jesus, jobs, and justice : African American women and religion /

At the outset, historian Collier-Thomas (Temple) states her intentions. Contending that "religion has been the central guiding force of most African Americans," she seeks to demonstrate "how religion informed and shaped the public lives and social activism of African American women, and how that in turn has influenced the American experience more broadly." The book begins with a look at black women's experience in slavery and ends in the era of black power and after. Always, Collier-Thomas focuses on churchwomen--the key female leaders at all times in shaping public responses and policy within the black community. To prove her point, the author examines the role of women in all the major black churches as well as African American women leaders in predominantly white churches with large black memberships. Collier-Thomas notes the flowering of interracial efforts between white and black churchwomen on public issues beginning in the 1920s, which becomes a major emphasis thereafter. The breadth and depth of her research matches the comprehensiveness of her analysis. Although the documentation system is awkward and unwieldy, it reveals an unusually wide array of secondary and primary sources. Though not a book that can be digested quickly and easily, the work is a major addition to the historiography of US race relations. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. J. F. Findlay emeritus, University of Rhode Island

How the church has figured in the lives of black women battling racism and sexism, from the days of slavery to the present. IN 1995, one million black men - give or take a couple of hundred thousand - gathered on the National Mall in Washington. The Million Man March bested the March on Washington of 1963 in turnout but otherwise fell far short of that historic benchmark. It was a rebellion without a cause, lacking any specific political agenda, and its organizer, the notorious demagogue Louis Farrakhan, was as repellent as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was inspiring. Perhaps worst of all, the Million Man March announced its chauvinism in its very name, deliberately excluding half the black community. Unfortunately, the civil rights movement has often lagged on the question of women's equality even as it has led the nation on matters of race. Much of the blame for this must be borne by the religious institutions that have played a predominant role in the struggle for racial justice. Until recently, most black churches refused to grant women leadership roles, depriving them of the platform that so many black men have used to rally followers and challenge injustice. Despite these affronts, black women have remained the most faithful and abiding servants of the church, and they have been among the most diligent and effective activists for racial justice. In "Jesus, Jobs, and Justice," Bettye Collier-Thomas, a professor of history at Temple University, tells the untold stories of scores of religious and politically active black women, their organizations, informal gatherings and intellectual movements. For readers who imagine that the religious and political activism of Sojourner Truth, Mary McLeod Bethune and Rosa Parks is exceptional, the book will be a revelation. The author details the contributions of black women to almost every important aspect of the struggle for racial justice. The book weaves its many smaller stories into the broad fabric of the black experience, beginning in the early days of slavery and covering the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the civil rights and black power movements, before arriving at today's tense moment of renewed hope and familiar anxiety. The progressive black women of "Jesus, Jobs, and Justice" fought for respect from the male-dominated churches in which they worked, even as they confronted the common enemy of white racism. An especially absorbing chapter describes the experiences of black women missionaries in Liberia, Congo, Nigeria and Sierra Leone during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These women overcame the resistance and paternalism of black and white church leaders who thought black women should restrict their philanthropic activities to the narrow domestic sphere, only to encounter condescending European missionaries and exploitative colonists who feared they would spread "radical ideas" of racial equality to the native population once they arrived in Africa. A Baptist prayer meeting in Mississippi, 1964. The book also explores the fraught relationship between black and white feminists, who share a commitment to women's equality but have clashed because many black women have seen feminism as a distraction from the struggle for racial justice and a threat to an embattled black masculinity. And it shows how chauvinistic men have exploited this concern - by the time of the Million Man March, it had proved to be little more than a cheap justification for sexism. For the most part, Collier-Thomas writes with the cadence and detachment of the professional historian. That makes the book reassuringly authoritative, but it can also make for dense reading. A blizzard of people, places, organizations and anecdotes can be disorienting, and instead of a discrete central narrative that might keep wandering minds on course, the book contains multiple narratives and delicately interlaced themes. Despite her academic tenor, Collier-Thomas is obviously passionate about her subject, and she occasionally editorializes. A small but telling example: In describing the Rev. James H. Cone's controversial "black liberation theology" - which the Rev. Jeremiah Wright introduced to much of the world in the heat of the 2008 presidential contest - she writes that Cone "demonstrated how a historically accurate interpretation of the Bible leads to the conclusion that black power is a legitimate expression of the Gospel in a particular situation of oppression." Surely a more dispassionate author would leave it to others to judge whether Cone's argument was persuasive. For Collier-Thomas, it's an article of faith that religious conviction has been indispensable to the battles against racism, class exploitation and sexism: "Motivated by their deep religious convictions . . . black women worked long and hard . . . to improve the economic, social and political status of females, blacks and other minorities." She brusquely dismisses those who question why politically progressive black women have tolerated sexist and often corrupt religious organizations as "critics, pundits and outsiders" who "often hold blacks to a higher standard than whites." Collier-Thomas rightly insists that the church "represents a way of life and has been at the center of black life." But that very centrality makes obscure the role of religious faith as such in the struggle for racial justice. Because churches were the most important autonomous organizations in the black community, they were the natural places for oppositional social movements to form; in a sense, the church played the same role in the civil rights movement that the tavern and the cafe did in many European social movements. And if faith inspired the struggle against injustice, it may also have discouraged the critical posture that would have allowed people to detect and challenge malfeasance, abuse and prejudice by those in positions of religious authority. Collier-Thomas reminds us that for every courageous and self-sacrificing religious leader, like Martin Luther King Jr., there are several less altruistic figures. Consider, for instance, the misdeeds of people like Bishop William H. Hillery of the A.M.E. Zion Church, who was defrocked in 1884 after decades of embezzlement, violence, alcohol abuse and sexual transgressions, and the Rev. Henry J. Lyons of the National Baptist Convention U.S.A., who was sentenced to five years in federal prison after embezzling $4 million from his church in the 1990s, partly to support "a bevy of mistresses." Collier-Thomas also reminds us that after the Rev. Jesse Jackson carried on an extramarital affair, he shamelessly turned a church service at which he was to atone for his indiscretion into a self-serving "media event." (To this list of miscreants we might add the ostentatious Rev. Al Sharpton and the self-obsessed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who, after his demagogic sermons were posted on YouTube, did his best to remain in the limelight despite the damage to Barack Obama.) COLLIER-THOMAS treats these and numerous other dramatic scandals as serious lapses of faith, and she frankly acknowledges many instances of religiously motivated bigotry, of which widespread antigay bias is the most conspicuous today. Still, she sees the church as a fundamentally benevolent institution that can be cured of these blemishes. But "Jesus, Jobs, and Justice" suggests a plausible counterreading: abuse of authority and unexamined prejudice are typical of the religious complexion generally - they are the dark side of faith, the price to be paid for the fortitude and selflessness that religious conviction often inspires. The women in this book are heroic and their stories moving, but their fight for respect and authority in the churches they worked so hard to build and support evokes the melancholia of unrequited love. It's as if only a faith strong enough to endure slavery and overcome Jim Crow could compel them to give so much to institutions that offered them so little in return. The civil rights movement has lagged on the question of women's equality even as it has led on matters of race. Richard Thompson Ford is a professor at Stanford Law School and the author of "The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse," which is now in paperback.

Collier-Thomas views the long struggle by black women for racial and gender equality through the lens of their strong religious faith and spirituality. She covers two centuries of black women's history, recalling clubs and organizations including Church Women United and the National Council of Negro Women. Black women's church clubs headed grassroots social, political, and educational reform movements, speaking out on issues from lynching to woman suffrage. They challenged the racism of white-led groups, from the Young Women's Christian Association to the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and worked alongside national black organizations such as the NAACP for civil rights. Collier-Thomas highlights the famous Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, and Mary McLeod Bethune and the less well known, including Nannie Helen Burroughs, a leader in the National Baptist Convention Woman's Convention, and Julia Foote, a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. She also explores issues within the church, including rampant sexism and black women's struggles with black theology and feminism. Photographs add to the value of this well-researched book.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist

The most extensive and best-known histories of African-American religion in America give short shrift to the role of African-American women in religion. In her exhaustive and monumental study, Collier-Thomas (Daughters of Thunder) allows the strong voices of women as diverse as Ida B. Wells Barnett, Sarah Jane Woodson Early (the first black woman to serve on a faculty of an American university), and Mary McLeod Bethune to articulate the causes of liberation and justice in a culture where their race and sex continually called into question their self-understanding. Collier-Thomas demonstrates the ways black women have woven their faith into their daily experience and played central roles in developing African-American religion, politics, and public culture. By examining the histories of various organizations such as the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church's Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society, she shows how black women of faith created a network indispensable to the fight against racism, sexism, and poverty. Although her turgid and wooden prose and academic tone detract from the power of the book, Collier-Thomas's study nevertheless offers a magisterial survey of a too-long neglected topic. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Collier-Thomas (history, Temple Univ., Daughters of Thunder: Black Women Preachers and Their Sermons) has produced the first comprehensive history of African American women and their participation in religious institutions from slavery to the present. The book covers enslaved and free women preachers in the antebellum era, black women's missionary work, their struggle to gain equality with men in many denominations, and their work in their own women's organizations and in conjunction with white women's organizations to gain suffrage and civil rights. Collier-Thomas convincingly argues that religion has been a fundamental force in black women's lives, and their participation in churches has shaped public life and politics in America. Although she covers some well-worn history, such as the work of women in the African Methodist Episcopal and Baptist denominations, Collier-Thomas also surveys the untapped archives of smaller churches and organizations. The result is an almost encyclopedic chronicle. VERDICT A monumental work, this is highly recommended for academic libraries and is certainly essential for all students of African American history.-Kate Stewart, Proquest/Library of Congress (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Comprehensive survey of the role of African-American women throughout the history of American religion. Collier-Thomas (History/Temple Univ.; Sisters in the Struggle: African-American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement, 2001, etc.) does an admirable job revealing and preserving the stories of the women as a group and, more importantly, as individuals. Her subject matter is wide-ranging, both historically and geographically, but her methodical approach brings this remarkable story together. The author begins with a discussion of the role of religion in women's lives during the era of slavery, both for slave women and free women. She then explores the early era of women's leadership in the Black church, highlighting extraordinary figures as well as the countless women who toiled without fanfare and who are now barely remembered. Collier-Thomas does a service by listing the names of the countless unheralded women throughout the book. The struggle to gain leadership, whether in the pulpit or in the ability to govern the affairs of their own organizations, is a recurring theme throughout. Moving into the 20th century, Collier-Thomas focuses on an alphabet soup of organizations founded and led by African-American women, dedicated to missions, poor relief, evangelization, suffrage, etc. Such social involvement and organizational acumen provides a preview of the civil-rights battles described later in the book. The author focuses almost exclusively on Black Methodists and Baptists until the later stages of the narrative, but this simply mirrors the demographic reality. As she paraphrases one African-American woman from 1964, "colored people were supposed to be either Baptist or Methodist." Indeed, writes the author, early in the 20th century, 90 percent of them were. The book's title is at first enigmatic, but in the final analysis makes senseJesus, jobs and justice are what most of these brave women were concerned with throughout history. An important American story well told. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.