Yale University Library Research Guides: African American Religious History: Evangelicalism

Black Evangelicals

Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism Between the Wars by Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews Examines the history of African American Baptists and Methodists of the early twentieth century and their struggle for equality in the context of white Protestant fundamentalism.
Feeling the Spirit: Faith and Hope in an Evangelical Black Storefront Church by Frances Kostarelos An analysis of the precepts that unite First Corinthians Missionary Baptist Church church, the life histories of its leading members, and the organizational structure of the ministry.
Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality (Online) by Todne Thomas Explores the internal dynamics of community life among black evangelicals, who are often overshadowed by white evangelicals and the common equation of the "Black Church" with an Afro-Protestant mainline. Drawing on fieldwork in an Afro-Caribbean and African American church association in Atlanta, Thomas locates black evangelicals at the center of their own religious story, presenting their determined spiritual relatedness as a form of insurgency.

The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby; Lecrae Moore (Foreword by) Details how the American church has helped create and maintain racist ideas and practices.
Evangelicalism and the Politics of Reform in Northern Black Thought, 1776-1863 (Online) by Rita Roberts During the revolutionary age and in the early republic, when racial ideologies were evolving and slavery expanding, some northern blacks surprisingly came to identify very strongly with the American cause and to take pride in calling themselves American. In this study, Rita Roberts explores this phenomenon and offers an in-depth examination of the intellectual underpinnings of antebellum black activists.
Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945-1995 by Mark Newman Examines the evolution of Southern Baptists' attitudes toward African Americans during a tumultuous period of change in the United States.
The Myth of Colorblind Christians: Evangelicals and White Supremacy in the Civil Rights Era by Jesse Curtis Argues that white evangelicals deployed a Christian brand of colorblindness to protect new investments in whiteness. While black evangelicals used the rhetoric of Christian unity to challenge racism, white evangelicals repurposed this language to silence their black counterparts and retain power, arguing that all were equal in Christ and that Christians should not talk about race.