Why do African Americans pray so often? -- So rooted a past: slavery and African American Protestant religious tradition -- The Apostles' creed: racial similarities in commitments to core Christian tenets -- Learning and burning: racial differences in "academic" versus "experiential" models of Christianity -- Religious convictions: everyday faith-based actions and beliefs -- Shaded morality: not so Black and White -- Far-reaching faith: evidence of an inclusive religious doctrine -- Reconciling the race problem: identity politics and the gulf between Black and White Protestants
Summary
In this engaging and accessible sociological study of white and black Christian beliefs, Jasom E. Shelton and Michael O. Emerson explore why those differences exist. Drawing on the most comprehensive and systematic empirical analysis of African American religious actions and beliefs to date, they delineate five building blocks of black Protestant faith which have emerged from the particular dynamics of American race relations. Shelton and Emerson find that America's history of racial oppression has had a deep and fundamental effect on the religious beliefs and practices of blacks and whites across America
