Black Studies

The preface to this work introduces it as “a comprehensive bibliographical guide to more than thirteen thousand primary and secondary sources in the areas of African, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-American religious studies” (ix). It is divided into five broad sections: I. African Heritage II. Christianity and Slavery in the New World III. The Black Man and His Religious Life in the Americas IV. The Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1967 V. The Contemporary Religious Scene. Each broad section is divided into subsections by region, denomination, or other relevant specification. Entries consist of a bibliographic citation, a brief annotation when the title of the work requires further clarification as to subject matter, and the name of at least one American library that holds the item (in abbreviated form; an index to abbreviations begins on p. xiii; for the traveling scholar, it is helpful to note that abbreviations are alphabetized by state, then by institution). There are also two addenda, a guide to unpublished manuscripts and a list of six thousand autobiographical and biographical works. In addition there is a general index, mainly to names and organizations. Caveat lector: the bibliography is in very small type, it is mainly oriented toward Christianity, and most importantly, it is more than thirty years old, so more recent scholarship is not included. Nevertheless, it remains the only nearly comprehensive bibliography on African-American religion and is a good place to begin research on specific topics, especially historical research and research involving primary sources.

This book is an example of how a thorough, meticulously researched bibliography can make a substantial contribution to scholarship in a neglected subfield of African American religion. The bibliography arose from DuPree’s efforts to locate and preserve souvenir booklets, magazines, newspapers, photographs, oral interviews, videos, dissertations and even FBI reports, among other publicly and privately held materials, for the National African-American Pentecostal Project. Included materials cover African-American Pentecostalism in American from the 1880s to publication in 1996. The book begins with a historical overview of Pentecostalism and a list of repositories and libraries before moving on to the bibliography, divided into nine chapters: Selected Bibliographies on African-American Religion and Culture; Origin of Pentecostalism; Trinitarian Pentecostal Groups; Apostolic Pentecostal Groups; Evangelical Charismatic or Neo-Pentecostal Groups; African-American Movements Influenced by African-American Pentecostalism (including Black Jewish and cult groups); Selected Media Covering Pentecostals; Holiness Pentecostal Charismatics; and Women Founders and Leaders. Each entry includes a full bibliographic citation, as appropriate for the type of material, and up to a paragraph of annotation. Appendices include a glossary of terms, a list of denominations, and addresses of sources. There is also a comprehensive and a geographical index. This book is indispensible for in-depth research on African-American Pentecostalism that demands investigation of available primary sources.

€œEvans has annotated more than 460 books and articles on black theology, a 20-year-old discipline. In a fine introduction, Evans shows that black theology's roots go back further than the black power movement to radical slave religion and the founding of independent black churches. The introduction includes references to citations in the bibliography, and there are plentiful cross-references. The first section treats origin and development. Part 2 addresses challenges by black feminists and Marxists. Part 3 treats liberation theologies in Latin America, South Africa, and the Caribbean, which also focus on liberation as the content of the Gospels. This is an important contribution to black religious studies because it focuses on the literature and thought of this brief period, which although brief is vital, and which has national and global reverberations.”– Choice

Comprehensive list of monographs and collections of Black Theology from 1990 to 2010. Published on the website of the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.