Black women's influence of faith

African American Women and Religion
By Bettye Collier-Thomas

Alfred A. Knopf. 695 pp. $37.50

It navigates within and beyond the walls of institutional religion to delineate the tremendous contributions of African American women of faith to the larger American project.

Collier-Thomas, professor of history at Temple University, makes the convincing argument that it was, indeed, the amazing networks of organizations that women developed in the 1920s and '30s that laid the foundation for the success of the civil rights movement.

In 509 pages of narrative text, we witness the historical record of black women's struggles since emancipation for true freedom, justice, education, and livelihood. Ultimately, this struggle led them to work alongside and also confront black men, white women, white men, and at times one another in the quest for a better world.

Collier-Thomas' book expands on the work of historians such as Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Jualynne Dodson, and Anthea Butler, who focus on women's labors within particular denominations - the National Baptist Convention, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), and the Church of God in Christ.

Instead of locating women's activities within the exclusive framework of a particular denomination, Collier-Thomas examines their contributions across denominational affiliations for the advancement of women in ministry, the spread of global missions, and the structuring of a national political agenda.

Her work broadens earlier interpretations of how women structured their efforts on behalf of justice. She highlights the significance of geographical location and social relations for understanding how different denominations responded to the question of women in ministry.

She argues, for example, that the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME), founded in the South after the Civil War, differed in the intensity (if not the kind) of its opposition to women's leadership in the church from the AME and African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches. Those two churches were formed in the North, more than 50 years before to the war.