Doing Black Christianity: Reframing Black Church scholarship

Abstract

The Black Church is the oldest social institution in the Black community and has played a significant role in the Black American experience by offering a space to develop Black oppositional consciousness. Despite the strong Black Christian tradition, a comprehensive review of the sociological literature on Black Christianity has yet to be conducted. The present article surveys extant literature and finds that two major frames are utilized when analyzing Black Christianity: (a) the Institutional-level frame, which focuses on the Black Church as a social and cultural space, and (b) the Ideological-level frame, which sees Black Christianity as a set of racialized attitudes, values, and beliefs. I rely on Avishai's concept of “Doing Religion” to argue the case for a new approach in framing this research and propose the use of an Individual-level frame, which considers the agency of Black Christian actors by examining how they construct identity and embody faith. To illustrate the usefulness of the new frame, I provide an exemplar of Black Christian activist Bree Newsome Bass, highlighting the ways her faith informs her activism. By shifting the focus away from the Black Church as an institution and Black Christianity as an ideology, and instead centering the mechanisms Black Christian actors use to incorporate their faith into their everyday lives, sociological research on Black Christianity will be better equipped to provide insights into how religion informs racialized experiences in society.