Reclaiming Spirit in the Black Faith Tradition

This work attempts to uncover the function of religion for those degraded on the basis of race. Accordingly, Recalibrating Spirit reveals the role of religion in critical reflection on and active protest against negative assertions about racial identity in general, and the abuse of black life in particular.

"Reclaiming Spirit in the Black Faith Tradition ambitiously combines an impressive engagement with the theoretical claims of scholars like Giorgio Agamben with a meticulous and careful scouring of the archives. Derek Hicks takes on the macro-structural forces that explain how and why African Americans have come to embrace the kind/s of Christianity they embrace/embody while providing compellingly close readings of how different African American thinkers and believers have deployed that faith to confront political and existential threats alike. This brilliant book also demonstrates an amazing facility for transcending any ostensible boundaries between the humanities and the social sciences, offering a wildly interdisciplinary journey into the lives of 19th century Americans. The author's historical focus even resonates with the complex screams from contemporary figures like hip-hop emcee DMX (in/famous for praying to God and boasting about pumping people with bullets on the same rap albums) - and this is because Hicks has given us a language and a framework for talking not just about where Black religion has been, but also where it might be headed." - John L. Jackson, Jr., author, Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity, Richard Perry University Professor of Communication, Anthropology and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania

"Hicks's project is one that attempts to form a nexus between currently disjointed discourses on black spirituality sociologists aren't reading black theologians and black theologians aren't reading political scientists (or at least are not citing them). Hicks brings the social constructionist project of Berger and Luckmann and the symbolic interactionism of contemporary social scientists together with black religious history and theology a bold move with imaginative import for various disciplines. It is my belief that Dr. Hicks's manuscript will be a monumental contribution not only to black studies but also to sociology of religion, by highlighting the inventive ways black slaves wielded Christianity as a cultural toolkit to repair and reconstitute their human dignity and by demonstrating Christianity as a fluid repository of cultural assets." - Shayne Lee, associate professor of Sociology, University of Houston

DEREK S. HICKS is the Henry Luce Fellow and teaches Religion and Culture at Wake Forest University's School of Divinity, USA.