Rethinking Political Black Churches: Bridging Cultural Work Within African American Christian Zionism

• In Event: 262 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Law and Politics

Abstract

How do racial histories and cultural legacies affect political attitudes and social engagement? Existing studies of cultural work in social movements have focused on how groups create meaning around political ideas in order to recruit members or to develop in-group ties. By contrast, this paper draws on two years of fieldwork in a black church-based social movement and thirty interviews with pastors and lay church members to suggest bridging cultural work as a theoretical tool for understanding how groups re-work their own cultural heritage in service of a political-religious project. Using the case of the growing African American Christian Zionist movement, which draws on racial and religious motivations to foster political support for the State of Israel, this paper explores how activists bridge social divides by constituting memories of the civil rights movement, reframing the salience of race in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and reorienting the social significance of black churches. Attention to how black Christian supporters of Israel deploy historical meaning and cultural legacies as bridging cultural practices sheds light the role of race and religion in shaping political engagement. Studies of black church-based social movements usually consider religious frameworks of emancipation (social gospels) or racialized political outlooks, associating civically and politically engaged groups with socially liberal politics. This paper explains how non-emancipatory religious frameworks and socially conservative political activism operate in black churches, suggesting increased attention to theologically and politically conservative social movements within black church contexts.

Author

• Roger Baumann, Yale University