Religion, Jim Crow, and American National Identity

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Religion, Jim Crow, and American National Identity

Religion occupied a complicated and often contradictory place in the history of Jim Crow. Christian churches and other religious institutions existed within a society structured by racial segregation, disfranchisement, economic inequality, and racial violence. Some churches defended or accommodated that racial order, while others became important centers of resistance. Religious language could be used to justify racial separation, but it could also provide a moral vocabulary for challenging segregation and demanding equal citizenship.

These competing religious traditions helped shape larger arguments about American national identity. Questions about who belonged in the nation, who qualified for full citizenship, and whether the United States should be understood as a Christian nation were frequently connected to race. During the Jim Crow era and afterward, religion therefore functioned not simply as a matter of private belief but as an institution through which Americans debated race, democracy, citizenship, morality, and the meaning of the nation itself.

Religion and the Construction of Jim Crow

The rise of Jim Crow after Reconstruction occurred within a deeply religious society. Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish institutions operated alongside the political and legal systems that established racial segregation. In many communities, religious organizations adapted themselves to prevailing racial customs instead of directly challenging them.

White churches were frequently segregated in membership, worship, education, and leadership. Biblical interpretation was sometimes employed to defend racial separation as natural, traditional, or divinely sanctioned. Segregation could therefore acquire religious legitimacy even when individual Christians differed over the degree to which churches should directly participate in racial politics.

Studies of Southern evangelicalism show that resistance to integration was not limited to secular political institutions. Congregations, religious schools, denominational organizations, seminaries, and church-related colleges could become arenas of conflict over desegregation. Religious arguments were used both by those seeking to preserve racial separation and by Christians who believed segregation contradicted fundamental Christian teachings.

The relationship between religion and Jim Crow was nevertheless never uniform. Denominations differed internally, and clergy, congregations, denominational officials, and laypeople sometimes took sharply different positions. The history of religion under segregation is therefore one of institutional accommodation, theological conflict, gradual reform, and organized resistance rather than a single unified religious response.

Black Churches and Religious Independence

For African Americans, independent religious institutions became particularly important after emancipation. Black churches provided spaces in which African Americans could exercise authority and build organizations beyond direct white control.

Historically Black denominations such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Black Baptist organizations, the Church of God in Christ, and other independent religious movements became major institutions of community life. Their activities extended beyond worship. Churches supported education, mutual aid, leadership development, political discussion, charitable work, social networks, and efforts to secure greater equality.

The development of Black religious independence was itself closely connected to racial discrimination. African Americans had repeatedly encountered exclusion and unequal treatment within white-controlled churches. Independent denominations allowed Black communities to establish their own ministers, governing institutions, schools, publishing networks, conventions, and social organizations.

Jim Crow increased the importance of these institutions. As African Americans faced disfranchisement, segregated transportation, unequal schools, racial violence, and restrictions on public life, churches could serve as places where community autonomy survived despite exclusion from many other institutions.

Black religious life was not politically uniform. Ministers and congregations disagreed about protest strategies, integration, electoral politics, economic development, and relationships with white denominations. Some religious leaders strongly supported direct-action campaigns, while others favored legal action, gradualism, institution-building, or other approaches.

Religious Arguments for and Against Segregation

Biblical interpretation became one of the most visible areas of conflict surrounding Jim Crow. Defenders of segregation sometimes argued that racial separation reflected divine intention, historical tradition, or the preservation of social order. Certain interpretations of scripture were used to reinforce existing racial boundaries.

Other Christians reached very different conclusions. Black theologians, ministers, activists, and some white religious leaders argued that segregation violated Christian principles concerning human dignity, moral equality, justice, and the unity of humanity.

Martin Luther King Jr. became one of the most prominent representatives of this tradition. His sermons and writings placed the struggle against segregation within Christian moral thought while also drawing upon constitutional principles and democratic ideals. In Letter from Birmingham Jail, King criticized white clergy who expressed opposition to racial injustice in principle but opposed direct action against segregation.

Other Black religious thinkers developed theological responses to racial oppression long before and alongside the modern civil rights movement. W. E. B. Du Bois examined the social importance and limitations of Black churches. Howard Thurman explored Christianity from the perspective of people living under oppression. James H. Cone later connected Christian theology with the history of lynching and racial violence.

These debates demonstrate that scripture alone did not produce a single racial position. Religious texts were interpreted within broader social, political, cultural, and institutional contexts.

Segregated Churches and Denominational Change

Many American religious institutions were themselves racially divided. Segregated congregations, denominational structures, schools, seminaries, and religious organizations persisted well into the twentieth century.

Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, and other groups experienced internal conflicts over racial integration. The Methodist Church, for example, maintained a racially segregated Central Jurisdiction before denominational restructuring eventually eliminated it. Southern Baptists experienced decades of disagreement concerning segregation and civil rights before later adopting formal statements rejecting racism.

Catholic institutions likewise reflected both accommodation and resistance. Segregated parishes and schools existed in many communities, while Black Catholics and interracial Catholic organizations increasingly challenged discrimination. Bishops, priests, religious orders, lay activists, and local congregations did not always move toward desegregation at the same pace.

Church desegregation sometimes became a direct civil rights tactic. During so-called kneel-ins and church visits, Black activists attempted to worship in white congregations. Their treatment revealed the contradiction between public Christian claims of spiritual equality and racially restricted religious practice.

Lynching, Racial Violence, and Religious Authority

The Jim Crow order was sustained not only through laws and customs but also through racial violence. Lynching became one of its most extreme forms.

Religious institutions responded unevenly. Some ministers and religious organizations condemned lynching, while others remained silent or operated within communities where racial violence was socially accepted. Scholars have therefore examined the relationship between local religious culture and the broader social environment in which lynching occurred.

Ida B. Wells's anti-lynching investigations challenged widely repeated claims used to justify mob violence. Later scholarship has shown that lynching was often a public event connected to community ritual, racial identity, journalism, photography, politics, and cultural memory.

The moral problem posed by lynching became especially significant for American Christianity. If Christianity proclaimed universal human worth, racial terror raised fundamental questions about the credibility of churches that failed to oppose violence committed within their communities.

The Lost Cause, the Ku Klux Klan, and Religious Nationalism

Religion also became entangled with post-Civil War Southern memory. The Lost Cause transformed remembrance of the Confederacy into a broader cultural tradition involving sacrifice, regional identity, memorialization, and religious symbolism.

Religious themes could present the defeated Confederacy as a sacred cause and minimize or reinterpret the central role of slavery and racial hierarchy. Such narratives helped shape later Southern identity and influenced understandings of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.

The second Ku Klux Klan expanded this relationship between race, religion, and nationalism during the early twentieth century. It portrayed itself not only as a defender of white supremacy but also as a defender of Protestantism, morality, patriotism, and what it regarded as authentic Americanism.

Klan ideology combined racial hierarchy with anti-Catholicism, nativism, immigration restriction, gender expectations, and claims about national belonging. Protestant imagery, crosses, patriotic symbols, and appeals to Christian civilization became part of its public identity.

This combination illustrates how racial boundaries could be presented as national and religious boundaries simultaneously.

Race, Religion, Citizenship, and American Identity

Jim Crow concerned more than physical segregation. It helped define the boundaries of citizenship and national belonging.

After Reconstruction, African Americans were legally citizens, yet segregation and disfranchisement restricted the practical exercise of citizenship throughout much of the United States. Religious institutions participated in debates over whether racial equality was compatible with established understandings of American society.

At the same time, Black churches developed alternative visions of American citizenship. Religious appeals to freedom, equality, justice, and human dignity were often combined with appeals to the Constitution and the promises associated with American democracy.

These competing interpretations contributed to a larger tradition of American civil religion in which national history, religious imagery, constitutional ideals, sacrifice, providence, and national mission became interconnected.

Race complicated those narratives. Claims that the United States possessed a special Christian identity could raise questions about who counted as a legitimate member of the nation. Religious and racial identity therefore became overlapping dimensions of arguments about American belonging.

The Civil Rights Movement and Religious Transformation

Religion became especially visible in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Black churches provided meeting spaces, leadership networks, moral arguments, organizational resources, and community support for numerous campaigns.

The Montgomery bus boycott, Birmingham campaign, Selma voting-rights movement, and many local struggles depended in part on religious organizations and clergy. Christian teachings concerning love, justice, sacrifice, and nonviolence became important components of movement rhetoric.

Yet the association between Black Christianity and civil rights activism should not obscure differences within Black religious communities. Ministers and denominations disagreed about strategies, leadership, direct action, political alliances, and the appropriate role of churches.

White Christianity was similarly divided. Some clergy supported civil rights activism and faced substantial opposition from congregations and communities. Others opposed integration, defended local control, or sought to keep churches removed from political controversy.

The civil rights struggle consequently became an internal religious conflict as well as a political and social struggle.

From Segregation to Colorblindness

The decline of legal Jim Crow did not end religious disagreements about race. Instead, the vocabulary of those disagreements changed.

Explicit theological defenses of racial segregation became less socially acceptable, while ideas emphasizing individual equality, spiritual unity, personal relationships, and colorblindness became increasingly influential in some Christian communities.

Supporters of such approaches often understood colorblindness as a rejection of racial prejudice. Critics argued that an exclusive emphasis on individual attitudes could minimize institutional inequalities or the continuing effects of historical segregation.

Religious efforts at racial reconciliation similarly produced debate. Programs emphasizing interpersonal friendship, repentance, and unity sometimes improved relationships between Christians of different racial backgrounds, while critics questioned whether reconciliation could succeed without addressing inequalities in churches, neighborhoods, education, wealth, and political institutions.

These debates demonstrate how the religious discussion of race continued after formal segregation ended.

Jim Crow's Legacy and Christian Nationalism

Contemporary scholarship has renewed attention to relationships among Christianity, race, and American nationalism. Researchers examining Christian nationalism study beliefs that connect Christianity with the identity, history, institutions, or destiny of the United States.

The relationship between Christian nationalism and race is debated and varies among individuals and groups. Contemporary studies have investigated associations between Christian-nationalist beliefs and attitudes concerning racial inequality, immigration, policing, interracial relationships, cultural membership, and national belonging.

Historians also examine whether modern forms of Christian nationalism draw upon older narratives developed during slavery, Reconstruction, segregation, the Lost Cause, and twentieth-century racial politics.

Historical continuity should not be treated as simple or automatic. Modern religious and political movements operate under different legal, demographic, and cultural conditions from those of the Jim Crow era. Nevertheless, the history of segregation provides important context for understanding why arguments linking Christianity, race, citizenship, and national identity remain subjects of public and scholarly debate.

Conclusion

The history of religion under Jim Crow cannot be reduced to a story in which religion either caused segregation or defeated it. Religious institutions participated in the racial order in multiple and sometimes contradictory ways.

Some churches and religious leaders defended segregation or accepted it as part of established social life. Others challenged racial discrimination, supported civil rights campaigns, or developed theological arguments for equality. Black churches created institutions of extraordinary importance for community survival, political organization, education, culture, leadership, and resistance.

The same religious traditions could therefore support competing understandings of American society. One vision connected Christianity with established racial and social boundaries. Another connected religious faith with universal dignity, equal citizenship, and democratic reform.

These conflicts also shaped American national identity. Jim Crow forced Americans to confront whether claims about Christianity, liberty, equality, and national mission could coexist with racial exclusion. The consequences of those debates continued beyond the abolition of legal segregation and remain important for understanding modern discussions of race, religion, citizenship, and the meaning of the United States.

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Religion and the Construction of Jim Crow

• [The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy | J. Russell Hawkins | Oxford University Press | 2021]

Investigates evangelical resistance to racial integration, particularly in South Carolina, and documents how some white Christians used biblical interpretations, church institutions, and religious education to defend segregation.

• [Desegregating Dixie: The Catholic Church in the South and Desegregation, 1945–1992 | Mark Newman | University Press of Mississippi | 2018]

Examines Black and white Catholics in the South and documents the uneven transition from segregated parishes, schools, and institutions toward formal desegregation and limited integration.

• [One Mississippi, Two Mississippi: Methodists, Murder, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in Neshoba County | Carol V. R. George | Oxford University Press | 2015]

Uses Methodist communities in Mississippi to examine the interaction among religion, segregation, racial violence, civil rights activism, and changing white attitudes during the twentieth century.

• [No Jim Crow Church: The Origins of South Carolina’s Bahá’í Community | Louis Venters | University Press of Florida | 2015]

Examines an interracial religious community that challenged the racial conventions of the Jim Crow South and explores the difficulties its members faced in practicing racial equality.

• [Introduction: African American Religion in the Age of Segregation in the Delta | John M. Giggie | Oxford University Press | December 6, 2007]

Introduces the transformation of African American religious culture after Reconstruction and explains how churches and other sacred institutions responded to disfranchisement, segregation, migration, and racial violence.

• [After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875–1915 | John M. Giggie | Oxford University Press | 2007]

Studies Black religious life in the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta as Jim Crow emerged, emphasizing how African Americans developed religious institutions, rituals, and community networks under increasingly restrictive racial conditions.

• [Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans — Review | William E. Montgomery | Journal of American History | June 1, 2006]

Reviews James B. Bennett’s study of religion in post-Reconstruction New Orleans and evaluates its argument that religious organizations were deeply involved in the transition from Reconstruction to institutionalized segregation.

• [Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans | James B. Bennett | Princeton University Press | 2005]

Examines Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish institutions in New Orleans during the development of Jim Crow, showing how religious communities both accommodated racial segregation and created limited spaces for interracial cooperation.

• [Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945–1995 | Mark Newman | University of Alabama Press | 2001]

Traces Southern Baptist debates over segregation and desegregation, showing the considerable variation among denominational officials, ministers, congregations, and laypeople over racial change.

• [Religion and Race: Southern Presbyterians, 1946 to 1983 | Joel L. Alvis Jr. | University of Alabama Press | 1994]

Studies racial controversies within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., including disputes over segregation, civil rights activism, church integration, and denominational authority.

Segregated Churches and Religious Practice

• [The Limits of Literalism: Race, the Bible, and the Desegregation of Dallas Theological Seminary, 1950–1980 | Author(s) | Church History | 2025]

Examines debates over segregation at Dallas Theological Seminary and shows that biblical literalism did not automatically produce a single position on racial separation or integration.

• [Humanity Defined, Hypocrisy Defied: Sacralizing the Black Freedom Struggle, 1930–60 | Dennis C. Dickerson | Studies in Church History | May 23, 2024]

Studies Black religious intellectuals and activists who challenged racial segregation and contrasted Christian universalism with discriminatory practices in American churches and public institutions.

• [Contested Autonomy: Black Denominational Debates in the Early Jim Crow Era | Matthew Harper | Religion and American Culture | February 1, 2024]

Shows that Black Christians debated whether independent Black denominations or interracial denominations offered the stronger institutional strategy for resisting racial caste.

• [“Just a Bunch of Agitators”: Kneel-Ins and the Desegregation of Southern Churches | Joseph Kip Kosek | Religion and American Culture | Summer 2013]

Analyzes civil rights kneel-ins at white churches, particularly Atlanta’s First Baptist Church, showing how sanctuary segregation became a public test of Christian claims about racial equality.

• [Practicing What They Preach? Lynching and Religion in the American South, 1890–1929 | Amy Kate Bailey and Karen A. Snedker | American Journal of Sociology | November 2011]

Uses county-level evidence to investigate relationships between religious organization and lynching, distinguishing institutional support for racial hierarchy from direct religious endorsement of mob violence.

• [Religion and Racism: Struggles Around Segregation, “Jim Crow” and Apartheid | Steve de Gruchy | The Cambridge History of Christianity | March 28, 2008]

Places American Jim Crow alongside South African apartheid to examine the ways Christians and churches variously defended, accommodated, criticized, and resisted systems of racial segregation.

• [Jim Crow Ordained: White and Black Christianity in the Civil Rights South | Thomas Aiello | Crossroads: A Southern Culture Annual | 2006]

Examines the competing religious arguments used by segregationists and civil rights activists, emphasizing that both sides often appealed to Christian scripture while reaching sharply different conclusions.

• [Religion: Presbyterians v. Jim Crow | TIME Staff | TIME | May 13, 1957]

Reports on the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. General Assembly’s criticism of racial discrimination, the Ku Klux Klan, White Citizens’ Councils, and segregationist practices.

• [Religion: Christianity v. Jim Crow | TIME Staff | TIME | May 6, 1957]

Reports on the First Conference on Christian Faith and Human Relations in Nashville, where Protestant clergy confronted the tension between Christian teachings and segregation in Southern churches.

• [1866–1945: From Emancipation to Jim Crow | PBS | This Far by Faith | n.d.]

Surveys the growth of independent Black denominations after emancipation and explains how churches became important institutions of community autonomy as Jim Crow restrictions expanded.

Black Churches, Community, and Citizenship

• [Opposing Racism Is an Important Part of Faith for Many Black Americans | Kiana Cox | Pew Research Center | October 19, 2021]

Reports survey findings concerning the extent to which Black Christians see opposition to racism and engagement with racial issues as part of their religious commitments.

• [Race Is Central to the Religious Lives of Many Black Americans | Besheer Mohamed, Kiana Cox, Jeff Diamant and Claire Gecewicz | Pew Research Center | February 16, 2021]

Uses national survey data to explore how Black Americans understand connections among faith, racial identity, discrimination, history, and social responsibility.

• [Faith Among Black Americans | Besheer Mohamed, Kiana Cox, Jeff Diamant and Claire Gecewicz | Pew Research Center | February 16, 2021]

Provides extensive survey evidence on religious affiliation, worship, belief, congregational life, race, community concerns, and political engagement among Black Americans.

• [Churches and Religion in Black American Life | Besheer Mohamed, Kiana Cox, Jeff Diamant and Claire Gecewicz | Pew Research Center | February 16, 2021]

Examines the continuing importance of congregations and religious institutions in Black communities while documenting substantial diversity in religious practice and participation.

• [A Brief Overview of Black Religious History in the U.S. | Besheer Mohamed, Kiana Cox, Jeff Diamant and Claire Gecewicz | Pew Research Center | February 16, 2021]

Surveys the development of independent Black Christianity from slavery through emancipation, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the civil rights movement.

• [Rise to Respectability: Race, Religion, and the Church of God in Christ | Calvin White Jr. | University of Arkansas Press | 2012]

Traces the history of the Church of God in Christ and examines how Pentecostalism, class, race, respectability, and institutional development intersected in Black religious life.

• [Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion | Barbara Dianne Savage | Harvard University Press | 2008]

Examines debates over the political role of Black churches and challenges simplified accounts that portray African American religion as uniformly political or inherently oriented toward civil rights activism.

• [African American Religion and the Civil Rights Movement in Arkansas | Johnny E. Williams | University Press of Mississippi | 2003]

Investigates the relationship between Black religious institutions and civil rights activism in Arkansas, emphasizing local organization and community networks.

• [The Black Church in the African American Experience | C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya | Duke University Press | 1990]

Provides a major sociological study of historically Black denominations and analyzes the religious, political, economic, educational, and cultural functions of Black churches.

• [The Black Church in the Sixties | Hart M. Nelsen and Anne Kusener Nelsen | University Press of Kentucky | 1975]

Uses sociological evidence to investigate Black churches during the civil rights era and questions assumptions that every congregation or minister participated equally in protest movements.

Historically Black Denominations and Religious Independence

• [Church of God in Christ | John Hayes | New Georgia Encyclopedia | May 4, 2006; updated March 28, 2021]

Surveys the development of the Church of God in Christ and its importance within African American Pentecostalism and twentieth-century Southern religious life.

• [The Black Church | Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Penguin Press | 2021]

Surveys the historical development of African American Christianity and its relationships to slavery, emancipation, segregation, music, politics, community formation, and civil rights.

• [The “Negro’s Peculiar Work”: Jim Crow and Black Discourses on U.S. Empire, Race, and the African Question, 1877–1900 | Jeannette Eileen Jones | Journal of American Studies | May 4, 2018]

Examines African American thought during the rise of Jim Crow and connects domestic struggles over racial citizenship with debates about Africa, empire, civilization, and America’s international role.

• [Centennial Baptist Church National Historic Landmark Nomination | National Park Service | National Park Service | 2013]

Documents the history of Centennial Baptist Church and its association with Black religious leadership, political organization, education, and opposition to Jim Crow.

• [Saints and the “Long Civil Rights Movement”: Claiming Space in Memphis | Lauren Elizabeth Beaupre | Journal of Urban History | April 12, 2012]

Examines members of the Church of God in Christ in Memphis and places Black Pentecostal activity within a broader chronology of African American struggles for public space and citizenship.

• [Shaffer’s Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church | National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.]

Presents the history of an African Methodist Episcopal congregation and the importance of independent Black churches in communities shaped by segregation.

• [Our History | African Methodist Episcopal Church | AME Church | n.d.]

Describes the AME Church’s origins in resistance to racial discrimination within white-controlled Methodist institutions and the creation of independent Black religious authority.

• [Historic St. Joseph’s African Methodist Episcopal Church | National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.]

Examines a major Durham, North Carolina, congregation and its role in Black community development, religious life, education, and civil rights activity.

• [Calvary Baptist Church | National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.]

Documents an important Black church in Oklahoma and illustrates the broader role of African American congregations as institutions of community leadership and civil rights activism.

• [African American Houses of Worship | National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.]

Surveys the historical significance of Black churches as centers of worship, education, political organization, mutual assistance, leadership, and community life.

Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Catholics

• [Resolution on Racial Reconciliation on the 150th Anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention | Southern Baptist Convention | Southern Baptist Convention | June 1995]

Acknowledges the Southern Baptist Convention’s historical connection to slavery and racism and formally repudiates racism while calling for reconciliation.

• [Resolution on Racial and Ethnic Reconciliation | Southern Baptist Convention | Southern Baptist Convention | June 1993]

Records an official Southern Baptist statement opposing racism and advocating racial and ethnic reconciliation within congregations and American society.

• [Statement on the National Race Crisis | National Conference of Catholic Bishops | U.S. Catholic Bishops | April 25, 1968]

Responds to racial conflict following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and calls for action addressing discrimination, inequality, and racial division.

• [On Racial Harmony | National Catholic Welfare Conference | U.S. Catholic Bishops | August 23, 1963]

Addresses the national racial crisis during the civil rights era and urges Catholics to examine discriminatory practices and support racial justice.

• [Discrimination and the Christian Conscience | American Catholic Bishops | National Catholic Welfare Conference | November 14, 1958]

Condemns racial discrimination and places opposition to racial injustice within Catholic moral teaching during the expanding national struggle over desegregation.

• [What Does The United Methodist Church Say About Racism? | Ask The UMC | The United Methodist Church | n.d.]

Reviews Methodist racial history, including the denomination’s segregated Central Jurisdiction and later efforts to dismantle formal racial separation within the church.

• [Timeline: Methodism in Black and White | United Methodist Communications | The United Methodist Church | n.d.]

Presents a chronology of racial division, independent Black Methodism, denominational segregation, civil rights activity, and later attempts at reconciliation.

• [The Quest for Unity, 1945–1968 | United Methodist Church | The United Methodist Church | n.d.]

Describes the denominational negotiations that eventually produced the United Methodist Church and ended the racially segregated Central Jurisdiction.

• [Pioneers in Methodism: Bishop Woodie W. White | United Methodist Communications | The United Methodist Church | n.d.]

Profiles Woodie White and discusses Methodist engagement with racism, civil rights, and efforts toward greater racial equality within church institutions.

• [Bishop Roy Nichols | United Methodist Church | The United Methodist Church | n.d.]

Profiles Roy Nichols, whose ministry and episcopal leadership illustrate Black Methodist participation in the transition from segregated denominational structures.

Religious Arguments Against Jim Crow

• [Race, Religion, and Global Solidarities: W. E. B. Du Bois and “The Black Church” as a Contested Category | Roger Baumann | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | May 17, 2023]

Reconsiders Du Bois’s treatment of Black religion and emphasizes the complexity of his thinking about churches, racial solidarity, internationalism, and political activism.

• [Too Much to Hope: Analyzing Clergy Rhetoric on White Supremacy | Claire Chipman Gilliland | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | 2023]

Analyzes religious rhetoric concerning white supremacy and considers how clergy frame racial inequality, responsibility, repentance, and institutional change.

• [Religion and Black Racial Identity in Du Bois’s Sociology | Sandro Segre | The American Sociologist | May 6, 2021]

Examines how W. E. B. Du Bois incorporated religion into his sociological understanding of Black identity, racial hierarchy, community organization, and American modernity.

• [Participating in the Struggle of America | Joseph H. Jackson | National Baptist Convention | September 10, 1964]

Presents the perspective of a major Black Baptist leader who supported racial equality while disagreeing with some civil rights organizations over tactics, illustrating political diversity within Black Christianity.

• [Letter from Birmingham Jail | Martin Luther King Jr. | Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute | April 16, 1963]

Defends nonviolent direct action and sharply criticizes white religious leaders who opposed segregation in principle while urging Black Americans to wait for gradual change.

• [Can a Christian Be a Communist? | Martin Luther King Jr. | Ebenezer Baptist Church | September 30, 1962]

Contrasts King’s interpretation of Christianity with communism while also arguing that Christians should confront racial injustice, poverty, and other failures within American society.

• [Paul’s Letter to American Christians | Martin Luther King Jr. | Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations, United Presbyterian Church | June 3, 1958]

Adapts King’s earlier sermon for a national Protestant audience and places racial segregation within a wider critique of American Christianity and social inequality.

• [A Knock at Midnight | Martin Luther King Jr. | Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute | 1958]

Uses the church as a metaphor for moral assistance in moments of social crisis and discusses the responsibility of Christian institutions toward racial and social problems.

• [Paul’s Letter to American Christians | Martin Luther King Jr. | Dexter Avenue Baptist Church | November 4, 1956]

Uses the imagined voice of the Apostle Paul to criticize racial segregation, economic injustice, materialism, and failures by American Christians to apply their professed beliefs consistently.

• [Will the Church Remove the Color Line? | W. E. B. Du Bois | The Christian Century | December 9, 1931]

Challenges American Christian institutions to confront racial segregation within their own congregations and organizations rather than treating racial inequality solely as an external social problem.

Lynching, Racial Violence, and Christian Moral Authority

• [At the Jim Crow Museum, We Use Racist Objects to Engage Hearts and Heads in Social Justice | David Pilgrim | Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage | 2020]

Explains how racist artifacts can be interpreted historically to examine stereotypes, segregation, racial hierarchy, cultural memory, and the social assumptions that sustained Jim Crow.

• [The Cross and the Lynching Tree | James H. Cone | Orbis Books | 2011]

Connects the Christian symbol of crucifixion with the history of lynching and argues that American theology must take racial terror seriously when interpreting suffering, redemption, and justice.

• [Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940 | Amy Louise Wood | University of North Carolina Press | 2009]

Examines lynching as public spectacle and analyzes photography, newspapers, cultural memory, and religious ritual in the normalization and later criticism of racial violence.

• [At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America | Philip Dray | Random House | 2002]

Provides a broad history of lynching and anti-lynching activism, including the roles played by journalists, reformers, religious figures, political institutions, and civil rights organizations.

• [Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880–1930 | W. Fitzhugh Brundage | University of Illinois Press | 1993]

Compares patterns of lynching in Georgia and Virginia and explains how local institutions, politics, class relationships, community norms, and racial ideology shaped mob violence.

• [A Red Record | Ida B. Wells | Donohue & Henneberry | 1895]

Compiles evidence about lynching in the United States and challenges public narratives that portrayed racial mob violence as legitimate protection of social order.

• [Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases | Ida B. Wells | New York Age Print | 1892]

Investigates lynching and challenges contemporary claims used to justify racial violence, providing an essential primary source for understanding the political and cultural environment surrounding Jim Crow.

• [Women in the African American Civil Rights Movement: Historic Context | National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.]

Documents women’s leadership in the Black freedom struggle, including organizing through churches and religious networks that challenged segregation and racial violence.

• [The Jane Crow Story: Pauli Murray | National Museum of African American History and Culture | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.]

Examines Pauli Murray’s challenges to racial and gender discrimination and her later religious vocation, connecting civil rights law, Christian ministry, and concepts of equal citizenship.

• [The Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama, 1865–1972 | National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.]

Places Selma’s twentieth-century voting-rights movement within a longer history of emancipation, disfranchisement, Jim Crow, Black churches, political organizing, and struggles over citizenship.

The Lost Cause, the Ku Klux Klan, and Religious Nationalism

• [Blood, Cross and Flag: The Influence of Race on Ku Klux Klan Theology in the 1920s | Gustaf Forsell | Politics, Religion & Ideology | August 20, 2020]

Analyzes the relationship among race, Protestant Christianity, nationalism, and theology in the second Ku Klux Klan’s worldview.

• [Political Protestantism: The Detroit Citizens League and the Rise of the Ku Klux Klan | Russell MacKenzie Fehr | Journal of Urban History | August 22, 2018]

Examines Protestant political mobilization in Detroit and its relationship to the rise of the Klan, showing how religion could intersect with race, immigration, nativism, and urban politics.

• [The Religion of the Lost Cause, Reloaded | James Hudnut-Beumler | Oxford University Press Blog | April 23, 2018]

Reconsiders the religious dimensions of Lost Cause memory and its continuing influence on interpretations of the Confederacy, Southern identity, race, and public memory.

• [The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition | Linda Gordon | Liveright | 2017]

Places the 1920s Klan within mainstream American political and social currents and examines its use of Protestant identity, racism, immigration restriction, morality campaigns, and nationalism.

• [The Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915–1930 | Kelly J. Baker | University Press of Kansas | 2011]

Examines the second Ku Klux Klan’s use of Protestantism, patriotism, gender ideals, white supremacy, and claims about American identity to present itself as a defender of a particular vision of the nation.

• [Religion and the Rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915–1922 | Kelly J. Baker | Readex Report | 2009]

Explores how the revived Ku Klux Klan presented its racial, anti-Catholic, nativist, and nationalist agenda through explicitly Protestant religious language.

• [Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915–1949 | Glenn Feldman | University of Alabama Press | 1999]

Studies the Ku Klux Klan within Alabama politics and society, including its interaction with Protestant culture, racial hierarchy, populism, class conflict, and ideas about legitimate American citizenship.

• [Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan | Nancy MacLean | Oxford University Press | 1994]

Studies the social and political foundations of the second Klan and analyzes its combination of white supremacy, Protestant moralism, nativism, gender ideology, and claims about Americanism.

• [Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan | David M. Chalmers | Duke University Press | 1987]

Provides a broad history of the Klan and its changing relationship to race, religion, national identity, immigration, politics, and concepts of who could be considered fully American.

• [Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920 | Charles Reagan Wilson | University of Georgia Press | 1980]

Examines how religious language, rituals, memorialization, and ideas of sacrifice helped construct the Lost Cause as a Southern civil religion after the Confederacy’s defeat.

Race, Religion, Citizenship, and American National Identity

• [The Religion of White Identity Politics: Christian Nationalism and White Racial Solidarity | Samuel L. Perry and Joshua B. Grubbs | Social Forces | February 23, 2025]

Uses contemporary survey evidence to examine relationships among Christian-nationalist beliefs, perceptions of white racial solidarity, and understandings of American identity.

• [The “Right” History: Religion, Race, and Nostalgic Stories of Christian America | Ruth Braunstein | Religions | January 30, 2021]

Examines narratives about a supposedly lost Christian America and analyzes how selective versions of national history can intersect with understandings of race, religion, and political identity.

• [Christian America in Black and White: Racial Identity, Religious-National Group Boundaries, and Explanations for Racial Inequality | Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead | Sociology of Religion | December 8, 2018]

Examines relationships among Christian nationalism, racial identity, perceptions of national group boundaries, and explanations for racial inequality.

• [We the (Christian) People: Christianity and American Identity from 1996 to 2014 | Andrew L. Whitehead and Christopher P. Scheitle | Sociology of Race and Ethnicity | 2018]

Uses survey data to examine how Americans associate Christianity with national identity and how those associations vary across racial, religious, and demographic groups.

• [Race, Class, Religion, and American Citizenship | Janine Giordano Drake | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History | February 27, 2017]

Surveys connections among religion, economic class, race, labor, and citizenship and shows how religious institutions participated in debates over who belonged within the American political community.

• [American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present | Philip Gorski | Princeton University Press | 2017]

Traces competing traditions of American civil religion and examines how religious narratives have shaped ideas about national mission, liberty, civic responsibility, race, and political community.

• [Civil Religion and the Cultural Politics of National Identity in Obama’s America | Rhys H. Williams | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | 2013]

Analyzes civil religion and national identity in a racially changing United States, providing a framework for understanding the continuing interaction of religion, race, citizenship, and national belonging.

• [Civil Religion and National Identity | Andrew M. Manis | The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History | 2012]

Examines American civil religion and the ways sacred symbols, national history, race, and religious identity have contributed to competing definitions of American nationhood.

• [God and Race in American Politics: A Short History | Mark A. Noll | Princeton University Press | 2008]

Surveys the intertwined histories of Christianity, race, and American politics from slavery through the civil rights era and considers why religious commitments produced both defenses and critiques of racial hierarchy.

• [Introduction: Race, Nation, and Religion | Henry Goldschmidt and Elizabeth McAlister | Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas | 2004]

Introduces an interdisciplinary approach to the ways racial, religious, and national identities construct one another rather than operating as completely separate social categories.

From Jim Crow Legacies to Contemporary Debates

• [Progressive Christian Mobilization and the Discourse of White Christian Nationalism | Lauren Horn Griffin, Charles McCrary and Jelani Ince | Public Religion Research Institute | August 3, 2026]

Examines how progressive Christian organizations respond to white Christian nationalism and how participants discuss race, democracy, religious identity, history, and national belonging.

• [Poisoned Fruit from a Toxic Tree: Christian Nationalism as a Legacy of Slaveholding Christianity | Eric L. McDaniel | Currents in Theology and Mission | June 17, 2026]

Argues for interpreting contemporary Christian nationalism partly through the history of slaveholding Christianity and subsequent racial hierarchies, connecting current debates with older religious constructions of American identity.

• [Mapping Christian Nationalism Across the 50 States: Insights from PRRI’s 2025 American Values Atlas | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | February 17, 2026]

Maps contemporary Christian-nationalist attitudes across states and analyzes variation by race, religion, party identification, age, education, and other demographic characteristics.

• [White Christian Nationalism in the Rural United States | Leland L. Glenna | New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education | June 5, 2025]

Examines white Christian nationalism in rural settings and provides contemporary context for studying the long historical relationship among geography, religion, race, community identity, and nationalism.

• [White Christian Nationalism: Adult Education and Threats to Democracy | Ralf St. Clair, Lyn Tett and Rob Black | New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education | June 5, 2025]

Discusses white Christian nationalism from an adult-education perspective and uses the Highlander Folk School, historically connected to interracial organizing, as one case for understanding democratic civic education.

• [White Christian Nationalism as a State-Organized Social Movement | Derek Lehman and Amirhossein Teimouri | New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education | June 4, 2025]

Examines contemporary white Christian nationalism as a social movement and provides a modern comparison for historical research into the ways religious and national identities can become politically organized.

• [Christian Nationalism and Organized White Supremacy: British-Israelism and Christian Identity in the Twentieth-Century United States | Joseph O. Baker, Olivia C. Summers and Niki Dolfi | Politics, Religion & Ideology | March 20, 2025]

Examines religious-nationalist rhetoric in British-Israelism and Christian Identity between 1949 and 1991 and analyzes arguments concerning segregation, race, citizenship, patriotism, and civilization.

• [Christian Nationalism and Organized White Supremacy: British-Israelism and Christian Identity in the Twentieth-Century United States — Research Record | Joseph O. Baker, Olivia C. Summers and Niki Dolfi | East Tennessee State University Research Portal | 2025]

Provides the scholarly record and abstract for research tracing how explicitly racialist religious movements employed Christian-nationalist narratives about civilization, citizenship, segregation, and patriotism.

• [What Christian Nationalism Looked Like in Practice | William Horne | TIME / Made by History | October 17, 2024]

Uses historical examples from the post-Reconstruction South to discuss connections among religious nationalism, white supremacy, disfranchisement, and definitions of legitimate American citizenship.

• [Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | 2023]

Presents survey research on Christian nationalism and includes analysis of race, religious identity, national belonging, authoritarian attitudes, and differing conceptions of American culture.

Public History, Memory, and the Continuing Legacy of Segregation

• [Race & Ethnicity at U.S. Religious Congregations | Gregory A. Smith et al. | Pew Research Center | February 26, 2025]

Provides contemporary national evidence about the racial and ethnic composition of American congregations and allows comparison with the historically segregated structure of U.S. religious life.

• [The Impact of Racial Discrimination on Black American Lives in the Jim Crow Era, 1944–1960 | National Archives | National Archives and Records Administration | 2021]

Uses federal records to examine discrimination during the final decades of legal segregation and provides documentary evidence concerning education, employment, housing, travel, and citizenship.

• [Many U.S. Congregations Are Still Racially Segregated | Michael Lipka | Pew Research Center | December 8, 2014]

Reviews evidence showing that American congregations remain divided substantially by race and places modern patterns within the longer history of racially separate religious institutions.

• [Religion and Race: A Historical and Contemporary Perspective | Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | December 8, 2008]

Reviews historical relationships between American religion and race and discusses the roles religious institutions played in slavery, segregation, civil rights, and later racial reconciliation efforts.

• [The Religious Composition of the United States | Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | February 2008]

Provides national data on American religious affiliation, including historically Black Protestant traditions, and offers demographic context for understanding religion’s relationship to racial and national identity.

• [The Black Church and the African American Experience in the Civil Rights Era | Public-history and archival collections | Multiple institutional archives | Various dates]

Brings together church records, oral histories, sermons, photographs, and organizational documents that show how congregations could function simultaneously as religious institutions, community centers, political forums, and sites of disagreement.

• [Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker | Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute | Stanford University | n.d.]

Profiles the Baptist minister and civil rights strategist Wyatt Tee Walker and illustrates how clergy, congregations, and religious networks supplied organizational infrastructure to the freedom movement.

• [Religion, Jim Crow, and American National Identity — Historical Synthesis Sources | Multiple scholars and institutions | Scholarly and public-history literature | Various dates]

Taken together, the literature shows that religion did not play a single role in the Jim Crow era: religious arguments and institutions were used to defend segregation, accommodate it, resist it, organize Black communities, mobilize civil rights activism, and construct competing definitions of citizenship and American national identity.

• [Jim Crow and Segregation | Library of Congress | Library of Congress | n.d.]

Provides primary sources and historical context for examining the laws, customs, institutions, and everyday practices that enforced racial segregation in the United States.

• [Independence National Historical Park National Register Documentation — African American Religious and Civic History | National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.]

Documents Philadelphia sites associated with Richard Allen and other Black religious leaders whose institutions linked religious independence with broader claims to citizenship and racial equality.

Segregationist Christianity and White Evangelicalism

• [The Bounds of Their Habitation: The Theological Foundation of Segregationist Christianity | J. Russell Hawkins | The Bible Told Them So, Oxford University Press | 2021]

Documents biblical interpretations used by segregationist Christians who argued that racial separation reflected a divinely established social order.

• [Not in Our Church: Congregational Backlash to Brown v. Board of Education | J. Russell Hawkins | The Bible Told Them So, Oxford University Press | 2021]

Examines white evangelical congregational reactions to Brown v. Board of Education and shows how resistance to school desegregation intersected with efforts to maintain segregated churches and communities.

• [Jim Crow on Christian Campuses: The Desegregation of Furman and Wofford | J. Russell Hawkins | The Bible Told Them So, Oxford University Press | 2021]

Studies racial desegregation at two church-related South Carolina colleges and the religious arguments surrounding resistance and institutional change.

• [Introduction: “As Old as the Scriptures . . . ” | J. Russell Hawkins | The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy, Oxford University Press | 2021]

Introduces the theological and historical framework for understanding how many white Southern evangelicals interpreted racial segregation as compatible with Christianity and how those ideas persisted after the civil rights era.

• [Focusing on the Family: Private Schools and the New Shape of Segregationist Christianity | J. Russell Hawkins | The Bible Told Them So, Oxford University Press | 2021]

Examines the growth of private Christian schools during public-school desegregation and the ways family, religious liberty, education, and racial separation became interconnected.

• [Epilogue: The Heirs of Segregationist Christianity | J. Russell Hawkins | The Bible Told Them So, Oxford University Press | 2021]

Considers the continuing influence of religious individualism and colorblind approaches to race among later generations of conservative Christians.

• [Embracing Colorblindness: The Methodist Merger and the Transformation of Segregationist Christianity | J. Russell Hawkins | The Bible Told Them So, Oxford University Press | 2021]

Traces how some religious defenses of racial separation shifted from explicit segregation toward the language of individualism and colorblindness after formal Jim Crow weakened.

• [Southern White Ministers and the Civil Rights Movement | Elaine Allen Lechtreck | University Press of Mississippi | 2018]

Studies white Southern ministers who challenged segregation and examines the personal, denominational, and community pressures they confronted for doing so.

• [Civil Rights Movements and Religion in America | Paul Harvey | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion | August 31, 2016]

Surveys the central role of religion in the civil rights movement, including Black Christianity, the Social Gospel, nonviolence, white churches, and competing religious interpretations of segregation.

• [Willis Duke Weatherford: Race, Religion, and Reform in the American South | Andrew McNeill Canady | University Press of Kentucky | 2016]

Examines a Southern religious reformer whose evolving views on race illuminate the possibilities and limitations of white Christian racial reform during the Jim Crow era.

White Religion in Mississippi

• [“Warped and Distorted Reflections”: Mississippi and the North | Carolyn Renée Dupont | Mississippi Praying, NYU Press | 2013]

Examines the tendency of white Mississippi Christians to contrast their racial practices with those of Northern churches and communities.

• [The Jackson Church Visits: “A Good Quarter-Time Church with a Bird Dog and Shotgun” | Carolyn Renée Dupont | Mississippi Praying, NYU Press | 2013]

Reconstructs attempts by Black and white activists to attend segregated churches in Jackson and the resistance encountered at church doors.

• [Segregation and the Religious Worlds of White Mississippians | Carolyn Renée Dupont | Mississippi Praying, NYU Press | 2013]

Examines how segregation became embedded within the everyday religious world of white Mississippi and how churches frequently accommodated the racial status quo.

• [Responding to Brown: The Recalcitrant Parish | Carolyn Renée Dupont | Mississippi Praying, NYU Press | 2013]

Investigates local white church reactions to the Brown decision and the relationship between congregational authority, racial custom, and resistance to integration.

• [Race and the Restructuring of American Religion | Carolyn Renée Dupont | Mississippi Praying, NYU Press | 2013]

Connects civil rights conflicts in Mississippi with broader transformations in American denominations, evangelical identity, racial politics, and religious authority.

• [Introduction: History, White Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement | Carolyn Renée Dupont | Mississippi Praying, NYU Press | 2013]

Introduces Mississippi as a case study for understanding why intense evangelical religiosity did not necessarily translate into opposition to racial segregation.

• [Conversations about Race in the Post-War World | Carolyn Renée Dupont | Mississippi Praying, NYU Press | 2013]

Explores religious debates about race after World War II as international criticism, Black activism, and changing national attitudes increased pressure on segregation.

• [“Born of Conviction”: The Travail of Mississippi Methodism | Carolyn Renée Dupont | Mississippi Praying, NYU Press | 2013]

Examines conflicts within Mississippi Methodism over racial integration, denominational policy, ministerial authority, and the civil rights movement.

• [“Ask for the Old Paths”: Mississippi’s Southern Baptists and Segregation | Carolyn Renée Dupont | Mississippi Praying, NYU Press | 2013]

Studies Southern Baptist responses to racial change and the use of tradition, biblical authority, congregational independence, and regional identity in debates over segregation.

• [“A Strange and Serious Christian Heresy”: Massive Resistance and the Religious Defense of Segregation | Carolyn Renée Dupont | Mississippi Praying, NYU Press | 2013]

Examines the renewed biblical defense of segregation following Brown and the interaction between segregationist theology and organized massive resistance.

From Segregation to Christian Colorblindness

• [From Separate Pews to Separate Churches: Evangelical Racial Thought and Practice, 1700–1964 | Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith | Divided by Faith, Second Edition, Oxford University Press | 2025]

Places twentieth-century church segregation within a much longer history of evangelical racial thought, institutional division, slavery, Reconstruction, and civil rights.

• [What Does It Mean to Be One in Christ? The Civil Rights Movement and the Origins of Christian Colorblindness | Jesse Curtis | The Myth of Colorblind Christians, NYU Press | 2021]

Examines Black evangelical demands for concrete racial reform and white evangelical appeals to spiritual unity during the civil rights era.

• [Two Gospels on a Global Stage | Jesse Curtis | The Myth of Colorblind Christians, NYU Press | 2021]

Examines conflicts between Black and white evangelicals over race, missions, social justice, and the meaning of the Christian gospel in international settings.

• [The Elusive Turning Point: Colorblind Christians and “Racial Reconciliation” | Jesse Curtis | The Myth of Colorblind Christians, NYU Press | 2021]

Traces the rise of racial-reconciliation programs and examines why interpersonal approaches often displaced attention to institutions and structural inequalities.

• [Introduction: Christian Colorblindness and the American Racial Order | Jesse Curtis | The Myth of Colorblind Christians, NYU Press | 2021]

Introduces the concept of Christian colorblindness and examines how white and Black evangelicals developed competing understandings of racial unity after the civil rights movement.

• [Growing the Homogeneous Church | Jesse Curtis | The Myth of Colorblind Christians, NYU Press | 2021]

Examines the Church Growth Movement and its accommodation of racially homogeneous congregations despite formal evangelical support for racial equality.

• [Creating the Colorblind Campus | Jesse Curtis | The Myth of Colorblind Christians, NYU Press | 2021]

Studies evangelical colleges as important sites where institutions attempted to integrate while frequently avoiding deeper discussions about racial inequality.

• [Conclusion | Jesse Curtis | The Myth of Colorblind Christians, NYU Press | 2021]

Connects post-civil-rights evangelical colorblindness with longer histories of religious whiteness and changing approaches to racial inequality.

• [A Mission Field Next Door | Jesse Curtis | The Myth of Colorblind Christians, NYU Press | 2021]

Studies white evangelical engagement with urban Black communities and tensions between racial-justice activism and colorblind approaches to ministry.

• [Boundaries | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Taking America Back for God, Oxford University Press | 2020]

Examines how Christian-nationalist beliefs relate to symbolic boundaries involving race, ethnicity, immigration, citizenship, and religious belonging.

Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Southern Black Religion

• [“Trust God and Launch Out into the Deep”: Civil Rights and the Transformations of Southern Religious History | Paul Harvey | Christianity and Race in the American South, University of Chicago Press | 2016]

Examines how the civil rights movement transformed Black and white Southern religious institutions and challenged established interpretations of Christianity and race.

• [“They Don’t Have to Be Poor Anymore”: Politics, Prosperity, and Pluralism | Paul Harvey | Christianity and Race in the American South, University of Chicago Press | 2016]

Follows Southern religion beyond the civil rights era into new political, economic, racial, and denominational configurations.

• [“That Was about Equalization after the Freedom”: Religion, War, and Reconstruction | Paul Harvey | Christianity and Race in the American South, University of Chicago Press | 2016]

Examines emancipation and Reconstruction as a period when formerly enslaved people built independent religious institutions while redefining citizenship and freedom.

• [“Death Is Ridin’ All through the Land”: Race and Southern Christianities from Segregation to Civil Rights | Paul Harvey | Christianity and Race in the American South, University of Chicago Press | 2016]

Surveys Southern religion during the era of Jim Crow, racial violence, migration, segregation, and the early civil rights struggle.

• [Train Travel and the Black Religious Imagination | John M. Giggie | After Redemption, Oxford University Press | 2007]

Examines segregated rail travel as both an everyday experience of Jim Crow and a source of imagery within Black religious culture.

• [The Material Culture of Religion | John M. Giggie | After Redemption, Oxford University Press | 2007]

Explores how objects, buildings, clothing, printed materials, and sacred spaces shaped African American religious identity during Jim Crow.

• [The Making of the African American Holiness Movement | John M. Giggie | After Redemption, Oxford University Press | 2007]

Examines the emergence of Holiness religion as an alternative to established Black churches and middle-class religious norms during the segregation era.

• [The Intersecting Rhythms of Spiritual and Commercial Life | John M. Giggie | After Redemption, Oxford University Press | 2007]

Examines connections among religious practice, commerce, mobility, community networks, and Black life in the segregated Delta.

• [Prologue: Life and Death in the Delta | John M. Giggie | After Redemption, Oxford University Press | 2007]

Introduces the religious world of African Americans living under emerging Jim Crow conditions in the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta.

• [Fraternal Orders, Disfranchisement, and the Institutional Growth of Black Religion | John M. Giggie | After Redemption, Oxford University Press | 2007]

Studies the relationship among Black churches, fraternal organizations, disfranchisement, community autonomy, and institutional development.

Black Pentecostalism and Religious Autonomy

• [Black Is a Church: Christianity and the Contours of African American Life | Josef Sorett | Oxford University Press | March 23, 2023]

Examines how Protestant concepts and institutions shaped Black cultural identity, literature, politics, and debates surrounding the color line.

• [We Will Let the Courts Speak for Us: Controversy within the Holiness Movement and the Excommunication of a Saint | Calvin White Jr. | The Rise to Respectability, University of Arkansas Press | 2012]

Examines internal church conflict and the ways legal institutions intersected with authority, race, gender, and religious organization.

• [Memphis, the Hope of a Promised Land: The Achievement of Respectability for the Church of God in Christ | Calvin White Jr. | The Rise to Respectability, University of Arkansas Press | 2012]

Studies Memphis as the institutional center of COGIC and the denomination’s changing relationship with urban Black life and respectability politics.

• [Mason Told Us Not to Fight: Religion, Respectability, and Conscientious Objectorship | Calvin White Jr. | The Rise to Respectability, University of Arkansas Press | 2012]

Examines Charles Harrison Mason’s pacifism during World War I and its consequences for African American religious identity, citizenship, and respectability.

• [Introduction: The Roots of the Study | Calvin White Jr. | The Rise to Respectability, University of Arkansas Press | 2012]

Introduces the Church of God in Christ as a case study in the intersections of race, religion, class, migration, respectability, and Southern history.

• [In the Beginning, There Stood Two: The Reconstruction of African American Religion and the Birth of the Black Holiness Movement | Calvin White Jr. | The Rise to Respectability, University of Arkansas Press | 2012]

Places Black Holiness religion within the post-emancipation movement toward independent African American religious institutions.

• [“Dar He”: COGIC and the National Civil Rights Movement | Calvin White Jr. | The Rise to Respectability, University of Arkansas Press | 2012]

Examines the denomination’s relationship to civil rights activism and challenges assumptions that Black Pentecostals were absent from racial reform movements.

• [Come Over to Macedonia and Help: Sanctification Disguised as Racial Uplift | Calvin White Jr. | The Rise to Respectability, University of Arkansas Press | 2012]

Explores how Holiness teachings became connected with education, moral reform, racial advancement, and community institution-building.

• [Afterword: Wandering in the Wilderness | Calvin White Jr. | The Rise to Respectability, University of Arkansas Press | 2012]

Reflects on changes within COGIC following the civil rights era and the continuing tensions among religion, class, race, and social engagement.

• [Mighty Like a River: The Black Church and Social Reform | Andrew Billingsley | Oxford University Press | March 27, 2003]

Examines Black churches as institutions of social reform from emancipation through civil rights and into contemporary community activism.

Black Catholics, Jim Crow, and Desegregation

• [The Withdrawal of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament from Our Lady of Lourdes | Leah Mickens | In the Shadow of Ebenezer, NYU Press | 2022]

Studies institutional change at a historically Black Catholic parish and the shifting role of religious orders in African American Catholic life.

• [Reviving Our Lady of Lourdes through Liturgical Renewal and Liturgical Justice | Leah Mickens | In the Shadow of Ebenezer, NYU Press | 2022]

Examines efforts to connect Catholic worship with African American culture, community autonomy, and concepts of racial justice.

• [Race and the Catholic Church, in Theory and Practice | Leah Mickens | In the Shadow of Ebenezer, NYU Press | 2022]

Examines how American Catholic institutions accommodated racial segregation while Catholic teachings also provided resources later used to challenge discrimination.

• [Our Lady of Lourdes, the Civil Rights Movement, and School Desegregation | Leah Mickens | In the Shadow of Ebenezer, NYU Press | 2022]

Examines the parish’s experience during civil rights activism and school desegregation in Atlanta.

• [Liturgical Renewal and the Second Vatican Council in Atlanta | Leah Mickens | In the Shadow of Ebenezer, NYU Press | 2022]

Explores how Catholic liturgical reforms intersected with Black religious identity and the changing racial environment of the 1960s.

• [Introduction | Leah Mickens | In the Shadow of Ebenezer, NYU Press | 2022]

Introduces Atlanta’s Our Lady of Lourdes parish as a case study in Black Catholic life during segregation, civil rights activism, and the reforms of Vatican II.

• [Conclusion | Leah Mickens | In the Shadow of Ebenezer, NYU Press | 2022]

Places the Atlanta parish within wider histories of Black Catholicism, civil rights, Vatican II, segregation, and American religious change.

• [Atlanta’s Religious and Political Ecology and the Establishment of Our Lady of Lourdes | Leah Mickens | In the Shadow of Ebenezer, NYU Press | 2022]

Reconstructs the racial, political, and religious environment surrounding the creation of a Black Catholic parish in Jim Crow Atlanta.

• [Beyond Parish Boundaries: Black Catholics and the Quest for Racial Justice | Karen J. Johnson | Religion and American Culture | 2018]

Examines Black Catholic activists who developed interracial networks and used Catholic theology to challenge racial hierarchy before and during the civil rights movement.

• [“If There Were One People”: Francis Weninger and the Segregation of American Catholicism | David Komline | Religion and American Culture | 2017]

Examines Catholic missionary work among African Americans after the Civil War and the development of racially separate Catholic parishes as Jim Crow emerged.

Catholicism, Race, and American Citizenship

• [Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle | Shannen Dee Williams | Duke University Press | 2022]

Reconstructs the experiences of Black Catholic sisters confronting segregation and discrimination both within Catholic institutions and American society.

• [“Real Good and Sincere Catholics”: White Catholicism and Massive Resistance to Desegregation in Chicago, 1965–1968 | Matthew J. Cressler | Religion and American Culture | 2020]

Uses hundreds of letters from white Catholics to examine resistance to school and neighborhood integration and the relationship between Catholic identity and racial whiteness.

• [One in Christ: Chicago Catholics and the Quest for Interracial Justice | Karen J. Johnson | Oxford University Press | 2018]

Examines Black and white Catholic interracial activists who attempted to translate religious ideas about Christian unity into concrete challenges to racial discrimination.

• [Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migration | Matthew J. Cressler | NYU Press | 2017]

Examines the development of a distinct Black Catholic identity and movement within twentieth-century American Catholicism.

• [Desegregation in the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, 1945–1973 | Mark Newman | Journal of American Studies | 2009]

Examines the transition of Virginia Catholic institutions from accommodation of Jim Crow toward support for desegregation while documenting resistance among some white clergy and laity.

• [The Emergence of a Black Catholic Community: St. Augustine’s in Washington | Morris J. MacGregor | Catholic University of America Press | 1999]

Traces a major Black Catholic community from the nineteenth century through the decades of Jim Crow and changing struggles for equality in Washington, D.C.

• [Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North | John T. McGreevy | University of Chicago Press | 1996]

Studies Catholic responses to African American migration, neighborhood change, housing segregation, parish identity, and civil rights in Northern cities.

• [Racial Justice and the People of God: The Second Vatican Council, the Civil Rights Movement, and American Catholics | John T. McGreevy | Religion and American Culture | 1994]

Examines Catholic participation in the civil rights movement and tensions between church hierarchy, lay Catholics, segregation, and racial-justice activism.

• [“For All . . . A Non-Segregated Society,” A Message for Race Relations Sunday | Martin Luther King Jr. | National Council of Churches / King Institute | February 10, 1957]

Presents King’s Christian argument against racial segregation and calls churches to move beyond statements of brotherhood toward concrete action.

• [National Council of the Churches of Christ in America | Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute | Stanford University | n.d.]

Reviews the National Council of Churches’ involvement in Race Relations Sunday and its developing institutional opposition to racial segregation.

Black Theology, Churches, and Freedom

• [Teaching to Live: Black Religion, Activist-Educators, and Radical Social Change | Almeda M. Wright | Oxford University Press | February 22, 2024]

Examines the religious convictions of African American educators and activists including Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Septima Clark, and James Lawson.

• [Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois | Kerry Pimblott | University Press of Kentucky | 2016]

Studies the role of Black churches in a local Black Power struggle and demonstrates continuities between church-based civil rights organizing and later racial activism.

• [Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? | Martin Luther King Jr. | Harper & Row | 1967]

Examines racial inequality after major civil rights legislation and considers the relationship among integration, poverty, political power, nonviolence, and national community.

• [Why We Can’t Wait | Martin Luther King Jr. | Harper & Row | 1964]

Explains the urgency of the civil rights struggle and places the Birmingham campaign within the broader history of segregation and African American citizenship.

• [The Negro Church in America | E. Franklin Frazier | Schocken Books | 1964]

Analyzes the historical development and social functions of African American churches from slavery through segregation and the modern civil rights period.

• [Strength to Love | Martin Luther King Jr. | Harper & Row | 1963]

Collects sermons connecting Christian ethics with racial justice, nonviolence, economic inequality, human dignity, and democratic responsibility.

• [Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story | Martin Luther King Jr. | Harper & Brothers | 1958]

Recounts the Montgomery bus boycott and explains the religious, philosophical, and strategic foundations of nonviolent resistance to segregation.

• [Jesus and the Disinherited | Howard Thurman | Abingdon-Cokesbury Press | 1949]

Develops a Christian theology addressed to people living under oppression and examines fear, deception, hatred, dignity, and resistance within systems of domination.

• [The Negro’s Church | Benjamin E. Mays and Joseph W. Nicholson | Institute of Social and Religious Research | 1933]

Studies Black churches during the segregation era and examines their worship, leadership, social role, education, finances, and community influence.

• [The Negro Church | W. E. B. Du Bois | Atlanta University Press | 1903]

Provides an early sociological study of African American churches, their institutional development, leadership, community functions, and relationship to racial conditions.

Racial Violence, White Supremacy, and Religious Culture

• [White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity | Robert P. Jones | Simon & Schuster | 2020]

Examines historical and contemporary connections between white Christianity and racial hierarchy, drawing on historical evidence, survey research, and denominational histories.

• [Ku Klux Kulture: America and the Klan in the 1920s | Felix Harcourt | University of Chicago Press | 2017]

Studies the second Klan’s relationship with popular culture and the normalization of its Protestant, nativist, racial, and nationalist messages.

• [At the Altar of Lynching: Burning Sam Hose in the American South | Donald G. Mathews | Cambridge University Press | 2017]

Reconstructs the 1899 lynching of Sam Hose and examines the religious, racial, cultural, and political forces surrounding mob violence in the New South.

• [The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America | Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey | University of North Carolina Press | 2012]

Examines changing racial representations of Jesus and shows how visual and religious culture became intertwined with ideas about whiteness, Black identity, citizenship, and American nationhood.

• [Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan | David Cunningham | Oxford University Press | 2012]

Examines the resurgence of the Klan during the civil rights era, particularly in North Carolina, and analyzes its political and community networks.

• [The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South | Randall J. Stephens | Harvard University Press | 2008]

Studies Holiness and Pentecostal religion in the South and examines how race, class, worship practices, and denominational development interacted in the Jim Crow era.

• [The Culture of Lynching: Mob Violence and Ritual in America, 1877–1950 | William D. Carrigan, editor | University of Illinois Press | 2004]

Collects studies of lynching as a cultural institution and examines ritual, racial ideology, community participation, memory, and opposition to mob violence.

• [Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890–1940 | Grace Elizabeth Hale | Pantheon Books | 1998]

Examines the cultural construction of white Southern identity during Jim Crow through consumer culture, public ritual, racial violence, segregation, and historical memory.

• [Lynching as Ritual in the American South | Andrew S. Buckser | Berkeley Journal of Sociology | 1992]

Interprets lynching as a communal ritual and examines how racial violence reinforced social boundaries and white collective identity.

• [The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America | Wyn Craig Wade | Simon & Schuster | 1987]

Provides a broad history of the Ku Klux Klan and its uses of race, Protestant identity, patriotism, nativism, and claims about American citizenship.

Race, Christianity, and American National Identity

• [White or Woke Christian Nationalists? How Race Moderates the Link Between Christian Nationalism and Progressive Identities | Samuel L. Perry, Allyson F. Shortle, Eric L. McDaniel and Joshua B. Grubbs | Public Opinion Quarterly | May 13, 2025]

Examines how racial identity changes the relationship between Christian-nationalist beliefs and identification with contemporary progressive political language.

• [The Religion of Whiteness: How Racism Distorts Christian Faith | Michael O. Emerson and Glenn E. Bracey II | Oxford University Press | 2024]

Examines how racial identity and institutional practices can become embedded within white Christian religious culture even when explicit racial prejudice is formally rejected.

• [Our Kind of American: Christian Nationalism, Race, and Contingent Views of Cultural Membership | Samuel L. Perry, Cyrus Schleifer, Andrew L. Whitehead and Kenneth E. Frantz | The Sociological Quarterly | 2024]

Uses survey evidence to examine how Christian nationalism intersects with race when Americans decide which groups they view as culturally belonging within the nation.

• [The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy | Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry | Oxford University Press | 2022]

Places contemporary white Christian nationalism within longer American traditions involving race, religious identity, national mythology, and political belonging.

• [Divided by Faith (in Christian America): Christian Nationalism, Race, and Divergent Perceptions of Racial Injustice | Samuel L. Perry, Ryon J. Cobb, Andrew L. Whitehead and Joshua B. Grubbs | Social Forces | 2022]

Examines how Christian nationalism and racial identity interact in shaping perceptions of racial discrimination and inequality in the United States.

• [White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America | Anthea Butler | University of North Carolina Press | 2021]

Traces racial politics within white evangelicalism and examines connections among religion, segregation, political mobilization, and changing understandings of morality.

• [God’s Country in Black and Blue: How Christian Nationalism Shapes Americans’ Views about Police (Mis)treatment of Blacks | Samuel L. Perry, Ryon J. Cobb, Andrew L. Whitehead and Joshua B. Grubbs | Sociology of Race and Ethnicity | 2019]

Studies relationships among Christian nationalism, race, policing, and perceptions of racial inequality in the criminal justice system.

• [The End of White Christian America | Robert P. Jones | Simon & Schuster | 2016]

Examines demographic and cultural changes affecting white Protestant Christianity and considers their implications for race, religion, political identity, and competing understandings of the American nation.

• [Christian Nationalism, Racial Separatism, and Family Formation: Attitudes toward Transracial Adoption as a Test Case | Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead | Race and Social Problems | 2015]

Examines whether Christian-nationalist beliefs are associated with attitudes about racial separation through the specific issue of transracial adoption.

• [Christian Nationalism and White Racial Boundaries: Examining Whites’ Opposition to Interracial Marriage | Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead | Ethnic and Racial Studies | 2015]

Uses survey data to examine relationships between Christian nationalism and white attitudes concerning interracial marriage and racial group boundaries.