Culture, Religion, and Corruption/Prosperity (A), (B), (C), (1), (2)

This chapter characterises the relations between culture, religion, and corruption/prosperity. It advances the explanations of the prosperity–religion nexus from the perspective of cultural attributes (e.g. trust, individualism, familialism) by comparing Roman Catholic and Protestant theologies.Protestant denominations have mostly relinquished their founding principles, while “Rome never changes” as per the Italian saying. Despite the progress after Vatican II, Roman Catholicism has not markedly altered its beliefs and practices or its institutional founding principles (i.e. Canon Law) since medieval times. The political repercussions of an ecumenism in “Rome terms” are beyond its theological or religious implications.Liberation theology urged the Latin American Roman Church to break away from its imperialist origins and favouritism for landlords, industrialists, and power elites. However, liberation theology never became the mainstream or hegemonic Catholic theology in Latin America.Distinct Protestant theologies and organisational forms have led to distinct outcomes. New forms of Protestantism (i.e. Pentecostalism) placing less emphasis on education are less likely to have a positive social impact than previous (historical) Protestant versions. Some Protestant denominations still adhere to intertextual historicist biblical interpretation and hold the belief that the papacy continues to be “Satan’s synagogue” today.The heavily criticised Prosperity Gospel (PG) movement has syncretic roots in Pentecostalism, New Thought, and African American religion, and is composed mainly of the middle classes and blacks.While syncretism has been a natural process in all religions, Jews and historical Protestants have tended to be more anti-syncretic given their Scriptural base of beliefs. In turn, the importance of traditions, in Roman Catholicism for instance, has led to include more non-orthodox rituals in its practice.

Dance, Religion, and the Legacy of European Colonialism

In the waning days of the Renaissance, the race among Western Europeans to control, convert, and displace Indigenous peoples around the globe precipitated a collision of cultures, unprecedented in scope, between Christians who largely denied dance a constitutive role in religious life and Indigenous traditions from Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas for whom dancing and religion were inseparable. In the economic, political, and cultural conflicts that ensued, the practice of dancing as religion emerged as a contested site—both a nearly universal target of Christian imperial and colonial oppression, and an equally frequent agent of Indigenous resistance, resilience, and creative response. Focusing on the United States, this article documents how European colonization of Native American people, and European and American enslavement of Africans precipitated cultural shifts in how each of these cultures conceived and practiced “dancing” in relation to “religion.” Among European and Euro-American colonizers, these collisions fueled some of the most virulent expressions of hostility toward dancing in Christian history—as an activity punishable by death—especially when that dancing appeared in the form of Native American or African American religion. Nevertheless, Native American and African American dancing also inspired Euro-American artists to create techniques and aesthetics of dance that they claimed functioned as religion. Such cases of religious art-dance in turn not only catalyzed the use of dancing in Christian worship, they spurred Western philosophers, scholars of religion, and Christian theologians to reconsider the importance of dancing for the study and practice of religion, Christianity included. Meanwhile, Native and African peoples, as they navigated the challenges of ongoing racism and oppression, created new forms of their own dance traditions. Some of these forms emerged in explicit dialogue with Christian forms and even in Christian contexts; and others have appeared on secular concert stages, representing ongoing efforts to preserve and perpetuate Native and African identity, spirituality, creativity, and agency. These projects are dismantling the conceptual typologies that Euro-Americans have used to devalue Native and Indigenous dancing, including the assumption that religion and dance are separable dimensions of human life.

The Practicality of Holiness

In the second edition of the book African American Religion: Varieties of Protest and Accommodation, Hans A. Baer and Merrill Singer explore the relationship between Black Holiness–Pentecostalism and social activism. Ultimately, the authors conclude this portion of their study by asserting that “the vast majority of African American conversionist sects [among which they include Black Holiness–Pentecostalism] remain apolitical in their posture toward the larger society.” The idea is that Black Holiness–Pentecostals tend to put more emphasis on socially approved behaviors, attitudes, work ethic, and styles of dress than on engaging in socioeconomic and political affairs. This article considers Baer and Singer’s claim that Black Holiness–Pentecostals have historically tended to be apathetic toward worldly concerns and puts that claim into conversation with the life and work of Ida Bell Robinson, founder of the Mt. Sinai Holy Church of America (1925–1946). I explore the issues of class, race, and gender in relation to holiness. Moreover, I contend that the distinct practices of early Black Holiness–Pentecostals proved critical to living a sanctified, or clean, life and also determined the ways local churches addressed and worked to remedy problems around poverty (both social and economic) in their communities.

Your Sister in the Gospel

In this biography of Jane Elizabeth Manning James, Quincy D. Newell traces the life of a free African American woman who converted to Mormonism in the early 1840s and remained a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS, or Mormon, Church) for the rest of her life. James worked as a servant for LDS founder Joseph Smith and his successor Brigham Young. She traveled to the Salt Lake Valley with the church and lived there until her death in 1908. In the last decades of her life, James persistently requested permission to perform the temple rituals that would ensure that she reached the highest degree of glory after death, but church leaders denied her requests because she was black. Nevertheless, they created a ritual just for her: a master–servant sealing that allowed her to be a servant in Joseph Smith’s household for eternity. James’s life provides a different angle on the development of the LDS Church than the experiences of white, male Mormons, whose perspective dominates the narrative of Mormon history. Her story is an important addition to the history of African American religion, American women’s history, the history of the American West, and the history of the LDS Church.