This roundtable aims to assess the state of the field of African American religious history and explore new directions and agendas for research. The 1978 publication of Albert Raboteau’s Slave Religion opened a new era in the study of African American religious history and stimulated scholarly interest in the theologies, religious experiences, and expressions of enslaved people. Since then, the field of African American religious history took shape largely around topics related to Black Protestant experience in the United States and concerning the relationship between religion and political activism. More recently, historians of African American religions have engaged gender and sexuality, critical race studies, media and the arts, capitalism, and transnational connections, among other topics, offering more texture and complexity to our understanding of the place of religion in African American history and life and of African American religions in American history. In light of recent popular and scholarly discussions that have aimed to historicize and complicate the notion of a singular “Black Church” as the sole locus of African American religious activity, the time is right to review the literature in the field and identify future research questions and agendas for the study of African American religious history. The roundtable will be organized around key questions highlighting the concerns that have shaped the field and that can help chart pressing areas for additional work.

The roundtable will begin with the session chair, Lerone Martin, orienting the discussion with a consideration of why we find it an important and fruitful time to assess the field and envision directions for future research. Judith Weisenfeld’s presentation focuses on what scholars have meant by religion and religious history, the implications for scholarship of traditional framings of African American religious history as largely Protestant church history, and suggests approaches to accounting for religious diversity, gender, and sexuality in African American religious history. Kelsey Christina Moss engages the geographic scope of African American religious history in her reflections on where scholars have sited their work and the benefits of using connective and comparative analysis to examine the religious experiences of Afro-Americans beyond mainland British North America and the United States. Anthea Butler explores how scholars have imagined when African American religious history matters in narratives of American religious history and African American studies and takes up the implications of periodization in the field. Finally, Vaughn Booker discusses how historians of African American religious life have approached their work in terms of sources and interdisciplinary methods and considers how engaging sources beyond those of clergy, churches, and denominations broadens the field.