The second edition of “African Americans and Religious Freedom: New Perspectives for Congregations and Communities” was released on February 28.
A new preface ushers in a collection of essays rich and dynamic in religious practices, political cultures, and knowledge traditions, offered to readers compelled to interpret and speak to these troubling times through the lens and lived experiences of African Americans. Hosted by the BJC Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation and Wake Forest University School of Divinity, the book launch was marked by a release event at the Wake Washington Center in Washington, D.C., and was also livestreamed.
“The new preface underscores what many of us have long understood: religious freedom is not a static ideal, but it is a concept that must evolve alongside the realities of our time,” said Sabrina E. Dent, director of the BJC Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation and co-editor of the book. “This book offers a bold and fresh perspective on what religious freedom means for communities that have been continuously fighting for justice and dignity.”
Corey D. B. Walker, dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity and co-editor of the book, emphasized the need for more public conversations on religious freedom in our political moment. “The release of the second edition of “African Americans and Religious Freedom” provides a critical opportunity to deepen public conversations on how African American intellectual traditions and faith practices can shape and enrich our understanding of religious freedom,” he said. “In the face of mounting threats to democracy, these conversations are not only timely, they are crucial for reinforcing the foundations of our shared freedoms.”
Dent and Walker were joined by contributors Rahmah Abdulaleem, Co-chair of the Religious Freedom Committee of the American Bar Association, Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice and the Rev. William H. Lamar IV, pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. alongside Elizabeth Reiner Platt, director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School, for a conversation that named the current political reality, expanded attendees’ understandings of religious freedom, and called for a fuller and freer democracy. Like the book, each panelist also offered insights from their personal experiences during their presentations.
Abdulaleem shared her experiences of invisibility in religious spaces, wherein Islam was not considered. “Whose religious freedom are we really talking about?” she asked.
“Fighting for a true definition of religious freedom” and defining herself as “an African American Muslim woman lawyer,” she said, “Let’s be honest. When you think about religious freedom, you don’t picture someone like me.”
“For too long, religious freedom has been used as a sword rather than a shield, a privilege rather than a right,” Abdulaleem continued. “If we truly honor this fundamental freedom, we must recognize its full complexity.”
Lamar, whose church was vandalized by the Proud Boys in 2020 and consequently awarded ownership of the group’s trademark in a Feb. 3 ruling from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, said the group understood “that what they were doing in attacking these churches was attacking the very root of the spaces that have tried to make democracy real here, that they were not just tearing up a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign but they were engaging in spectacle. They were engaging in political violence designed to quiet us.”
“When I first read it, “African Americans and Religious Freedom” really pushed me in a very good positive way to take a step back from the Supreme Court, take a step back from the doctrine and that kind of analysis and think about how race has played a [part] in the history and contemporary picture of what religious freedom means,” Reiner Platt said. She offered parallel examples of how the religiosity of groups is treated based on the sociopolitical construct. “So the religiosity of the business owner who doesn’t want to sell the cake, their authentic religious beliefs are not questioned but when we get to folks who are ‘speaking truth to power,’ when we get to people like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or groups like the Nation of Islam or Philadelphia, the group MOVE, they’ve been labeled all sorts of things: a communist front, a political group, a gang, including, in some cases, in actual legal opinions,” Reiner Platt pointed out.
After their presentations, Walker moderated a riveting panel discussion and took questions from the audience. Their inquiries named a desire for even more representation and inclusion of diverse perspectives on faith.
In her closing remarks, Dent reminded participants that “African Americans and Religious Freedom: New Perspectives for Congregations and Communities” is a free resource and encouraged them to share it widely with the hope that Americans can get on the same page. To download your copy, click here.
Top Left to Right: Sabrina Dent, Elizabeth Reiner Platt, William H. Lamar IV. Bottom Left to Right: Corey D.B. Walker, Rahmah Abdulaleem
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
