Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans

Course: Afro-Christianity and The Black Church in America (AAS165)

This book, by Historian of Religion, Albert J. Raboteau, author of the classic volume on African American Christianity Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South, is a broader, more general introduction to the religious history of African Americans, from their enslavement in the U.S. and beyond. I am using it this quarter to provide the necessary background and foundation for our study of more contemporary issues and manifestations of African American Christianity. At 184 pages, it is a small, highly readable volume, and I recommend it as an overview of the origins and establishment of Afro-Christianity in the United States and the institution of the Black Church that facilitated a movement for Civil Rights that continues to impact American society to this day.