Pentecostal Construction of Race (2013-2019)
Funded by UPenn Benjamin Franklin Grant; Mellon SAS Dissertation Completion Grant
This monograph explores the case study of an Appalachian white Pentecostal Christian history to highlight the construction of race in religions in the history of the United States. In particular the project tracks the construction of whiteness. The group under review, Church of God (close to 15 denominations epicentered in Eastern Tennessee, USA), were originally identified as neither white nor Protestant by popular culture, religious elites, and academic social scientists in their formative years 1884 to 1923. Yet by 1955 the largest group to emerge from this history, now known today as Church of God (Cleveland, TN), was able to construct both a white and Protestant Christian identity. This project reconstructs the social history of these religious groups that today amount to over 8 million people globally and are a thriving part of Pentecostal Christianity, the largest and fastest growing form of Christianity in the world. By exploring legal depositions, material culture, ethnography, vernacular architecture, historic filmography (16mm), and oral histories, this project unravels the mythic element of how religious histories are told and written in the United States and who is allowed to be counted as legally and properly a religion. Key to this projects narrative is the ongoing construction of identity within the overlapping, conflicting, and reinforcing elements of religion, race, and class. The project draws on this micro study to illuminate larger questions about the ways in which identity is crafted in the writing of American histories generally and religious histories specifically.
The project is currently in the initial stages of revision for publishing.
Funded by UPenn Benjamin Franklin Grant; Mellon SAS Dissertation Completion Grant
This monograph explores the case study of an Appalachian white Pentecostal Christian history to highlight the construction of race in religions in the history of the United States. In particular the project tracks the construction of whiteness. The group under review, Church of God (close to 15 denominations epicentered in Eastern Tennessee, USA), were originally identified as neither white nor Protestant by popular culture, religious elites, and academic social scientists in their formative years 1884 to 1923. Yet by 1955 the largest group to emerge from this history, now known today as Church of God (Cleveland, TN), was able to construct both a white and Protestant Christian identity. This project reconstructs the social history of these religious groups that today amount to over 8 million people globally and are a thriving part of Pentecostal Christianity, the largest and fastest growing form of Christianity in the world. By exploring legal depositions, material culture, ethnography, vernacular architecture, historic filmography (16mm), and oral histories, this project unravels the mythic element of how religious histories are told and written in the United States and who is allowed to be counted as legally and properly a religion. Key to this projects narrative is the ongoing construction of identity within the overlapping, conflicting, and reinforcing elements of religion, race, and class. The project draws on this micro study to illuminate larger questions about the ways in which identity is crafted in the writing of American histories generally and religious histories specifically.
The project is currently in the initial stages of revision for publishing.
