“Your Spirit Walks Beside Us”
The Politics of Black Religion

Harvard University Press
By Barbara Dianne Savage

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the Black church was thrust into controversial discussions about race and politics.  Barbara Savage’s “Your Spirit Walks Beside Us” explores historical debates over Black religion and politics.  Even before the emergence of the civil rights movement with black churches at its center, African-American religion and progressive politics were assumed to be closely intertwined.  In her revelatory book, Savage counters this assumption with the story of a highly diversified religious community whose debates over engagement in the struggle for racial equality were as vigorous as they were persistent.  Rather than inevitable allies, black churches and political activists have been uneasy and contentious partners.

From the 1920s on, some of the best African-American minds – W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Benjamin Mays, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mary McLeod Bethune, Charles S. Johnson, and others – argued tirelessly about the churches’ responsibility in the quest for racial justice.  Could they be a liberal force, or would they be a constraint on progress?  There was no single, unified black church but rather many churches marked by enormous intellectual, theological, and political differences and independence.  Yet, in the face of discrimination and poverty, churches were called upon again and again to come together as savior institutions for black communities.

The tension between faith and political activism in black churches testifies to the difficult and unpredictable project of coupling religion and politics in the twentieth century.  By retrieving the people, the polemics, and the force of the spiritual that animated African-American political life, Savage has dramatically demonstrated the challenge to all religious institutions seeking political change in our time.