Black Lives and Sacred Humanity Toward an African American Religious Naturalism

Identifying African American religiosity as the ingenuity of a people constantly striving to inhabit their humanity and eke out a meaningful existence for themselves amid harrowing circumstances, Black Lives and Sacred Humanity constructs a concept of sacred humanity and grounds it in the writings of Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, and James Baldwin. Supported by current theories in science studies, critical theory, and religious naturalism, this concept, as Carol Wayne White demonstrates, offers a capacious view of humans as interconnected, social, value-laden organisms with the capacity to transform themselves and create nobler worlds wherein all sentient creatures flourish.

Acknowledging the great harm wrought by divisive and problematic racial constructions in the United States, this book offers an alternative to theistic models of African American religiosity to inspire newer, conceptually compelling views of spirituality that address a classic, perennial religious question: What does it mean to be fully human and fully alive?

Carol Wayne White is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA. Her areas of specialization include Poststructuralist and Feminist Philosophies, Process Philosophy and Theism, Critical Theory and Religion, Religious Naturalism, and Science and Religion. Professor White's publications include Poststructuralism, Feminism, and Religion: Triangulating Positions, The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631-70): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism, and various articles addressing the intersections of critical theory, process thought, and religion. She is currently researching a new book on the critical intersections of deep ecology, religious naturalism, and nature poetry. Professor White has received national and international awards and fellowships, including an Oxford University Fellowship in Religion and Science, a Science and Religion Course Award Program Development Grant (The John Templeton Foundation), and a NEH Fellowship, "Dialectical of Enlightenment: 50 Years Later," at Boston University, Boston, MA. She has also held a fellowship appointment at the Women Studies Research Center associated with the Five College Consortium (Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire, and UMass/Amherst).