Synopses & Reviews
This book provides a sophisticated new interdisciplinary interpretation of the formulation and evolution of African American religion and culture. Theophus Smith argues for the central importance of "conjure"--a magical means of transforming reality--in black spirituality and culture. Smith shows that the Bible, the sacred text of Western civilization, has in fact functioned as a magical formulary for African Americans. Going back to slave religion, and continuing in black folk practice and literature to the present day, the Bible has provided African Americans with ritual prescriptions for prophetically re-envisioning, and thereby transforming, their history and culture. In effect the Bible is a "conjure book" for prescribing cures and curses, and for invoking extraordinary and Divine powers to effect changes in the conditions of human existence--and to bring about justice and freedom. Biblical themes, symbols, and figures like Moses, the Exodus, the Promised Land, and the Suffering Servant, as deployed by African Americans, have crucially formed and reformed not only black culture, but American society as a whole. Smith examines not only the religious and political uses of conjure, but its influence on black aesthetics, in music, drama, folklore, and literature. The concept of conjure, he shows, is at the heart of an indigenous and still vital spirituality, with exciting implications for reformulating the next generation of black studies and black theology. Even more broadly, Smith proposes, "conjuring culture" can function as a new paradigm for understanding Western religious and cultural phenomena generally.
Review
"Employing ethnographic theories, phenomenological analysis, and biblical hermeneutics, Smith moves across a dazzling array of disciplines and cultural materials, both historical and contemporary....Highly recommended for graduate students and specialists."--
Choice"A highly original and very creative text. The breadth of reading and learning displayed is not only impressive but apt. The book defies easy categorization, as it ranges across theological, literary, ethical, biblical, and aesthetic issues. I predict that it will be widely noticed, it will arouse argument, and it will represent a new kind of African-American religious scholarship."--Albert J. Raboteau, Princeton University
"Smith's work shows independence, creativity, and originality. It is the first work on African-American religion that has grown out of religious studies. While attentive to the black theology agenda, he has not succumbed to it, and while well versed in the scholarly work of those in other humanistic disciplines, he has held out for a religious meaning of these same data. The black theology project seemed at one point to take away all the other options....Smith's work opens up the area of black religion again, an opening that places the study within a wider perspective of method."--Charles Long, University of California, Santa Barbara
"This book is a "must reading"-a seminal work of analysis and synthesis, and a major event in hermeneutics and cultural criticism."--Allen D. Callahan, Harvard Divinity Bulletin
"Theophus Smith provides an innovative, interdisciplinary interpretation of the formation of African-American religion and culture....The book introduces "conjuring culture" as a new conceptual paradigm for understanding western religious and cultural phenomena generally."--Black Media News
"...highly recommended for scholars..."--Religious Studies Review
"Theophus H. Smith has written an extremely important and intellectually creative book. Indeed, it is a new paradigm for black theological and African American religious studies thought and method...Smith's text is the first to combine an investigation of religious approach, the folk tradition of conjuring, and the magical deployment of the Bible."--Bryn Mawr Medieval Review
Review
"A highly original and very creative text....Will represent a new kind of African-American religious scholarship."--Albert J. Raboteau, Princeton University
"Promises not only to move African American religious studies to a new stage but also to provide a kind of 'healing book' of his own for a contemporary culture in which racial antagonism has again poisoned the body politic."--The Cresset
Synopsis
In "Conjuring Culture," Theophus Smith provides an innovative, interdisciplinary interpretation of the formation of African-American religion and culture. Smith argues for the central role in black spirituality of "conjure"--a magical means of transforming reality. Smith shows that the Bible, the sacred text of Western civilization, has in fact functioned as a magical formulary or sourcebook for African-Americans.