Bound For the Promised Land

African American Religion and the Great Migration

Author: Milton C. Sernett
ISBN: 9780822319931

Bound for the Promised Land is the first extensive examination of the impact on the American religious landscape of the Great Migration-- the movement from South to North and from country to city by hundreds of thousands of African Americans following World War I. In focusing on this phenomenon's religious and cultural implications, Milton C. Sernett breaks with traditional patterns of historiography that analyze the migration in terms of socioeconomic considerations.Drawing on a range of sources-- interviews, government documents, church periodicals, books, pamphlets, and articles-- Sernett shows how the mass migration created an institutional crisis for black religious leaders. He describes the creative tensions that resulted when the southern migrants who saw their exodus as the Second Emancipation brought their religious beliefs and practices into northern cities such as Chicago, and traces the resulting emergence of the belief that black churches ought to be more than places for "

Publisher: Duke University Press
Publish Date: 1997-10-13

Subjects: History / United States / General, History / United States / 20th Century, Religion / Christianity / General, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, Social Science / Emigration & Immigration

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Black Resource Center (Location: 1B)