Uncovers the often overlooked participation of African Americans and Native Americans in early Protestant churches Phillis Wheatley was stolen from her family in Senegambia, and, in 1761, slave traders transported her to Boston, Massachusetts, to be sold. She was purchased by the Wheatley family who treated Phillis far better than most eighteenth-century slaves could hope, and she received a thorough education while still, of course, longing for her freedom. After four years, Wheatley began writing religious poetry. She was baptized and became a member of a predominantly white Congregational church in Boston. More than ten years after her enslavement began, some of her poetry was published in London, England, as a book titled Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. This book is evidence that her experience of enslavement was exceptional. Wheatley remains the most famous black Christian of the colonial era. Though her experiences and accomplishments were unique, her religious affiliation with a predominantly white church was quite ordinary. Dividing the Faith argues that, contrary to the traditional scholarly consensus, a significant portion of northern Protestants worshipped in interracial contexts during the eighteenth century. Yet in another fifty years, such an affiliation would become increasingly rare as churches were by-and-large segregated. Richard Boles draws from the records of over four hundred congregations to scrutinize the factors that made different Christian traditions either accessible or inaccessible to African American and American Indian peoples. By including Indians, Afro-Indians, and black people in the study of race and religion in the North, this research breaks new ground and uses patterns of church participation to illuminate broader social histories. Overall, it explains the dynamic history of racial integration and segregation in northern colonies and states.

Winner of the 2017 Eudora Welty Prize Sanctuaries of Segregation provides the first comprehensive analysis of the Jackson, Mississippi, church visit campaign of 1963-1964 and the efforts by segregationists to protect one of their last refuges. For ten months, integrated groups of ministers and laypeople attempted to attend Sunday worship services at all-white Protestant and Catholic churches in the state's capital city. While the church visit was a common tactic of activists in the early 1960s, Jackson remained the only city where groups mounted a sustained campaign targeting a wide variety of white churches. Carter Dalton Lyon situates the visits within the context of the Jackson Movement, compares the actions to church visits and kneel-ins in other cities, and places these encounters within controversies already underway over race inside churches and denominations. He then traces the campaign from its inception in early June 1963 through Easter Sunday 1964. He highlights the motivations of the various people and organizations, the interracial dialogue that took place on the church steps, the divisions and turmoil the campaign generated within churches and denominations, the decisions by individual congregations to exclude black visitors, and the efforts by the state and the Citizens' Council to thwart the integration attempts. Sanctuaries of Segregation offers a unique perspective on those tumultuous years. Though most churches blocked African American visitors and police stepped in to make forty arrests during the course of the campaign, Lyon reveals many examples of white ministers and laypeople stepping forward to oppose segregation. Their leadership and the constant pressure from activists seeking entrance into worship services made the churches of Jackson one of the front lines in the national struggle over civil rights.

Witnessing to an enemy African tribe taught Nicholas Muteti the power of unity. He learned that ending segregation in churches enables Christians to become a powerful force for God’s kingdom.

From the late nineteenth century to the dawn of the civil rights era, the Churches of Christ operated outside of conventional racial customs. Many of their congregations, even deep in the South, counted whites and blacks among their numbers. As the civil rights movement began to challenge pervasive social views about race, Church of Christ leaders and congregants found themselves in the midst of turmoil. In Race and Restoration: Churches of Christ and the Black Freedom Struggle, Barclay Key focuses on how these churches managed race relations during the Jim Crow era and how they adapted to the dramatic changes of the 1960s. Although most religious organizations grappled with changing attitudes toward race, the Churches of Christ had singular struggles. Fundamentally “restorationist,” these exclusionary churches perceived themselves as the only authentic expression of Christianity, compelling them to embrace peoples of different races, even as they succumbed to prevailing racial attitudes. The Churches of Christ thus offer a unique perspective for observing how Christian fellowship and human equality intersected during the civil rights era. Key reveals how racial attitudes and practices within individual congregations elude the simple categorizations often employed by historians. Public forums, designed by churches to bridge racial divides, offered insight into the minds of members while revealing the limited progress made by individual churches. Although the Churches of Christ did have a more racially diverse composition than many other denominations in the Jim Crow era, Key shows that their members were subject to many of the same aversions, prejudices, and fears of other churches of the time. Ironically, the tentative biracial relationships that had formed within and between congregations prior to World War II began to dissolve as leading voices of the civil rights movement prioritized desegregation.

Uncovers the often overlooked participation of African Americans and Native Americans in early Protestant churches Phillis Wheatley was stolen from her family in Senegambia, and, in 1761, slave traders transported her to Boston, Massachusetts, to be sold. She was purchased by the Wheatley family who treated Phillis far better than most eighteenth-century slaves could hope, and she received a thorough education while still, of course, longing for her freedom. After four years, Wheatley began writing religious poetry. She was baptized and became a member of a predominantly white Congregational church in Boston. More than ten years after her enslavement began, some of her poetry was published in London, England, as a book titled Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. This book is evidence that her experience of enslavement was exceptional. Wheatley remains the most famous black Christian of the colonial era. Though her experiences and accomplishments were unique, her religious affiliation with a predominantly white church was quite ordinary. Dividing the Faith argues that, contrary to the traditional scholarly consensus, a significant portion of northern Protestants worshipped in interracial contexts during the eighteenth century. Yet in another fifty years, such an affiliation would become increasingly rare as churches were by-and-large segregated. Richard Boles draws from the records of over four hundred congregations to scrutinize the factors that made different Christian traditions either accessible or inaccessible to African American and American Indian peoples. By including Indians, Afro-Indians, and black people in the study of race and religion in the North, this research breaks new ground and uses patterns of church participation to illuminate broader social histories. Overall, it explains the dynamic history of racial integration and segregation in northern colonies and states.