The Black Coptic Church - (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity) by Leonard Cornell McKinnis (Paperback)

About the Book

"This book is an ethnographic study that explores the intersection of race, religion, and the construction of Black identity as imagined and performed in religious practices and rituals of the Black Coptic Church, an Ethiopianist New Religious Movement that emerged in Chicago during the Great Migration"--

Book Synopsis

Provides an illuminating look at the diverse world of Black religious life in North America, focusing particularly outside of mainstream Christian churches

From the Moorish Science Temple to the Peace Mission Movement of Father Divine to the Commandment Keepers sect of Black Judaism, myriad Black new religious movements developed during the time of the Great Migration. Many of these stood outside of Christianity, but some remained at least partially within the Christian fold. The Black Coptic Church is one of these.

Black Coptics combined elements of Black Protestant and Black Hebrew traditions with Ethiopianism as a way of constructing a divine racial identity that embraced the idea of a royal Egyptian heritage for its African American followers, a heroic identity that was in stark contrast to the racial identity imposed on African Americans by the white dominant culture. This embrace of a royal Blackness--what McKinnis calls an act of "fugitive spirituality"--illuminates how the Black Coptic tradition in Chicago and beyond uniquely employs a religio-performative imagination.

McKinnis asks, 'What does it mean to imagine Blackness?' Drawing on ten years of archival research and interviews with current members of the church, The Black Coptic Church offers a look at a group that insisted on its own understanding of its divine Blackness. In the process, it provides a more complex look at the diverse world of Black religious life in North America, particularly within non-mainstream Christian churches.

Review Quotes

"Leonard McKinnis' volume illustrates how the BCC's religious imagination, like other Black religio-racial movements, vests Black people's bodies, histories, selfhoods with ultimacy and sacred meaning ... an excellent resource for courses on religion and ethnography, American Christianity, and Black Church studies."-- "Nova Religio"

"These ideas are important for scholars of Black Thought and Religious Studies because this investigation demonstrates one of the critical functions which religion performs: that of the imaginary. All religions--indeed, all ideologies and systems of belief--attract members by providing an imaginary which helps them to understand their reality in a new way... The book's real value, however, is as a case study which illuminates the mechanisms of Black religion and religious formation generally. The book will be of great interest to scholars interested in Black religion, Black intellectual history, and Black Studies."-- "Global Black Thought"

"The Black Coptic Church is a theoretically and methodologically rich text that portrays the Black Coptic Church as a site for the enactment of Black freedom ... Students and scholars interested in the study of American religion, especially Black religions in the United States, would benefit greatly from reading this work."-- "Reading Religion"

"The Black Coptic Church is a theoretically and methodologically rich text that portrays the Black Coptic Church as a site for the enactment of Black freedom... Students and scholars interested in the study of American religion, especially Black religions in the United States, would benefit greatly from reading this work."-- "Reading Religion"

"McKinnis masterfully deconstructs popular incidents and historical figures, while narrating living conditions for persons previously unknown, which gives the book balance."-- "International Journal for the Study of New Religions"

"McKinnis's writing style is clear and inviting. . . . This book is poised to make a major contribution to American and African American religious studies."--Wallace D. Best, author of Langston's Salvation: American Religion and the Bard of Harlem

"The book makes original contributions to our understanding of Black religious diversity, providing a theological portrait of an unexamined Black new religious movement and engaging the Black Coptic Church as a lens on religion and race in America."--Judith Weisenfeld, Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion, Princeton University

"Contributes valuably to underscoring the diversity of African American religious diversity."--Charles A. Price, Temple University

About the Author

Leonard Cornell McKinnis II is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Religion and African American Studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project.