Upward Not Sunwise

Upward, Not Sunwise explores an influential and growing neo-Pentecostal movement among Native Americans characterized by evangelical Christian theology, charismatic “spirit-filled” worship, and decentralized Native control. As in other global contexts, neo-Pentecostalism is spread by charismatic evangelists practicing faith healing at tent revivals.In North America, this movement has become especially popular among the Diné (Navajo), where the Oodlání (“Believers”) movement now numbers nearly sixty thousand members. Participants in this movement value their Navajo cultural identity yet maintain a profound religious conviction that the beliefs of their ancestors are tools of the devil. Kimberly Jenkins Marshall has been researching the Oodlání movement since 2006 and presents the first book-length study of Navajo neo-Pentecostalism. Key to the popularity of this movement is what the author calls “resonant rupture,” or the way the apparent continuity of expressive forms holds appeal for Navajos, while believers simultaneously deny the continuity of these forms at the level of meaning. Although the music, dance, and poetic language at Oodlání tent revivals is identifiably Navajo, Oodlání carefully re-inscribe their country gospel music, dancing in the spirit, use of the Navajo language, and materials of faith healing as transformationally new and different. Marshall explores these and other nuances of Navajo neo-Pentecostal practices by examining how Oodlání perform their faith under the big white tents scattered across the Navajo Nation.

Pentecostalism is one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the world. In Canada, it is the most rapidly growing Christian group among Indigenous people, with approximately one in ten Pentecostals in the country being Indigenous. Pentecostalism has become a religious force in many Indigenous communities, where congregations are most often led by Indigenous ministers – an achievement that took many decades. The Holy Spirit and the Eagle Feather traces the development of Indigenous Pentecostalism in Canada. Exploring the history of twentieth-century missionization, with particular attention to the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada’s Northland Mission, founded in 1943, Aaron Ross shows how the denomination’s Euro-Canadian leaders, who believed themselves to be supporters of Indigenous-led churches, struggled to relinquish control of mission management and finances. Drawing on interviews with contemporary figures in the movement, he describes how Indigenous Pentecostals would come to challenge the mission’s eurocentrism over decades, eventually entering positions of leadership in the church. This process required them to confront the painful vestiges of colonialism and to grapple with the different philosophies and theologies of Pentecostalism and Indigenous traditional spiritualities. In doing so they indigenized the movement and forged a new identity, as Indigenous and Pentecostal. Indigenous Pentecostals now occupy key roles in the church and serve as political, cultural, and economic leaders in their communities. The Holy Spirit and the Eagle Feather tells the story of how they overcame the church’s colonial impulses to become religious leaders, as well as agents for decolonization and reconciliation.

A collection of original essays exploring the history of the various American religious traditions and the meaning of their many expressions The Blackwell Companion to American Religious History explores the key events, significant themes, and important movements in various religious traditions throughout the nation’s history from pre-colonization to the present day. Original essays written by leading scholars and new voices in the field discuss how religion in America has transformed over the years, explore its many expressions and meanings, and consider religion’s central role in American life. Emphasizing the integration of religion into broader cultural and historical themes, this wide-ranging volume explores the operation of religion in eras of historical change, the diversity of religious experiences, and religion’s intersections with American cultural, political, social, racial, gender, and intellectual history. Each chronologically-organized chapter focuses on a specific period or event, such as the interactions between Moravian and Indigenous communities, the origins of African-American religious institutions, Mormon settlement in Utah, social reform movements during the twentieth century, the growth of ethnic religious communities, and the rise of the Religious Right. An innovative historical genealogy of American religious traditions, the Companion: Highlights broader historical themes using clear and compelling narrative Helps teachers expose their students to the significance and variety of America’s religious past Explains new and revisionist interpretations of American religious history Surveys current and emerging historiographical trends Traces historical themes to contemporary issues surrounding civil rights and social justice movements, modern capitalism, and debates over religious liberties Making the lessons of American religious history relevant to a broad range of readers, The Blackwell Companion to American Religious History is the perfect book for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in American history courses, and a valuable resource for graduate students and scholars wanting to keep pace with current historiographical trends and recent developments in the field.

Ruptures brings together leading and emerging international anthropologists to explore the concept of ‘rupture’. Understood as radical and often forceful forms of discontinuity, rupture is the active ingredient of the current sense of a world in turmoil, lying at the heart of some of the most defining experiences of our time: the rise of populist politics, the corollary impulse towards protest and even revolutionary change, as well as moves towards violence and terror, and the responses these moves elicit. Rupture is addressed in selected ethnographic and historical contexts: images of the guillotine in the French revolution; reactions to Trump’s election in the USA; the motivations of young Danes who join ISIS in Syria; ‘butterfly effect’ activism among environmental anarchists in northern Europe; the experiences of political trauma and its ‘repair’ through privately sponsored museums of Mao’s revolution in China; people’s experience of the devastating 2001 earthquake in Gujarat; the ‘inner’ rupture of Protestant faith among Danish nationalist theologians; and the attempt to invent ex nihilo an alphabet for use in Christian prophetic movements in Congo and Angola. Ruptures takes in new directions broader intellectual debates about continuity and change. In particular, by thematising rupture as a radical, sometimes violent, and even brutal form of discontinuity, it adds a sharper critical edge to contemporary discourses, both in social theory and public debate and policy.

In Missionary Interests, David Golding and Christopher Cannon Jones bring together works about Protestant and Mormon missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, charting new directions for the historical study of these zealous evangelists for their faith. Despite their sectarian differences, both groups of missionaries shared notions of dividing the world categorically along the lines of race, status, and relative exoticism, and both employed humanitarian outreach with designs to proselytize. American missionaries occupied liminal spaces: between proselytizer and proselytized, feminine and masculine, colonizer and colonized. Taken together, the chapters in Missionary Interests dismantle easy characterizations of missions and conversion and offer an overlooked juxtaposition between Mormon and Protestant missionary efforts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

What does sovereignty sound like? Sonic Sovereignty considers how contemporary Indigenous musicians champion self-determination through musical expression in Canada and the United States. The framework of “sonic sovereignty” connects self-definition, collective determination, and Indigenous land rematriation to the immediate and long-lasting effects of expressive culture. Liz Przybylski covers online and offline media spaces, following musicians and producers as they, and their music, circulate across broadcast and online networks. Przybylski documents and reflects on shifts in both the music industry and political landscape over the course of a decade: as the ways in which people listen to, consume, and interact with popular music have radically changed, extensive public conversations have flourished around contemporary Indigenous culture, settler responsibility, Indigenous leadership, and decolonial futures. Sonic Sovereignty encourages us to experiment with temporal possibilities of listening by detailing moments when a sample, lyric, or musical reference moves a listener out of normative time. Nonlinear storytelling practices from hip hop music and other North American Indigenous sonic practices inform these generative listenings. The musical readings presented in this book thus explore how musicians use tools to help listeners embrace rupture, and how out-of-time listening creates decolonial possibilities.

“Navajo Latter-day Saints are Diné dóó Gáamalii,” writes Farina King, in this deeply personal collective biography. “We are Diné who decided to walk a Latter-day Saint pathway, although not always consistently or without reappraising that decision.” Diné dóó Gáamalii is a history of twentieth-century Navajos, including author Farina King and her family, who have converted and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), becoming Diné dóó Gáamalii—both Diné and LDS. Drawing on Diné stories from the LDS Native American Oral History Project, King illuminates the mutual entanglement of Indigenous identity and religious affiliation, showing how their Diné identity made them outsiders to the LDS Church and, conversely, how belonging to the LDS community made them outsiders to their Native community. The story that King tells shows the complex ways that Diné people engaged with church institutions in the context of settler colonial power structures. The lived experiences of Diné in church programs sometimes diverged from the intentions and expectations of those who designed them. In this empathetic and richly researched study, King explores the impacts of Navajo Latter-day Saints who seek to bridge different traditions, peoples, and communities. She sheds light on the challenges and joys they face in following both the Diné teachings of Si’ąh Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhǫ́—“live to old age in beauty”—and the teachings of the church.

In Walking to Magdalena, Seth Schermerhorn explores a question that is central to the interface of religious studies and Native American and indigenous studies: What have Native peoples made of Christianity? By focusing on the annual pilgrimage of the Tohono O'odham to Magdalena in Sonora, Mexico, Schermerhorn examines how these indigenous people of southern Arizona have made Christianity their own. This walk serves as the entry point for larger questions about what the Tohono O'odham have made of Christianity. With scholarly rigor and passionate empathy, Schermerhorn offers a deep understanding of Tohono O'odham Christian traditions as practiced in everyday life and in the words of the O'odham themselves. The author's rich ethnographic description and analyses are also drawn from his experiences accompanying a group of O'odham walkers on their pilgrimage to Saint Francis in Magdalena. For many years scholars have agreed that the journey to Magdalena is the largest and most significant event in the annual cycle of Tohono O'odham Christianity. Never before, however, has it been the subject of sustained scholarly inquiry. Walking to Magdalena offers insight into religious life and expressive culture, relying on extensive field study, videotaped and transcribed oral histories of the O'odham, and archival research. The book illuminates indigenous theories of personhood and place in the everyday life, narratives, songs, and material culture of the Tohono O'odham.