Blacks and Whites in Christian America

2012 Winner of the C. Calvin Smith Award presented by the Southern Conference on African American Studies, Inc.

2014 Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion Section

Conventional wisdom holds that Christians, as members of a

“universal” religion, all believe more or less the same things

when it comes to their faith. Yet black and white Christians

differ in significant ways, from their frequency of praying or

attending services to whether they regularly read the Bible or

believe in Heaven or Hell.

In this engaging and accessible sociological study of white

and black Christian beliefs, Jason E. Shelton and Michael O.

Emerson push beyond establishing that there are racial differences

in belief and practice among members of American

Protestantism to explore why those differences exist. Drawing

on the most comprehensive and systematic empirical

analysis of African American religious actions and beliefs

to date, they delineate five building blocks of black Protestant

faith which have emerged from the particular dynamics

of American race relations. Shelton and Emerson find that

America’s history of racial oppression has had a deep and

fundamental effect on the religious beliefs and practices of

blacks and whites across America.