UNC Charlotte Professor Christopher Cameron will publish a brand new e-book, “Liberal Faith and Race in America.” The e-book will spotlight African American contributions to American spiritual historical past.
Cameron is a Professor of Historical past and the interim chair of the Division of Africana Research at UNC Charlotte. After incomes his doctoral diploma from UNC Chapel Hill in 2010, Cameron based the African American Mental Historical past Society and started writing a collection of books on African American historical past.
“Liberal Race and Faith in America” focuses on African American contributions to the historical past of the Unitarian and Universalist spiritual actions in the USA.
“[My newest book will be] a historical past of African American Unitarians and Universalists from the colonial interval up by way of the Civil Rights period,” stated Cameron. “In the middle of writing my first two books, I turned actually eager about African American spiritual thinkers and activists who took a center manner between Calvinism and Evangelicalism and between the Black atheists and agnostics.”
Unitarian Universalists are a Christian denomination that rejects the idea of the Holy Trinity and believes that God is a rational being who manifests himself by way of rational means. Well-known adherents to Unitarian Universalism embody President John Quincy Adams, writer Henry David Thoreau and circus proprietor P.T Barnum.
“I am actually eager about non-traditional expressions of black thought and tradition,” stated Cameron. “One thing the place you’d have a look at it and be like, ‘Oh, I by no means knew there are quite a lot of black individuals who did that.’”
Cameron believes that although Unitarian Universalists have traditionally been predominantly white, African Individuals have made necessary contributions to the sect’s spiritual historical past.
“With of us like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and actually outstanding intellectuals and politicians, the scholarship is usually targeted on them,” stated Cameron. “[But] I discovered quite a lot of proof that, at sure key moments, African Individuals performed actually necessary roles within the improvement of Universalism and the event of Unitarianism, in addition to offshoots of these two sects just like the Transcendentalists, who have been closely concerned within the abolitionist motion. It was typically African American activists that have been pushing white Transcendentalists like Thoreau and Emerson to turn out to be much more engaged within the motion.”
Cameron’s earlier works, together with an essay revealed by Vanderbilt College on the connection between Black Lives Matter and the Unitarian Universalist motion, can be found for buy within the Amazon Bookstore. “Liberal Race and Faith in America” has an anticipated publishing date of fall 2025 or spring 2026.
“I believe it will develop our conceptions of the importance and the course of non secular liberalism in the USA,” stated Cameron. “To point out that intellectually, African American thought, particularly black spiritual thought, has all the time been a lot broader than evangelicalism or the extra conservative spiritual traditions to which blacks have adhered [and] that Blacks performed a very outstanding and important position in spiritual improvement.”
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