New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration

New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration is a groundbreaking book that sheds light on the little-known history of African American religious groups during the early 20th century.

Drawing on extensive archival research, the author uncovers the ways in which these groups formulated a new religio-racial identity that challenged conventional racial categorization. Through vivid storytelling and meticulous historical analysis, the book reveals how members of these movements understood their religious and racial identities as divinely-ordained and inseparable, and how this sense of self shaped their conceptions of their bodies, families, religious and social communities, space and place, and political sensibilities. With a focus on the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, and other congregations of Ethiopian Hebrews, the book demonstrates how these groups resisted racial identities imposed upon them by an increasingly powerful state and fellow American citizens alike. Innovatively researched and elegantly written, New World A-Coming is a major contribution to the study of African American religions during the Great Migration.

It will engage both scholars and general readers interested in religion, U.S.

history, and Africana studies.