Believing that African American religious studies has reached a crossroads, Cornel West and Eddie Glaude seek, in this landmark anthology, to steer the discipline into the future. Arguing that the complexity of beliefs, choices, and actions of African Americans need not be reduced to expressions of black religion, West and Glaude call for more careful reflection on the complex relationships of African American religious studies to conceptions of class, gender, sexual orientation, race, empire, and other values that continue to challenge our democratic ideals.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African American Studies and Chair of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the 2002 Modern Language Association William Sanders Scarborough Prize for his book Exodus!. His work also includes African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, coedited with Cornel West.

Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary and holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He has also taught at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris.