<p><b>2012 Winner of the C. Calvin Smith Award presented by the Southern Conference on African American Studies, Inc.</b> <br><br><b>2014 Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion Section</b> <br><br>Conventional wisdom holds that Christians, as members of a<br>“universal” religion, all believe more or less the same things<br>when it comes to their faith. Yet black and white Christians<br>differ in significant ways, from their frequency of praying or<br>attending services to whether they regularly read the Bible or<br>believe in Heaven or Hell.<br><br><br>In this engaging and accessible sociological study of white<br>and black Christian beliefs, Jason E. Shelton and Michael O.<br>Emerson push beyond establishing that there are racial differences<br>in belief and practice among members of American<br>Protestantism to explore why those differences exist. Drawing<br>on the most comprehensive and systematic empirical<br>analysis of African American religious actions and beliefs<br>to date, they delineate five building blocks of black Protestant<br>faith which have emerged from the particular dynamics<br>of American race relations. Shelton and Emerson find that<br>America’s history of racial oppression has had a deep and<br>fundamental effect on the religious beliefs and practices of<br>blacks and whites across America.</p> Read Less