The Achievement of Identity: Soul Work, Salvation, and Black Manhood in the Religious Imagination of James Baldwin
Literary writer James Baldwin is an underappreciated resource for Black religious reflection. Drawing upon Baldwin’s public writings and speeches, and notably his incisive criticism(s) of the sexual and gendered conservatism of fundamentalist Black holiness culture as mapped in his classic semi-autobiographical novel, Go Tell it On the Mountain (1953), my lecture will expand Baldwin’s religious imagination toward the reconstruction of Black male identity formation. Posturing Baldwin alongside other voices in Black religious scholarship, including womanist and Black feminist discourses, I articulate Black male identity formation as soul work, which is the quest for a relational identity (with moral and ethical obligation to others) as constitutive for one’s sense of self.
Faculty Member: Darrius Hills, associate professor, Religious Studies
Discussion date: Tuesday, May 6, 6 p.m. CT
Meet Darrius Hills
Darrius D. Hills is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Grinnell College. He received his M.Div. from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and his M.A. and Ph.D in Religion (concentration in African American Religion) from Rice University. His research ventures privilege African American religious thought, liberation theologies, womanist religious thought, Black male studies, and American religion and culture. Dr. Hills' first book, A Misrepresented People: Manhood in Black Religious Thought, will be available from New York University Press in January 2025.
Hills is completing a second book, New Black Religious Movements in the United States, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press, due for release in March 2025. Additionally, for calendar year 2025, Dr. Hills was awarded an early sabbatical grant from the Louisville Institute to begin research for his third book, tentatively titled, Red-Pilled Religion: Blurring the Lines of the Gender Wars in American Christianity and Popular Culture. Dr. Hills’ essays, reviews, and other writings can be found in journals such as American Religion, the Journal of Africana Religions, and Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. Dr. Hills was selected one of ten junior religion scholars nation-wide as part of the 2020-2022 cohort of the prestigious Young Scholars in American Religion program.
Hills’ research and teaching has also been supported by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (of the United Methodist Church), the Forum for Theological Exploration (formerly The Fund for Theological Education), the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, the Louisville Institute for the Study of American Religion, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture.
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