We missed this book release from 2019:
The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali (University of Chicago Press), by
Spencer Dew (Denison University). A description from the Press:
“Citizenship is salvation,” preached Noble Drew Ali, leader of the
Moorish Science Temple of America in the early twentieth century. Ali’s
message was an aspirational call for black Americans to undertake a
struggle for recognition from the state, one that would both ensure
protection for all Americans through rights guaranteed by the law and
correct the unjust implementation of law that prevailed in the racially
segregated United States. Ali and his followers took on this mission of
citizenship as a religious calling, working to carve out a place for
themselves in American democracy and to bring about a society that lived
up to what they considered the sacred purpose of the law.
In The Aliites,
Spencer Dew traces the history and impact of Ali’s radical fusion of
law and faith. Dew uncovers the influence of Ali’s teachings, including
the many movements they inspired. As Dew shows, Ali’s teachings
demonstrate an implicit yet critical component of the American approach
to law: that it should express our highest ideals for society, even if
it is rarely perfect in practice. Examining this robustly creative yet
largely overlooked lineage of African American religious thought, Dew
provides a window onto religion, race, citizenship, and law in America.
A few blurbs:
“In this
remarkable book of personal and communal atonement, Dew honors what he
calls ‘the intellectual aikido’ of Aliite thinkers across a hundred
years of insistent devotion to the ideals of American citizenship.
Placing the Aliites in the proud company of American freethinkers, Dew
lays before us an alternative tradition of American democracy—of civic
engagement as religion—from the founding of utopian communities to the
courting of FBI surveillance. The Aliites introduces us to a fecund and vital vernacular legal imagination, one that could only be American.” -- Winnifred Fallers
“A genuinely original work, The Aliites makes
significant contributions to the study of religion, religion’s
relationship to the law in the United States, and larger themes and
patterns among Aliites. Dew’s organization of the book around elements
of the Great Seal is creative and generative, foregrounding his
excellent study of the centrality of the law and practices of
citizenship in Aliite thought. This book offers the best interpretation
currently available of many practices that contribute to outsiders’
evaluations of some of the modern groups as criminal, making it an
enormously valuable work.” -- Judith Weisenfeld
More information is available
here.
H/t: New Books in Law, where you can listen to an
interview with the author.
-- Karen Tani
