Anthea Butler's New Book Women in the Church of God in Christ

About the Book: For decades, some have argued that church has been the one place where the "mules of the world," as folklorist Zora Neale Hurston referred to black women, could lay their burdens down and be free. But what if there is something much more than "feeling good" behind the historically high church attendance rates of African American women? What if they came to church to have their womanhood strengthened, politically and economically?

Such is the unique path of inquiry that Anthea Butler, an assistant professor of Religion at the University of Rochester's religion and classics department, takes in her new book Women in the Church of Christ: Making a Sanctified World (University of Temple Press). Established in 1896, the Church of God in Christ is the largest African American Pentecostal denomination in the United States today. Butler's book focuses on the religious and social lives of the church mothers and members of the Women's Department of COGIC from 1911 through to the 1960s.

Roundtable Participants:

• Anthea Butler, Department of Religion and Classics, University of Rochester
• David D. Daniels III, McCormick Theological Seminary
• Barbara A. Holmes, Memphis Theological Seminary