The author considers the inherent contradiction between sacrifice and salvation as articulated and practiced by female Saints in what the African Hebrew Israelite Community (AHIC)—or the Black Hebrews—refer to as their Kingdom of God. Toward the aim of understanding how and why these women reconcile daily sacrifices with the millenarian belief that they have found salvation, it presents Black Hebrew women's life stories as dialogic encounters with Old Testament personages and the grand redemption narrative of the Bible coupled with their reflections on what awaits women of African descent in white- and Christian-dominated America.
References
1.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1981) “Discourse in the Novel”, in Michael Holmquist (ed.) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, pp. 259-422. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
2.
Ben Ammi (1990) God, the Black Man, and Truth, 2nd revised edn.Washington, DC: Communicators Press.
3.
Benjamin, Walter (1968) “The Storyteller”, in Hannah Arendt (ed.) Illuminations, pp. 83-109. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
4.
Brotz, Howard (1964) The Black Jews of Harlem. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
5.
Burridge, Kenelm (1969) New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities. New York: Schocken.
6.
Cohn, Norman (1993) Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
7.
Collins, Patricia Hill (1998) “The Tie that Binds: Race, Gender and U.S. Violence”, Ethnic and Racial Studies21(5): 917-938.
8.
Comaroff, Jean (1985) Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
9.
Crumbley, Deidre Helen (2000) “Also Chosen: Jews in the Imagination and Life of a Black Sanctified Church”, Anthropology and Humanism25(1): 6-23.
10.
Delaney, Carol (1991) The Seed and the Soil. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
11.
Delaney, Carol (1998) Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
12.
Golden, Stephanie (1998) Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice. New York: Three Rivers Press.
13.
Haraymiel Ben-Shaleak (n.d.) The Holy Art of Divine Marriage. Global Images International Press.
14.
Harding, Susan F. (2000) The Book of Jerry Falwell. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
15.
Jacobs, Janet Liebman (1989) Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religions. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
16.
Kelley, Robin D. G. (1997) Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! Fighting the Cultural Wars in Urban America. Boston, MA: Beacon.
17.
Kermode, Frank (1967) The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. London: Oxford University Press.
18.
Landes, Ruth (1967) “Negro Jews in Harlem”, Jewish Journal of Sociology9(2): 175-189.
19.
Lanternari, V. (1963) The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults. New York: Knopf.
20.
Lee, M. F. (1996) The Nation of Islam: An American Millenarian Movement. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
21.
Lindstrom, Lamont (1993) Cargo Cults: Strange Stories of Desires from Melanesia and Beyond. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
22.
Linton, Ralph (1943) “Nativistic Movements”, American Anthropologist45: 230-240.
23.
Markowitz, Fran (1996) “Israel as Africa, Africa as Israel: `Divine Geography' in the Personal Narratives and Community Identity of the Black Hebrew Israelites”, Anthropological Quarterly69: 163-205.
24.
Markowitz, Fran (2000) “Millenarian Motherhood: Motives, Meanings and Practices Among African Hebrew Israelite Women”, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues3: 106-138.
25.
O'Leary, S. D. (1994) Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press.
26.
Palmer, Susan J. (1997) “Woman as World Savior: The Feminization of the Millennium in New Religious Movements”, in Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer (eds) Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem, pp. 159-171. New York: Routledge.
27.
Peres, Hagit (1998) “Women in the Kingdom of God: Reconstruction of a Hebrew Israelite Feminine Identity”, MA thesis, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
28.
Pierce, Paulette (1997) “Boudoir Politics and the Birthing of the Nation: Sex, Marriage, and Structural Deflection in the National Black Independent Political Party”, in Brackette Williams (ed.) Women Out of Place, pp. 216-244. New York: Routledge.
29.
Puttick, Elizabeth (1999) “Women in New Religious Movements”, in Bryan Wilson and Jennie Cresswell (eds) New Religious Movements: Challenge and Response, pp. 141-162. London: Routledge.
30.
Raboteau, Alfred J. (1995) A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History. Boston, MA: Beacon.
31.
Scott, James C. (1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
32.
Stack, Carol (1974) All Our Kin. New York: Harper & Row.
33.
Stewart, Kathleen and Harding, Susan (1999) “Bad Endings: American Apocalypsis”, Annual Review of Anthropology28: 285-310.
34.
Thompson, Damian (1996) The End of Time: Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
35.
Wallace, Anthony F. C. (1956) “Revitalization Movements”, American Anthropologist58: 264-281.
36.
Wessinger, Catherine (1997) “Millenialism with and without the Mayhem”, in Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer (eds) Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, pp. 47-59. New York: Routledge.
