Publisher's Synopsis
This book describes and attempts to explain the significance of women in roles of ritual authority as observed in Afro-Baptist rural folk church communities of North Central Florida beginning in 1980 and last observed in 2007. It advances intra cultural comparisons of rural Floridian folk Afro-Baptists and other Afro-Baptists in the North and South during the same time period. Gender-defined roles in Floridian Afro-Baptist churches and families emphasize matrifocal social organization, kinship ties, and the valorization of motherhood complemented by male corporate leadership. This book examines the transmission by African Americans, within their religion, of selected traditional African beliefs and practices that at once reflect and shape contemporary social reality to be harmonious with their core cultural values. Following Clifford Geertz's model of the dual nature of religious patterns, which simultaneously explain and shape reality, this book argues that Afro-Baptist women's church roles in Florida reflect and transmit African-derived cultural values and social forms that are materially significant to their day-to-day family life. Ethnohistorical and ethnographic data are presented that support this argument. The search for African continuities and transformations has significance in contemporary American society, which extends beyond the purely academic considerations of a few scholars of African American studies and Anthropology. Political, social and economic evidence of deeply ingrained prejudicial social attitudes based upon racial and class distinctions persist in our society threatening national cohesiveness and the democratic ideal. Understanding the sociocultural patterns of diverse groups in America as the unique expression of their cultural heritage is a sine qua non to achievement of a true democracy that embraces the concepts of cultural diversity and cultural pluralism as strengths that promote the maintenance of an open society.
