‘African Americans and Religious Freedom’ aims to get readers on same page concerning democracy

By Rev. Starlette Thomas

The second edition of African Americans and Religious Freedom: New Perspectives for Congregations and Communities illuminates the need to critically examine religious freedom in our contemporary moments.

The collection of essays explores religious freedom through the lens of African American history and lived experience, rich and dynamic in religious practices, political cultures and knowledge traditions. First released before the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and democracy, a new preface addresses the need for religious freedom to undergo a deep interrogation in our perilous times.

The BJC Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation and the Wake Forest University School of Divinity co-hosted an event in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 28 to mark the re-launch of the book, featuring new conversations with the co-editors, contributors and thought leaders.

“The new preface underscores what many of us have long understood: religious freedom is not a static ideal, but it is a concept that must evolve alongside the realities of our time,” said Dr. Sabrina E. Dent, director of the BJC Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation and co-editor of the book. “This book offers a bold and fresh perspective on what religious freedom means for communities that have been continuously fighting for justice and dignity.”

Dr. Corey D.B. Walker, dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity and co-editor of the book, emphasized the need for more public conversations on religious freedom in our political moment. “The release of the second edition of African Americans and Religious Freedom provides a critical opportunity to deepen public conversations on how African American intellectual traditions and faith practices can shape and enrich our understanding of religious freedom,” he said. “In the face of mounting threats to democracy, these conversations are not only timely, they are crucial for reinforcing the foundations of our shared freedoms.”

Contributors Rahmah Abdulaleem and the Rev. William H. Lamar IV joined Dr. Dent and Dr. Walker at the event, alongside Elizabeth Reiner Platt, director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School. During the program, they named the current political reality, expanded attendees’ understandings of religious freedom, and called for a fuller and freer democracy. Like the book, each panelist also offered insights from their personal experiences during their presentations.

Abdulaleem shared her experiences of invisibility in religious spaces, wherein Islam is not considered. “Whose religious freedom are we really talking about?” she asked the audience.

“I stand before you today as an African American Muslim woman lawyer,” she said. “Let’s be honest. When you think about religious freedom, you don’t picture someone like me.”

Abdulaleem, who serves as the co-chair of the Religious Freedom Committee of the American Bar Association, Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, noted the different uses of the idea of religious freedom by people who want to simplify it to meet their own desires. “For too long, religious freedom has been used as a sword rather than a shield, a privilege rather than a right,” Abdulaleem said. “If we truly honor this fundamental freedom, we must recognize its full complexity.”

The Rev. Lamar is pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., which was vandalized by the Proud Boys in 2020. A court ordered the Proud Boys to pay the church $2.8 million, but their failure to do so led to a court awarding ownership of the Proud Boys’ trademark to the church itself. During the event, the Rev. Lamar spoke about the recent ruling and the impact of targeted destruction.

“[The Proud Boys understood] that what they were doing in attacking these churches was attacking the very root of the spaces that have tried to make democracy real here,” he said.

“They were not just tearing up a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign, but they were engaging in spectacle. They were engaging in political violence designed to quiet us and to keep us from asserting our rights to protect ourselves and to worship.”

Platt spoke about the impact of reading the first edition of the book. “African Americans and Religious Freedom really pushed me — in a very good, positive way — to take a step back from the Supreme Court and to take a step back from the doctrine and analysis and think about how race has played a [part] in the history and contemporary picture of what religious freedom means,” she said.

Platt offered parallel examples of how the religiosity of groups is treated based on the sociopolitical construct. “So the religiosity of the business owner who doesn’t want to sell the cake, their authentic religious beliefs are not questioned. But, when we get to folks who are ‘speaking truth to power’ — when we get to people like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or groups like the Nation of Islam or in Philadelphia the group called ‘MOVE’ — they’ve been labeled all sorts of things: a communist front, a political group, a gang, including, in some cases in actual legal opinions,” Platt pointed out.

After the individual presentations, Dr. Walker moderated a panel discussion and took questions from the audience. Their inquiries named a desire for even more representation and inclusion of diverse perspectives on faith.

In her closing remarks, Dr. Dent reminded participants that African Americans and Religious Freedom: New Perspectives for Congregations and Communities is a free resource, and she encouraged everyone to share it widely with the hope that Americans can get on the same page.

The Rev. Starlette Thomas is director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor and host of the Good Faith Media podcast “The Raceless Gospel,” and the author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.

This article originally appeared in the spring 2025 edition of Report from the Capital. You can view it as a PDF or read a digital flip-through edition.