New History Finally Recognizes Afro-Creole Spiritualists |
New History Finally Recognizes Afro-Creole Spiritualists
Religion Dispatches
2016-09-20
Paul Harvey, Distinguished Professor of History
University of Colorado
Emily Clark’s new work, A Luminous Brotherhood, is an extensive study of a subject that has weirdly been neglected in scholarship: the career of the Afro-Creole Spiritualist Cercle Harmonique from 1858 to 1877. Religious studies scholar Clark has thoroughly mined the records of the Cercle, kept at the University of New Orleans, and produced one of the most important recent works I have seen in race and religion in American history.
By focusing on Afro-Creole Spiritualism in New Orleans, we get an extended, as well as intimate, look at how one very particular group, mostly men and free people of color, envisioned their ideal society through the voices of spirit mediums.
In doing so, they drew from French thinkers and historical experiences (including everyone from Rousseau, Robespierre, and Lamennais to the French and Haitian Revolutions), and applied those to the construction of what they referred to as “the Idea”—a republican society that would achieve liberty, equality and fraternity even in an American society burdened by slavery and racism since its birth.
I had a conversation with Clark, reflecting both on the book as well as on broader questions of race, religion and politics…
Read the entire interview here.
Tags: Cercle Harmonique, Emily Clark, Emily Suzanne Clark, New Orleans, Paul Harvey, Religion Dispatches