mjcressler
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Spring semester has come to an end here at the College and in many respects it ended with a bit of a whimper. Classes closed via Zoom with a “Whelp. Guess that’s it.” Content was delivered, grades submitted, commencement postponed, and now what’s left of the “summer” has begun in fits and starts. Before I
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Been a minute since I’ve posted on here, but now that grades have been submitted and the COVID-19 quarantine continues, seems as good a time as any to update the ole website. This past winter (December 2019 – February 2020) I had the opportunity to partner with award-winning religion journalist Adelle M. Banks in a
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This will be my third time teaching my Black religion and Black nationalism course at the College of Charleston and I’m finally starting to get the hang of it. The course is designed to introduce students to the religious ideas and practices from across the African diaspora that gave rise to the political tradition now
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The idea of our department’s senior seminar (#RELS450) is that it center on the specialty of the faculty member teaching the course but be broad enough for buy-in from students with a variety of interests. So, I designed this seminar where we would interrogate the mutual construction of “religion” and “race” as categories in the
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I preached this past Sunday at the Unitarian Church in Charleston, a community I am proud to call one of my spiritual homes. Here it is, linked. But given revelations regarding the sins and crimes of the Catholic Church this week, I feel I need to say a few more words as well. I am a
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I recently had the privilege to lecture at the University of Notre Dame on the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Black Catholic Movement in April 1968. The lecture, “Centering Black Catholics, Reimagining American Catholicism,” was sponsored by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. The Cushwa Center supported some of the dissertation
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Interested in a brief intro to my book Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migration (2017)? Check out my short video for Religion News Service! If you post comments and questions, I’ll write replies and answers.
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When I tell people that I study black Catholics, most kind of blink their eyes and go, “What?” We assume Catholicism is European in its essence, and that black people are Protestants. But the majority of black Christians in the Western hemisphere are actually Catholic, and the majority of Catholics in the Western hemisphere and
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I had the pleasure of answering Pete Cajka’s great questions about Authentically Black and Truly Catholic for the Religion in American History blog recently. Enjoy!
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Thank you, dear & brilliant friends, for encouraging me to finish this syllabus for the spring (mostly). Sadly, as with all syllabi, so many good things didn’t make the final cut. But, now that it’s done (again, emphasis on mostly), feel free to check it out. And do share your thoughts! Cressler RELS 370 Syllabus
Matthew J. Cressler, Ph.D. 