m (NOI) are more social, economic, and political than religious in character, at least in the American experience, it is nevertheless the case that they had a religious frame of reference. Indeed, the growth of membership in the NOI since the 1960s speaks to the influence of the organization as a social and cultural vehicle of the African American community in ways strikingly similar to that of the black Christian churches throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
To answer the issues regarding the purposes and ways in which the black church has exercised influence on the black American culture is to point to the significance and need for this study. No less significant is the degree to which and manner in which such influence has changed in recent years. Accordingly, it is in an elaboration and understanding of the established and shifting functions of the black church that one may discern patterns of sociological significance. Once such patterns have been identified, it may be possible to suggest future lines of development and point in the direction of further study.
To speak of the black church in historical perspective is very much to speak of the history of the American civil rights movement, itself an outgrowth of the legacy of slavery, emancipation, disenfranchisement, and discrimination. The black church became an agent of liberation in response to oppression. The study will therefore examine literature that charts the emergence of the black church as a social institution, chiefly from the modern civil rights period of the 1950s and 1960s to the current period.
There are two principal manifestations of the black church in the overall social system: the black Christian (mostly Protestant) church and the Nation of Islam, often referred to as Black Muslims. Accordingly, Islam and Christianity as manifest in black congregations, mainly with reference to leadership figures within those communities, will be discussed in respec...