Is there really a monolithic "Black church"? Distilling the arguments of Anthony B. Pinn's important and provocative work in Terror and Triumph, this brief volume asks the central question: What really is African American religion?

Sketching the religious landscape of African American communities today, Pinn makes explicit the tension in traditional conversations about Black religion that privilege either Christianity in particular or organizations (with doctrines and creeds) in general. Discussing the misunderstandings and historical inaccuracies of such views, Pinn offers an alternate theory of Black religion that begins with a basic push for embodied meaning as its core impulse. In this expanded edition, Pinn offers new reflections on the state of the Black church.