University of Arkansas Press Publishes History of Church of God in Christ

Photo Submitted

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Press has published The Rise to Respectability: Race, Religion, and the Church of God in Christ ($34.95 cloth), by Calvin White Jr., a history professor at the University of Arkansas. White’s book documents the history of the Church of God in Christ and examines its cultural and religious impact on African Americans and on the history of the South. It explores the ways in which Charles Harrison Mason, the son of slaves and founder of the church, embraced a Pentecostal faith that celebrated the charismatic forms of religious expression that many blacks had come to view as outdated, unsophisticated and embarrassing.

While examining the intersection of race, religion and class, The Rise to Respectability details how the denomination dealt with the stringent standard of bourgeois behavior imposed on churchgoers as they moved from southern rural areas into the urban centers in both the South and North.

Rooted in the hardships of slavery and coming of age during Jim Crow, the church’s story portrays its history as interwoven with the Great Migration, the struggle for modernity, class tension, and racial animosity — all representative parts of the African American experience.

John Boles, editor of the Journal of Southern History, said of the book: “In his prudently revisionist account of the early career of Charles H. Mason and the origins of the Church of God in Christ, Calvin White, Jr. shows that the church has on several key occasions tentatively engaged worldly concerns, including opposition to World War I, social-uplift missionary efforts in Africa, and cautious cooperation with Dr. King in the Memphis garbage workers strike of 1968. A valuable addition to the historiography of COGIC.”

Calvin White Jr. is assistant professor of history and director of the African and African American studies program at the University of Arkansas. He teaches African American and southern history. He will be reading and signing The Rise to Respectability at Nightbird Books in Fayetteville at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27. The event is free and open to the public.

Founded in 1980, the University of Arkansas Press is the book publishing division of the University of Arkansas. It publishes approximately 20 titles per year. The University of Arkansas Press is charged by the trustees of the university with the publication of books in service to the academic community and for the enrichment of the broader culture.