Televised Redemption: Black Religious Media and Racial Empowerment ed. by Carolyn Moxley Rouse, John L. Jackson, Jr., and Marla F. Frederick (review)

For those looking for a book on black religious imagery on television, Televised Redemption is not it. Despite the title, this book discusses television only sparingly, and even asserts, in reference to Gil Scott-Heron's 1974 spoken-word recording, that "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." This proclamation, in the last chapter of the book, made me wonder briefly why I had just bothered reading a book ostensibly about the topic. Then again, perhaps Scott-Heron's underlying premise is what led the authors to broadly define television as all media, including soapbox speeches, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, radio programs, and blogs, as well as documentary films and televised newscasts. This broad definition allows the authors to explore how African Americans involved with a variety of faiths have used the media to "redeem" their race—both in terms of their own self-worth and to white observers—in their quest for citizenship in a greater national, and even international, community.

The authors focus on "Christian prosperity ministry, African American Islamic consciousness, and black Hebrew Israelite reframings of race and belonging," stating that they "represent the dominant religions among African Americans" in the United States (4). The book is organized into two sections: part one discusses the historical antecedents of each religious tradition; part two highlights three case studies. Each religion is not discussed in equal measure, however. The pages devoted to Islam (76) total more than those to Christianity and Hebrew Israelite (72) combined.

In part one, the book provides interesting historical overviews of how the use of media has played a part in each faith's ideological development. For Christianity, the authors highlight the roles of black church leaders and television imagery in calls for social justice during the civil rights era, and current-day black televangelists preaching self-help gospels. The book emphasizes the importance of the periodical Muhammad Speaks in not only keeping the Nation of Islam together after Malcolm X's death, but in shifting the community's ideology to Sunni Islam after Elijah Mohammad's son W. Deen Mohammad took over in 1975 and formed the World Community of Islam in the West in 1976, renamed the American Society of Muslims in 1981. (In 1977, Louis Farrakhan rejected W.D. Mohammad's leadership, and re-established the Nation of Islam on the principles of its original founding, but Televised Redemption focuses on the American Society of Muslims throughout the rest of the book.) In the history of black Hebrew Israelites, the authors discuss how founder Ben Ammi used a variety of communication techniques, from the street corner soapbox and stories in black newspapers in the 1960s to DVD lectures and social media platforms more recently, to argue that African Americans are the descendants of the ancient Israelites, and thus should relocate to Israel.

The authors complement these histories by comparing and contrasting the various ideologies between the three faiths when the opportunities present themselves. That, and their overall themes of citizenship, and of the role of women in each faith, helps tie the histories and case studies together. The book includes some informational tidbits not often mentioned, including black ministers' recording of phonographic sermons at the turn of the 20^th century as an alternative to salacious blues records. It also provides an interesting discussion explaining why two African American Muslim women named Maryann and Wajda feel more comfortable living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates than in the U.S. Despite their lack of citizenship rights abroad, they receive theocratic legal protections that eluded them in their home country, having grown up "in an era of mass incarceration under the direct surveillance of the…police and the justice system" in the U.S. (166).

However, the authors make a number of methodological choices that weaken their analysis. Their disproportionate emphasis on...