Pinn/Embodiment and Black Religion, Introduction. Bodies and Religion

The introduction to Embodying Black Religion discusses the reason for the text’s emergence as well as its scope and trajectory. Surveying the two areas in African American religious studies where the body has been given the most attention—theology and ethics—we conclude that much of this theological and ethical work provides limited and narrow attention to the nature of embodiment. Such work calls for a more expansive conceptual and theoretical framing of both the body and religion, and we find a strong set of building blocks in Pinn’s work. His theory of religion as the quest for complex subjectivity provides an effective theoretical starting point from with which to further explore the nexus between religion and the body.