This chapter offers a theoretical examination of the relationship between the Black body and religion in African American religious studies, paying particular attention to enslavement and the construction of the slave body and “the flesh” as a complex fulcrum for religious embodiment and self-fashioning in modernity and also for intracommunal bodily violation in Black religious contexts. This chapter wrestles with the philosophical inheritances that scholars in this field must navigate as both an intellectual exercise on the matter of Black existence, and as an ethical problem with regard to how to account for both the experience of domination and the manifold examples of Black religious innovation which sit at the crux of the study of Black religions. Thus, it effectively argues that scholars cannot sidestep attention to the Black body and its interdependence on the fraught category of religion.

Chapter 4 describes the establishment of two schools by the pastor of one of the largest neo-Pentecostal churches in Dar es Salaam against a background of processes of social segregation as well as spiritual insecurity in the context of perceived urban ambiguity. The two schools; which cater to students from different socio-economic backgrounds; foster class formation among students and staff; as well as the ethos of a ‘caring discipline’ among the teachers. At the same time; there are significant tensions among the staff; which result from concerns about national and ethnic favouritism and from a rigid system of performance monitoring. On the other hand; however; the two schools also establish networks of local; national; and international belonging; which are particularly valued among teachers hired from abroad. Furthermore; an essential part of the two schools’ reputation derives from the fact that they are perceived as faith-oriented schools providing ‘moral education’. However; articulations of faith and morality play a rather implicit role in the everyday practices of the schools; not only with regard to the learning of values but also in the context of the (informal) healing prayers that are conducted for (exclusively female Muslim) students believed to have been exposed to evil spirits and witchcraft attacks.

Agency refers to the human capacity to choose, initiate, and control actions to influence events in the world. The experience of agency is fundamental to our sense of self but may be altered in certain neurological conditions and forms of psychopathology. In this chapter, we review recent work in cognitive neuroscience that shows how agency depends on sensorimotor loops between the body and the environment as well as higher-order processes of attribution and interpretation. The sensorimotor loops that contribute to the sense of agency and ownership of the body and its actions can be manipulated in laboratory experiments to give rise to startling illusions like being out of one’s body, having a rubber hand, or controlling random events. Religious experiences like spirit possession and dissociative symptoms like conversion disorder may depend on attributing action to agencies other than the self. Even everyday actions depend on interpretive processes that draw from cultural affordances and ontologies as well as social and political structures. Embodied experience grounds to the sense of agency, but culturally mediated attributions can alter bodily experience. Far from being simply a consequence of individual cognition or ability, therefore, agency is rooted in ongoing engagement with the social–cultural world.