From Jesus to J-Setting: Religious and Sexual Fluidity among Young Black People (Sociology of Race and Ethnicity)

From Jesus to J-Setting details the experiences of Black people with diverse sexual identities from ages eighteen to thirty years old. The work examines how the intersection of racial, sexual, gender, and religious identities influence self-expression and lifestyle modalities in this understudied, often hidden population, by exploring how racial, sexual, and religious dynamics play out.

Voices in the book illuminate a continuum of decisions―from more traditional (i.e., Black church participation) to nontraditional (i.e., dancing known as J-Setting and spirituality)―and the corresponding beliefs, values, and experiences that emerge under the ever-present specter of racism, homophobia, heterosexism, and for many, ageism.

Drawing upon sociology, sociology of religion, black studies, queer studies, inequality, stratification, and cultural studies, Sandra Lynn Barnes explores the everyday lives of young Black people with fluid sexual identities and their everyday forms of individual as well as collective resistance.

SANDRA LYNN BARNES is the C.V. Starr Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Brown University. Her previous books include Kings of Mississippi: Race, Religious Education, and the Making of a Middle-Class Black Family in the Segregated South (with Benita Blanford-Jones); Empowering Black Youth of Promise: Education and Socialization in the Village-minded Black Church (with Anne Streaty-Wimberly); Re-Positioning Race: Prophetic Research in a Post-Racial Obama Age (coedited with Zandria F. Robinson and Earl Wright II); and Live Long and Prosper: How Black Megachurches Address HIV/AIDS and Poverty in the Age of Prosperity Theology.