Julius Bailey, Ph.D.

The H. Eugene Farlough-California Chair in African-American Christianity, Graduate School of Theology
Professor, Religious Studies, College of Arts & Sciences

Photo of Julius Bailey, Ph.D.

Areas of Expertise

  • Race & Ethnic Issues
  • Social Science
  • Religion in America
  • African American Religious History
  • Church History
  • New Religious Movements
  • Religion in the American West
  • AME Church History

Education

B.A., Religious Studies, Occidental College, 1993

M.A, Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1996

Ph.D., Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003
Dissertation: “Around the Domestic Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1865-1900.”

For the Media

Contact :
Media Relations

Contact

Larsen Hall
220
P: 909.748.8678
E: julius_bailey@redlands.edu

Meet Dr. Bailey

Dr. Julius H. Bailey is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Redlands. He received a B.A. in Religious Studies from Occidental College and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He teaches courses on varied aspects of religion. He has written three books, Down in the Valley: An Introduction to African American Religious History (Fortress Press, 2016), Race Patriotism: Protest and Print Culture in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (University of Tennessee Press, 2012), and Around the Family Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1865-1900 (University Press of Florida, 2005) as well as several articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries. He has also given lectures on African mythology entitled, “The Great Mythologies of the World: Africa,” produced by the Great Courses DVD series.

Courses Taught

African American Religions

American Religious History

New Religious Movements

Religion and Popular Culture

Religion and Social Protest

Senior Seminar

Experience

Professor, Religious Studies Dept., University of Redlands, 2013 – to Present
Associate Professor, Religious Studies Dept., University of Redlands, 2007 – 2013
Assistant Professor, Religious Studies Dept., University of Redlands, 2001-2007
Instructor, Religious Studies Dept., Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, 2000-2001

Publications

Books:

Down in the Valley: An Introduction to African American Religious History (Fortress Press, 2016)

Race Patriotism: Protest and Print Culture in the African Methodist Episcopal Church 
(University of Tennessee Press, 2012) 

Around the Family Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1865-1900 (University Press of Florida, 2005)



Articles and Book Chapters:

“Sacred Not Secret: Esoteric Knowledge in the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors,” in Esotericism in African American Religious Experience: “There is a Mystery” (Brill, 2014)

“‘Cult’ Knowledge: The Challenges of Studying New Religious Movements in America,” in Doing Recent History: On Privacy, Copyright, Video Games, Institutional Review Boards, Activist Scholarship, and History That Talks Back 
(University of Georgia Press, 2012)

“Masculinizing the Pulpit: Images of the Black Preacher in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Fathers, Preachers, Rebels, Men: Black Masculinity in U. S. History and Literature, 1820-1945 (Ohio State University Press, 2011)

“Classifying the ‘Great World Religions’: The Legacy of Darwinism in the Study of African Traditional Religions,” in 150 Years of Evolution: Darwin’s Impact on the Humanities and Social Sciences (San Diego State University Press, 2011)

“Fearing Hate: Re-Examining the Media Coverage of the Christian Identity Movement,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism v 4, n 1 (Spring 2010): 55-73

“‘That Hardy Race of Pioneers’: Constructions of Race and Masculinity in AME Church Histories, 1865-1900,” Council of the Societies for the Study of Religion Bulletin v 36, n 1 (February 2007): 7-10 

“The Final Frontier: Secrecy, Identity, and the Media in the Rise and Fall of the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion
v 74, n 2 (June 2006): 302-323

Encyclopedia Entries:

“Eric B. & Rakim,” Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History (Facts on File, 2010)

“Father Divine,” Encyclopedia of African American History (ABC-CLIO, 2010)

“Heaven’s Gate,” American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History (M.E. Sharpe, 2008)

“Rebecca Steward,” African American National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2008)

“Ancestor Worship,” “African Methodist Episcopal Church,” Africa and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History (ABC-CLIO, 2008)

“African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church,” Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion, v 1 (Greenwood Press, 2007)

“Benjamin T. Tanner,” “Theophilus Gould Steward,” “Henry McNeal Turner,” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Literature (Greenwood Press, 2005)
“Pastor’s Wife,” Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism (Routledge, 2001)

“Women’s Missionary Society, African Methodist Episcopal Church,” “Black Methodists for Church Renewal,” “National Conference of Black Churchmen,” “Fraternal Council of Negro Churches,” Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations (Routledge, 2001)

“New Faiths to North Carolina: Islam,” Tar Heel Junior Historian (Spring 1998)


Book Reviews:

Review of Sylvester A. Johnson, African American Religions, 1500-2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 2015), The American Historical Review 121(4) 1300-1301 (2016)

Review of Calvin White, Jr., The Rise of Respectability: Race, Religion, and the Church of God in Christ (University of Arkansas Press, 2012), The Journal of Southern History (February 2014)

Review of Susan Palmer, The Nuwaubian Nation: Black Spirituality and State Control (Ashgate, 2010) Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 16(4) 152-154 (2013)

Review of J. Gordon Melton, A Will to Choose: The Origins of African American Methodism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) Journal of American History (March 2008)

Review of Carolyn M. Jones and Theodore Louis Trost, eds., Teaching African American Religions (Oxford University Press, 2005), Teaching Theology and Religion v 11, issue 1 (2008) 60-61.

Review of Sally Gregory McMillen’s To Raise Up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865-1915 (Louisiana State University Press, 2002) AME Church Review (2003)

Review of Paul Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925 (University of North Carolina Press, 1997) Koinonia (Fall 1998)

Awards, Honors, Grants

The Louisville Institute Sabbatical Grant for Researchers, 2014-2015

American Academy of Religion Individual Research Grant, 2013

Banta Center for Business Ethics and Society Research Grant, 2013

Proposal Writing Faculty Fellow, 2013

Dan and Sandra Bane Fellow, The Huntington Library, 2011

John Topham and Susan Redd Butler Faculty Research Award 
(Charles Redd Center for Western Studies), 2011

LENS Fellowship (G.I.S/Spatial Learning), 2011

The Louisville Institute Summer Stipend, 2009

University of Redlands Summer Faculty Research Grant, 2009

Banta Center for Business Ethics and Society Research Grant, 2008

American Academy of Religion Individual Research Grant, 2007

University of Redlands Summer Faculty Research Grant, 2007

University of Redlands Faculty Award for Outstanding Research, 2006

Young Scholars in American Religion Program, Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, IUPUI, 2005-2006

Wabash Center For Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, Summer Fellowship, 2006

Wabash Center Workshop on Teaching and Learning for Pre-Tenure Faculty at Colleges and Universities, 2005-2006

NEH Summer Seminar: “Roots: African Dimensions of the Early History and Cultures of the Americas,” University of Virginia, 2005

University of Redlands Summer Faculty Research Grant, 2005

Kenyon College Dissertation Fellowship, 2000-2001

University of North Carolina Tanner Teaching Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 1999

Graduate Student Merit Fellowship, The Graduate School, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994-1997

Invited Presentations

“Competing for California: Contested Religious Space Among Nineteenth-Century Black Churches,” November 2017, Western History Association, San Diego, CA

“Sacralizing the Land: The Nineteenth-Century Expansion of the AME Church in the American West,” November 2016, American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, Texas

“Nineteenth-Century Black Print Culture and the American Bible Society,” November 2016, American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, Texas

“Public Opinion, Social Issues, and the African American Religious Press,” November 2014, Johannes-Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

“Sacred Not Secret: Esoteric Knowledge in the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors,” November 2014, American Academy of Religion, San Diego, CA

“Polygamists or What Not, One Wife or Forty: Ambivalent Attitudes Toward Mormonism in Nineteenth-Century AME Church Print Culture,” November 2013, American Academy of Religion, Baltimore, Maryland

“Historical Narrative in the AME Church,” April 2012, Loma Linda University, 
Loma Linda, CA

“Writing the Scholarship of Teaching” (workshop), November 2011, American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, CA

“Confronting Confusion: The Perils and Prospects of New Assignments,” November 2010, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia

“Should ‘African’ Remain in Our Title?: Responses to Darwinism in the Nineteenth-Century AME Church,” January 2010, American Society of Church History, San Diego, California

“Defending the Faith from Darwin: Evolutionary Theory in the Nineteenth-Century Black Church,” February 2009, National Association of African American Studies, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Chair, “Diasporic Networks” Session, October 2008, American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, New Mexico

“‘Too Light to Lead’: Daniel Coker and Racial Liminality in the Early African Methodist Episcopal Church,” March 2008, Biennial Boston College Conference on the History of Religion ‘Religious Identities,’ Boston, Massachusetts

“Should ‘African’ Remain in Our Title?: The Americanization of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1868-1884,” February 2008, National Association of African American Studies, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

“Imagining the American West: Benjamin T. Tanner and the Politics of Racial Destiny in the AME Church,” November 2007, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, 
San Diego, California

“‘That Hardy Race of Pioneers’: Constructions of Race and Masculinity in AME Church Histories, 1865-1900,” November 2005, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the Racial Dimensions of Motherhood,” March 2004, American Academy of Religion/Western Region, Whittier, California

“Benjamin T. Tanner and the Creation of the AME Church Newspaper the Child’s 
Recorder, 1868-1884,” November 2002, 
American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada

“Around the Domestic Altar: Nineteenth-Century African-American Family Religious Life, 1865-1890,” March 2000, American Academy of Religion Southeastern Regional Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia

“Sculpting the Future: Nineteenth-Century African Methodist Episcopal Church Histories,” March 2000, 
Indiana Association of Historians Twentieth Annual Meeting, New Harmony, Indiana

“The Problem of ‘We’: Pedagogical strategies for the Multicultural Classroom,” 
April 1999, 3rd Annual Celebration of Teaching Conference, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

“Religion and the Moral Dilemma in the Slave/Master Relationship,” March 1999, 10th Annual Conference on African-American Culture & Experience, 
Greensboro, North Carolina

“Religion and Race in America: A Response to Michael Eric Dyson,” April 1998, 50th Anniversary Symposium, Religion and Society in the 21st Century: A View From The Public University, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Affiliations

University of North Carolina Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars
American Academy of Religion
American Historical Association
American Philosophical Association
American Society of Church History
Organization of American Historians
American Studies Association
National Association of African American Studies