God of the New Slaves or Slave to the Ideas of Religion and God?

Abstract

Religion, when dethroned from sacrality and the illusion of morality and affirmativeness, is just as ordinary as cherry pie. That talk of religion makes its way into the culture that we call hip-hop is of no surprise—after all, religion becomes just another (linguistic) way in which the social world is often discussed. In the same way, what some see as culture might be considered to hold “religious” weight and value for others and what holds “religious” weight and value for others might simply be referred to as culture. That is to say, there’s nothing intrinsic or of inherent value within these words that marks and delineates them as irreducibly different and distinct. What marks race or religion, for example, as “separate” domains is simply the constructed significance placed upon these terms across groups and communities. In other words, a term, or phrase like “religion in hip-hop” is in and of itself, empty of meaning and value. What they come to mean in time and space speaks to the contestation over ideas and values in the larger publics.

This essay is expanded and revised from previous commentaries written for Culture on the Edge, BET.com, and Huffington Post. These earlier writings can be found at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/monica-r-miller-phd/no-church-in-the-wild-spirituality-between-beats-and-rhymes_b_1756187.html, http://edge.ua.edu/monica-miller/god-of-the-new-slaves/, http://www.bet.com/news/national/2013/05/30/commentary-kanye-west-smost-important-social-critique.html, and http://edge.ua.edu/monica-miller/no-culture-in-the-cockpit-please/