This week’s faculty seminar series featured Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Judith Casselberry, who gave a presentation called “Harvesting Souls for Christ: Black Pentecostal Women’s Labor at the Altar.” In each weekly lunch seminar, faculty from across Bowdoin’s curriculum gather for a talk by one of their colleagues, who is typically returning from a sabbatical devoted to research or an artistic project.
Judith Casselberry presents “Harvesting Souls for Christ: Black Pentecostal Women’s Labor at the Altar”
Casselberry, who last year was a research associate in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School, described the unique role of altar workers – almost exclusively women – in the Harlem-based Church of our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, known as COOLJC. Read about Casselberry’s research on the remarkable spiritual and physical labor performed by altar workers within the male-headed hierarchy of Pentecostal churches.
