Captive Spirituality: Black Religion, Futures, and Nationalism in the Republic of New Afrika

This paper argues that the Black nationalist organization the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) cultivated a “captive spirituality” among its members. Founded in 1968, the RNA declared Black people in the United States a nation held captive by the U.S. government and demanded territorial sovereignty over five Southern states at the height of the Black Power era. Drawing on political education curricula, economic plans, meeting minutes, and internal memoranda from 1968 to 1975, I use “captive spirituality” as a theoretical lens to uncover the spiritual intellectualism shaping RNA leaders’ visions of a liberated Black future. This intellectualism was grounded in talk of soul evolution, esotericism, and ego death as ways of theorizing the modes of being required to build an independent Black nation. In contrast to scholarship that treats Black Power nationalism as the secular successor to earlier religio-racial movements, this paper shows how RNA organizing was grounded in metaphysical thinking that placed Black spirituality at the center of its aims and objectives.