Elevating the Race: Theophilus G. Steward, Black Theology, and the Making of an African American Civil Society, 1865-1924.

Elevating the Race: Theophilus G. Steward, Black Theology, and the Making of an African American Civil Society, 1865-1924. By Albert G. Miller. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. Pp. xxiv, 211. $28.00, ISBN 1-57233-221-2.)

Theophilus G. Steward, an African Methodist Epicopal pastor, often gravitated toward centers of action. Born in New Jersey in 1843, he moved south during Reconstruction to preach and teach among freedpeople in South Carolina and Georgia. Between 1891 and 1906 he served as chaplain to the Twenty-fifth Infantry and was stationed in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. He later became vice president of Wilberforce University, where he trained a new generation of black leaders using a curriculum that presaged modern African diasporic studies.

Albert G. Miller argues that through it all Steward remained "first and foremost a thinker" (p. 140). In this fine intellectual biography of Steward, Miller ignores the minutiae of Steward's eventful life and instead stresses the salient themes of his religious thought--in particular, education, rationalism, civilization, imperialism, gender, and race. These themes, Miller says, cohered around a central goal: "the development of an African American civil society through a variety of religious, educational, and social institutions" (p. 9). Steward believed black-run institutions would give African Americans the self-sufficiency and moral force they needed to enter the larger American society as equals.

Steward's intellectual independence often put him at odds with those around him. He called for integrated education when many black and white leaders preferred separation. His liberal views on religion and modern science drew fire from his mentor, Bishop Daniel Payne, and his one novel--A Charleston Love Story (1899)--annoyed religious liberals with its emphasis on traditional piety. Once an advocate of separate spheres, Steward later supported suffrage for women. And he promoted military service as a vehicle of racial uplift, even as he criticized the racist underpinnings of American imperialism. In Miller's portrayal, Steward often seems like the lone voice crying in the wilderness.

Miller fulfills his modest ambitions for the most part. The writing is engaging, the research thorough, and the arguments persuasive. The constant attention to shifts in Steward's thought--especially on religious liberalism and gender--adds interpretive nuance. A theologian, Miller clearly seeks a usable past, and his admiration for Steward's "triumphant and hopeful vision for humankind" is too evident at times (p. 143). Historians will want more contextualization in key parts of the book. Miller includes no substantive discussion of either black theology or racial uplift ideology, and he seldom compares Steward to more prominent contemporaries--Ida B. Wells or W. E. B. Du Bois, to name two. A few additional pages of material might have allowed a more accurate assessment of Steward's legacy.

Miller's work holds strong appeal to specific audiences. Southern historians will find it of passing interest, but scholars of African American thought and religion will surely welcome this compelling study of a neglected black intellectual.

J. AARON FRITH 

Spelman College