Historian of religion Charles H. Long's landmark text, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (1986), has served as a lynchpin for the interdisciplinary study of black religion and culture since its original publication more than a quarter of a century ago. This article focuses on how Long's masterwork has stimulated innovative theories and methods utilised in analysing the origins and varieties of black religious experience in the wake of New World slavery that often have been subsumed under the heavy-laden concept of “Black religion.” Additionally, this article contextualises the influential nature of Long's work upon the history of black religions in the modern world as modalities of both orientation and meaning-making by emphasising the book's powerful descriptions and critical analyses of black religious phenomenology. Through a historiography of New World slavery, religion, and culture within the context of the Black Atlantic, this article identifies a cluster of major theoretical paradigms illustrated by recent, far-ranging studies of race, religion, and culture at the height of the African enslavement in the circum-Atlantic world.

中文翻译：

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迈向黑色大西洋的宗教历史：查尔斯·H·朗的意义和新世界奴隶制

宗教史学家查尔斯·H·朗 (Charles H. Long) 的里程碑式著作《宗教解释中的符号、符号和图像》(Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (1986)) 自其最初出版以来，一直是黑人宗教和文化跨学科研究的关键。一个世纪以前。本文重点介绍朗的杰作如何激发创新的理论和方法，用于分析新世界奴隶制之后黑人宗教体验的起源和多样性，这些体验往往被归入沉重的“黑人宗教”概念之下。此外，本文通过强调这本书，将朗的作品对现代世界黑人宗教历史的影响作为定位和意义制定的方式进行了背景化。对黑人宗教现象学的有力描述和批判性分析。通过对黑大西洋背景下的新世界奴隶制、宗教和文化的史学编纂，本文确定了一系列主要理论范式，这些范式通过最近对非洲最高峰时期的种族、宗教和文化的广泛研究来说明。环大西洋世界的奴役。