The Nuwaubian Nation: Black Spirituality and State Control

Susan J. Palmer's The Nuwaubian Nation, Black Spirituality and State Control, published by Ashgate in 2010, is a scholarly study of the syncretic new religious movement founded by Dwight York, combining Palmer's own fieldwork and interviews with former members alongside analysis of the criminal prosecution that led to York's 2004 conviction and the movement's collapse. Palmer is a sociologist of new religious movements with a substantial body of comparative work on how state authorities respond to minority religions. Its strength is treating the Nuwaubian movement's theology and community seriously as a subject of study even after the criminal case dominated its public image, while not minimizing the substantiated charges against York himself. Its limit is that a study written so soon after the movement's collapse and York's conviction works with a still emotionally and legally charged body of testimony, so a claim needing dispassionate distance on contested factual details benefits from checking Palmer's account against the court record and other independent sources directly.