Move

Richard Kent Evans's MOVE: An American Religion operates on several levels vital to today's social and political discourse, both inside and outside the academic community. First, Evans asks the questions: What is a religion? What is theology? Who determines the legitimacy of a religious movement and its theological assertions? Second, MOVE examines police and state violence, most critically around the issue of the U.S. government's abuse of power against its own citizens. Finally, the book contextualizes these topics within a specific West Philadelphian Black community of believers and their allegiance to their prophet: John Africa. All three of these cultural, social, and political factors—religion, state violence, and race—fatally converged on May 13, 1985, when the Philadelphia Police Department, “using military grade firearms and explosives they borrowed from the [Federal Bureau of Investigation], raided the MOVE house on Osage Avenue” (p. 251). This event, known as the MOVE bombing, came about

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