Stephen Finley on Religious Fervor, Racial Injustice, and the Paranormal

Voices of Esalen

Dr. Stephen Finley, associate professor at Louisiana State University, where he teaches a host of courses that center around African American religious thought and culture, including Black Religion and Film, Race in the Age of Obama, and Black Intellectual Thought. He is the co-editor of “There is a Mystery: Esotericism, Gnosticism, and Mysticism in African American Religious Experience” and the author of “In and Out of this World: Material and Extraterrestrial Bodies in the Nation of Islam,” and together we discussed the pitfalls of diversity, including the very real risks of tokenization, UFOs and their relation to African American culture, and the history of racial terror.