Professor Julius H. Bailey is a Professor of Religion at the University of Redlands. He received a B.A. in Religious Studies from Occidental College and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include African mythology, African American religious history, and new religious movements. He teaches courses on varied aspects of religion.

Professor Bailey’s research focuses on the diverse experiences of the African diaspora. His first book is entitled Around the Family Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1865–1900. This work examines the ideology of domesticity in the lives of African Americans in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and its distinctiveness in light of recent studies of 19th-century white Protestant and Catholic homes. The book traces the efforts of AME Church leaders and members to apply notions of domesticity to the challenges facing the denomination after the Civil War, such as regional tensions, the restoration of families after slavery, the licensing of female preachers, and the spiritual nurturing of children.

Professor Bailey’s second book is Race Patriotism: Protest and Print Culture in the AME Church. This work analyzes the ways in which various understandings of race, gender, and place influenced the framing of social issues for African Americans in the 19th century. Issues discussed include westward migration, the selection of the appropriate referent for the race, social Darwinism, the viability of emigration to Africa, and cultural and religious connections to African traditional religions.

Professor Bailey’s research also looks at African American new religious movements. His work on this topic includes “‘Cult’ Knowledge: The Challenges of Studying New Religious Movements in America” (a chapter in Doing Recent History: On Privacy, Copyright, Video Games, Institutional Review Boards, Activist Scholarship, and History That Talks Back) and “The Final Frontier: Secrecy, Identity, and the Media in the Rise and Fall of the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors,” published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. The professor also has written an article on white supremacist movements, “Fearing Hate: Reexamining the Media Coverage of the Christian Identity Movement,” which appeared in the Journal for the Study of Radicalism.

Professor Bailey is currently at work on two books, a collection of international myths and a textbook on African American religious history.