When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends

Abstract

a simile from Thomas Tweed, these Buddhist artifacts which have been loosed from their traditional contexts are like found objects for new collages (2013). Black Americans are now taking up the work of creating new Buddhist forms, ones suited to their own needs and interests as a distinct cultural group. As I mentioned above, it seems that Vesely-Flad’s intended audience is not scholars of Buddhism in America such as myself but activists in the Movement for Black Lives who she believes could benefit from the model her interviewees provide. Nevertheless, her book stands to become a classic ethnographic study for the field of Buddhist studies and should be consulted by those looking to do further research on Black Buddhists in America and elsewhere. I believe Vesely-Flad’s book would be best suited to the graduate seminar or on the reading list of doctoral students looking to study American religion more broadly. While I recommend the book highly for these purposes, I must also give a strong proviso to readers unfamiliar with Buddhism to consult other sources for a more robust and lessslanted presentation of the tradition.