Erika Gault, an assistant professor of Africana Studies, has been selected as a 2018 recipient of the Louisville Institute’s First Book Grant for Minority Scholars.

Gault’s award of $40,000 will fund research over the coming academic year as she completes a book project that analyzes religion and faith among black millennials and how they’re influenced by social media and hip-hop.

Titled Being Christian, Doing Hip-Hop: A Digital Ethnography of Black Millennial Christianity, the book will draw on Gault’s research, including extensive interviews, observation of concerts and other events, an examination of song lyrics, and an advanced analysis of data collected from social media posts over two years.

“There’s so little data now on black millennial faith,” Gault says. “The pervasive influence of hip-hop on Christian black millennials provides a rich context for examining religious life beyond the Black Church. This project is a digital ethnography of how doing hip hop informs what it means to be Christian for a number of black millennials.”

Over the next year, Gault will interview prominent Christian black millennial hip hop artists, music producers, and pastors and as a participant, observe Christian open mics, rap concerts and youth conferences.

A qualitative content analysis of online profiles, posts and offline textual reads of song lyrics, and black millennial rappers’ autobiographies is used to identify the most salient themes in black Christian millennial beliefs and practices. Gault will use online tools like Socioviz and Graph API Explorer to collect and analyze social media content created, liked, shared or commented on by self-identified Christian black millennials over a two-year period.

“The final book provides an ‘internet-related’ journey through the religious world of Christian black millennials,” Gault says.

“There’s this assumption that if we know the Black Church, we know what all African-Americans think regarding religion. Considering the way in which millennials are generalized in the media and even in statistical and marketing research has really fueled my own desire to conduct a more holistic study of black millennials. We’re having the conversation now more than ever about all millennials, but we need to look specifically at religious belief among black millennials.”

Gault says that when she was an undergraduate, she felt the call the ministry and began the ordination process in her historically black church. Before obtaining her doctorate in American Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo, she earned a master’s degree in Religion from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School and became an ordained elder at Elim Christian Fellowship.

Her research follows a professional as well as personal interest.

“I am a product of the Black Church. As  a cusp-millennial that context has shaped my beliefs. Black young people haven’t lost their spirituality, but it’s in transition. I thought it was imperative to do that research so I started my Ph.D. to study a group that has received little scholarly attention,” she says.

Gault anticipates a book release date in the fall of 2019.

The Louisville Institute is a Lilly Endowment-funded program based at Louisville Seminary, supporting those who lead and study North American religious institutions.