Black Men Worshipping

Black Men Worshipping analyzes the discursive spaces where Black masculinity is constructed, performed, and contested in American religion and culture. It judiciously considers the anxiety that emerges from Black male negotiations with these constructions

Black Men Worshipping analyzes the discursive spaces where Black masculinity is constructed, performed, and contested in American religion and culture. It judiciously considers the anxiety that emerges from Black male negotiations with these constructions

The Black Clergy’s Misguided Worship Leadership, This book is an incisive analysis showing why and how the black community’s worship of Jesus Christ, Christianity’s White male idol, is a subliminal, underlying cause of the high incarceration rates among young Black males. Citing cogent historical, educational, and behavioral reasons, Dr. Bell explains why the worship of the ancient Roman, Constantine- certified, white male idol Jesus Christ is misguided and afflicts black people with a deleterious white superiority syndrome. Dr Bell explains further how such worship spiritually emasculates and socially demeans black manhood and how many young black men intuitively react in ways that lead to high rates of delinquencies, violence, crime, and incarceration. In this book, Dr. Bell petitions the black clergy to stop this misguided worship and start teaching black people a new Christianity that espouses a “Worship only God, the source and sustainer of life” message and honors but does not worship prophet Jesus. Dr. Bell argues that this new Christianity will liberate black people from the damaging psychological effects of their white-male worshipping folkways. He also argues that the new Christianity will end the spiritual emasculation and disrespect imposed on young black men by the old Constantine-certified Christianity and will thus mediate downward the high rates of delinquencies, violence, and incarceration among young black men. Dr. Bell asserts that unless the black clergy takes the actions requested in his petition, black people will forever think of themselves as inferior to white people and many, angry young Black men will continue their plight and plunge toward incarceration.

Issues in African American Music: Power, Gender, Race, Representation is a collection of twenty-one essays by leading scholars, surveying vital themes in the history of African American music. Bringing together the viewpoints of ethnomusicologists, historians, and performers, these essays cover topics including the music industry, women and gender, and music as resistance, and explore the stories of music creators and their communities. Revised and expanded to reflect the latest scholarship, with six all-new essays, this book both complements the previously published volume African American Music: An Introduction and stands on its own. Each chapter features a discography of recommended listening for further study. From the antebellum period to the present, and from classical music to hip hop, this wide-ranging volume provides a nuanced introduction for students and anyone seeking to understand the history, social context, and cultural impact of African American music.

One of America's most prominent worship leaders allows us to go on a liturgical journey with him. Out of his experience, Bishop Frederick Hilborn Talbot provides an exciting and useful guide for church leaders who understand that revitalizing worship is central to revitalizing the church itself. In African American Worship: New Eyes for Seeing, Talbot balances the cultural setting of African American churches and the wider experience of the church universal through the ages. He draws together his own wide and long experience, African background, Caribbean and United States churches, as well as the strong influence of the Wesleyan Revival. Outstanding church leaders, scholars in theology, and pastors commend this exceptional account of the African American experience of worship as a model for the future for churches of all denominations.

Male-centered theology, a dearth of men in the pews, and an overrepresentation of queer males in music ministry: these elements coexist within the spaces of historically black Protestant churches, creating an atmosphere where simultaneous heteropatriarchy and "real" masculinity anxieties, archetypes of the "alpha-male preacher", the "effeminate choir director" and homo-antagonism, are all in play. The "flamboyant" male vocalists formed in the black Pentecostal music ministry tradition, through their vocal styles, gestures, and attire in church services, display a spectrum of gender performances - from "hyper-masculine" to feminine masculine - to their fellow worshippers, subtly protesting and critiquing the otherwise heteronormative theology in which the service is entrenched. And while the performativity of these men is characterized by cynics as "flaming," a similar musicalized "fire" - that of the Holy Spirit - moves through the bodies of Pentecostal worshippers, endowing them religio-culturally, physically, and spiritually like "fire shut up in their bones". Using the lenses of ethnomusicology, musicology, anthropology, men's studies, queer studies, and theology, Flaming?: The Peculiar Theo-Politics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance observes how male vocalists traverse their tightly-knit social networks and negotiate their identities through and beyond the worship experience. Author Alisha Jones ultimately addresses the ways in which gospel music and performance can afford African American men not only greater visibility, but also an affirmation of their fitness to minister through speech and song.

A fundamental and well-illustrated reference collection for anyone interested in the role of women in North American religious life.