Music In The Black Church

The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.

A nongovernmental survey of urban and rural churches of black communities based on a ten year study.

Mapson's objective is to help today's pastor take the leadership in improving the worship experience through the use of music that meets the biblical norm and serves theology as a legitimate response to God.

This second volume of Readings in African American Church Music and Worship makes available the most recent scholarship on 21st-century developments and trends, through a representative number of articles, essays, and chapters written by brilliant musicians, authors, and theologians of our time. The list of contributors includes some of the finest emerging scholars, as well as offerings from seasoned authors whose research and writings are well regarded by peers and the worshiping community at large. The significant contributions--from names new and familiar--greatly broaden the field of study. The 43 chapters of this volume are divided into 7 categories: Worship and Liturgical Practices, Liturgical Theologies, Proclamation of the Word, Hymnody: Sound and Sense, Perspectives on Praise and Worship, Hip Hop and/in the Church, and Perspectives on Women and Gender. Insightful, thought-provoking, challenging, and hopeful--this volume will be a source of knowledge, a stimulus for discussion, and a call to reconsider the many and varied viewpoints of the African American church.

Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities. In The Black Church in the African American Experience, based on a ten-year study, is the largest nongovernmental study of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study on the subject since the 1930s. Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive historical overview of seven mainline black denominations, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya present an analysis of the Black Church as it relates to the history of African Americans and to contemporary black culture. In examining both the internal structure of the Church and the reactions of the Church to external, societal changes, the authors provide important insights into the Church’s relationship to politics, economics, women, youth, and music. Among other topics, Lincoln and Mamiya discuss the attitude of the clergy toward women pastors, the reaction of the Church to the civil rights movement, the attempts of the Church to involve young people, the impact of the black consciousness movement and Black Liberation Theology and clergy, and trends that will define the Black Church well into the next century. This study is complete with a comprehensive bibliography of literature on the black experience in religion. Funding for the ten-year survey was made possible by the Lilly Endowment and the Ford Foundation.

Provides a timely portrait of young Black Christians and how digital technology is transforming the Black Church They stand at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement, push the boundaries of the Black Church through online expression of Christian hip hop, and redefine what it means to be young, Black, and Christian in America. Young Black adults represent the future of African American religiosity, yet little is known regarding their religious lives beyond the Black Church. Networking the Black Church explores how deeply embedded digital technology is in the lives of young Black Christians, offering a first-of-its-kind digital-hip hop ethnography. Erika D. Gault argues that a new religious ethos has emerged among young adult Blacks in America. To understand Black Christianity today it is not enough to look at the traditional Black Church. The Black Church is itself being changed by what she calls digital Black Christians. The volume examines the ways in which Christian hip hop artists who have adopted Black-preaching-inspired spoken word performances create alternate kinds of Christian communities both inside and outside the walls of traditional Black churches. Framed around interviews with prominent Black Christian hip hop artists, it explores the multiple ways that digital Black Christians construct religious identity and meaning through video-sharing and social media. In the process, these digital Black Christians are changing Black churches as institutions, transforming modes of religious activism, inventing new communication practices around evangelism and Christian identity, and streamlining the accessibility of Black Church cultural practices in popular culture. Erika D. Gault provides a fascinating portrait of young Black faith, illuminating how the relationship between religion and digital media is changing the lived experiences of a new generation of Black Christians.

This book reflects opportunity for change in how "music" is defined and understood among churches of all denominations, (secular and religious).

The book ¿Music in The Black Church ¿ The Untold Story¿ is a true story written by Dr. Sylvester K. Starkes based on his 50 years in ministry. It is his lifelong journey of triumphs, up¿s, down¿s, in¿s, and out¿s. It will reveal many instances where God delivered him from the hand of his enemies. He persevered, through the storm, through the rain, through sickness and through pain, and through the talk of church folks. He knew that ministry was birthed in him; the ministry that only he alone could fulfill. The book unlocks Starkes¿ childhood, teen-hood an adulthood, all of which were saturated in ministry. Even though he spent countless hours in church, he was not exempt from being labored as a homosexual as well as having to bare false accusations. The book is comprised of 12 chapters and can be used as a music textbook as well as a testament of God¿s Grace and Mercy in action! It is filled with information pertinent to music education in music ministry.