The Traditions of the Black Church and the Preacher

The Traditions of the Black Church and the Preacher PDF Author: Dr. Nevalon Mitchell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780990925002
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
This book is an attempt to analyze the historic roles of the black church and the black preacher in light of liberation theology of radical social involvement. The first chapter, "The Black Church and the Black Preacher: African Roots, underscores the various ways in which African religious traditions shaped and informed the style and ethos of the black church, and the authority and artistic creativity of the black preacher. Only fleeting attention has been given the black preacher in this regard. Some attention is devoted in this chapter to how the image of Africa, as reflected in the early black church and the black preacher, contributed to a liberation theology that would find a strong intellectual character centuries later. Chapter two covers the different images of the black church and the black preacher during slavery. It is called, "Spiritual and Artistic Forms: The Black Church and the Black Preacher During Slavery." Emphasis is placed on how the black church translated its liberation theology into practical reality through its roles as the "Old Israel" and the "All-Comprehending Institution." The Church's involvement in Abolitionists activity, the Underground Railroad, and other movements against slavery and racism is regarded as an early expression of liberation theology. The preacher's significance as a symbol of hope, a leader in the spiritual destiny of the folk, an agent of protest, and a fashioner and exemplar of culture is also interpreted within this context. Chapter three begins with the immediate postbellum period and extends to the present, with a special focus on the implications of black church activism and black preaching for contemporary liberation theology. The argument is that the church and preachers in the slave songs, sermons, tales, and other sources. This chapter is entitled, "Beyond Slavery: The Black Church and the Black Preacher Since Slavery." The next chapter discusses black women in the ministry of the black church. It treats this as the most significant challenge confronting the black church with its strong tradition of a male-dominated leadership. The growing assertiveness of black women in the black church, and the extent to which gender issues are currently shaping black theology, is the central thrust of this chapter. It is called, "Extending the Tradition: Black Women and Ministry in the Black Church." This fourth chapter underscores the need for African-Americans to rethink the traditions of the black church and the black preacher in light of issues that are currently being raised in the works of Delores Williams, Jacquelyn Grant, Marcia Riggs, and other womanist theologians. The fifth chapter is entitled, "Blazing New Paths: Challenges Confronting the Black Church and Its Leadership in the Future." Here the stress is on the need for new and more vital ministries and missions to address drug addiction, Aids, poverty, illiteracy, and other problems that are still negatively affecting the quality of life in the African-American community.

The Traditions of the Black Church and the Preacher

The Traditions of the Black Church and the Preacher PDF Author: Dr. Nevalon Mitchell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780990925002
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is an attempt to analyze the historic roles of the black church and the black preacher in light of liberation theology of radical social involvement. The first chapter, "The Black Church and the Black Preacher: African Roots, underscores the various ways in which African religious traditions shaped and informed the style and ethos of the black church, and the authority and artistic creativity of the black preacher. Only fleeting attention has been given the black preacher in this regard. Some attention is devoted in this chapter to how the image of Africa, as reflected in the early black church and the black preacher, contributed to a liberation theology that would find a strong intellectual character centuries later. Chapter two covers the different images of the black church and the black preacher during slavery. It is called, "Spiritual and Artistic Forms: The Black Church and the Black Preacher During Slavery." Emphasis is placed on how the black church translated its liberation theology into practical reality through its roles as the "Old Israel" and the "All-Comprehending Institution." The Church's involvement in Abolitionists activity, the Underground Railroad, and other movements against slavery and racism is regarded as an early expression of liberation theology. The preacher's significance as a symbol of hope, a leader in the spiritual destiny of the folk, an agent of protest, and a fashioner and exemplar of culture is also interpreted within this context. Chapter three begins with the immediate postbellum period and extends to the present, with a special focus on the implications of black church activism and black preaching for contemporary liberation theology. The argument is that the church and preachers in the slave songs, sermons, tales, and other sources. This chapter is entitled, "Beyond Slavery: The Black Church and the Black Preacher Since Slavery." The next chapter discusses black women in the ministry of the black church. It treats this as the most significant challenge confronting the black church with its strong tradition of a male-dominated leadership. The growing assertiveness of black women in the black church, and the extent to which gender issues are currently shaping black theology, is the central thrust of this chapter. It is called, "Extending the Tradition: Black Women and Ministry in the Black Church." This fourth chapter underscores the need for African-Americans to rethink the traditions of the black church and the black preacher in light of issues that are currently being raised in the works of Delores Williams, Jacquelyn Grant, Marcia Riggs, and other womanist theologians. The fifth chapter is entitled, "Blazing New Paths: Challenges Confronting the Black Church and Its Leadership in the Future." Here the stress is on the need for new and more vital ministries and missions to address drug addiction, Aids, poverty, illiteracy, and other problems that are still negatively affecting the quality of life in the African-American community.

The Black Church

The Black Church PDF Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984880330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
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.

Say It!

Say It! PDF Author: Eric C Redmond
Publisher: Moody Publishers
ISBN: 0802497896
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Say It! A Celebration of Expository Preaching in the African American Tradition argues that Biblical Exposition is most dynamic when coupled with the African American preaching tradition. Charlie Dates, Romell Williams, George Parks, Jr., Terry D. Streeter and a cast of pastors and preaching professors collaborate to demonstrate the power of exposition in the cradle of the Black pulpit. The contributors in this volume give examples of African American Biblical exposition in every section of the Old Testament and New Testament. They also explain how to preach from narrative, poetical, prophetic, epistolary, and apocalyptic genres throughout the Scriptures. This important and powerful resource celebrates the faithful, biblical preaching of African Americans that is so often overlooked because it's stylistically different than the style of most white preachers. Appropriate for training associate ministers or use as a textbook in homiletics, Say It! will give the preacher what is needed to speak to real life from every page of the Book!

Introduction to the Practice of African American Preaching

Introduction to the Practice of African American Preaching PDF Author: Frank A. Thomas
Publisher: Abingdon Press
ISBN: 1501818953
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The Introduction to African American Preaching is an important, groundbreaking book. This book acknowledges African American preaching as an academic discipline, and invites all students and preachers into a scholarly, dynamic, and useful exploration of the topic. Author Frank Thomas opens with a “bus tour” study of African American preaching. He shows how African American preaching has gradually moved from an almost exclusively oral to an oral/written tradition. Readers will gain insight into the history of the study of the African American preaching tradition, and catch the author’s enthusiasm for it. Next Thomas traces the relationship between homiletics and rhetoric in Western preaching, demonstrating how African American preaching is inherently theological and rhetorical. He then explores the question, “what is black preaching?” Thomas introduces the reader to methods of “close reading” and “ideological criticism.” And then demonstrates how to use these methods, using a sermon by Gardner Calvin Taylor as his example. The next chapter considers the question, “what is excellence in black preaching?” The next chapter seeks to create bridges and dialogue within the field of homiletics, and in particular, the Euro-American homiletic tradition. The goal of this chapter is to clearly demonstrate connections between the African American preaching tradition and the field of homiletics. Thomas next turns to questions about the relevancy of the church to the Millennial generation. Specifically, how will the African American church remain relevant to this generation, which is so deeply concerned with social justice?

Black Preaching

Black Preaching PDF Author:
Publisher: Harper & Row, Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Transcripts of representative sermons are used to illustrate an appraisal of the language and style of the Black preaching tradition.

Dear Church

Dear Church PDF Author: Lenny Duncan
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506452574
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
Lenny Duncan is the unlikeliest of pastors. Formerly incarcerated, he is now a black preacher in the whitest denomination in the United States: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Shifting demographics and shrinking congregations make all the headlines, but Duncan sees something else at work--drawing a direct line between the church's lack of diversity and the church's lack of vitality. The problems the ELCA faces are theological, not sociological. But so are the answers. Part manifesto, part confession, and all love letter, Dear Church offers a bold new vision for the future of Duncan's denomination and the broader mainline Christian community of faith. Dear Church rejects the narrative of church decline and calls everyone--leaders and laity alike--to the front lines of the churchÂs renewal through racial equality and justice. It is time for the church to rise up, dust itself off, and take on forces of this world that act against God: whiteness, misogyny, nationalism, homophobia, and economic injustice. Duncan gives a blueprint for the way forward and urges us to follow in the revolutionary path of Jesus.

The Divided Mind of the Black Church

The Divided Mind of the Black Church PDF Author: Raphael G. Warnock
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479806005
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
A revealing look at the identity and mission of the Black church What is the true nature and mission of the church? Is its proper Christian purpose to save souls, or to transform the social order? This question is especially fraught when the church is one built by an enslaved people and formed, from its beginning, at the center of an oppressed community’s fight for personhood and freedom. Such is the central tension in the identity and mission of the Black church in the United States. For decades the Black church and Black theology have held each other at arm’s length. Black theology has emphasized the role of Christian faith in addressing racism and other forms of oppression, arguing that Jesus urged his disciples to seek the freedom of all peoples. Meanwhile, the Black church, even when focused on social concerns, has often emphasized personal piety rather than social protest. With the rising influence of white evangelicalism, biblical fundamentalism, and the prosperity gospel, the divide has become even more pronounced. In The Divided Mind of the Black Church, Raphael G. Warnock, Senior Pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., traces the historical significance of the rise and development of Black theology as an important conversation partner for the Black church. Calling for honest dialogue between Black and womanist theologians and Black pastors, this fresh theological treatment demands a new look at the church’s essential mission.

The Sacred Art

The Sacred Art PDF Author: Olin P. Moyd
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Dr. Moyd surveys the African American preaching tradition and shows that it has been the vehicle by which practical theology has been conveyed to the people in African American congregations. Preachers have proclaimed and interpreted the Word of God, and their preaching has been 'the hallmark of hope and the pivot of promise for a pilgrim people.' The Author has gathered examples from a number of master African American preachers as illustrations of the way practical theology has provided the content of much of the classic African American preaching of the past and present.

Bridging the Breach

Bridging the Breach PDF Author: Charles E. Booth
Publisher: Urban Ministries Inc
ISBN: 9780940955653
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
Suggested reading for those who struggle with the prophetic call of God

The Black Church in the African American Experience

The Black Church in the African American Experience PDF Author: C. Eric Lincoln
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822381648
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
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.