Black Catholic Worship On The Sacred Liturgy

“Roll, Jordan, Roll”, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Had”, “Go Down, Moses”, and “Wade in the Water” are the titles of only a handful of what were called “Negro Spirituals”, which originated during the reign of slavery in the United States (Frey). Such spirituals used call-and-response, a method of communication that was popular with slaves who brought African traditions to America, and gave way to the gospel music and unique form of preaching characteristic to the Black Church. The history of the Black Church, which began during the slave era, demonstrates the way that African Americans found refuge in Christianity, where the church became the center for African American communities (Baer). Born out of struggle and oppression, the Black Church not only became the focus for the religious practices of African American communities, but also worked to “re-member” the community through rituals such as that of call-and-response, a core element of the Black Church which served as a powerful tool for the African American community in the fight for the exercise of true freedom in America.

I chose to do my religious ethnographic study at my home church, Tabernacle Baptist Church in Youngstown, Ohio on Sunday, May 8, 2016. Tabernacle is an 112-year-old historic Black Baptist church located on the lower Northside of Youngstown surrounded by a mixed income housing development, homeless shelter, Youngstown State University, and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. I would say the average age of a Tabernacle member is 55 years old. About 70% of the members at this church are “middle-class” families. Until about five years ago, its membership was almost exclusively middle class. There has seen an influx of membership in working class individuals and students since the arrival of Tabernacle’s young, vibrant pastor, Rev. Christopher McKee, Jr., three years ago. The church is attentive to the needs of this demographic but remains true to its historic Black Baptist church roots. The church previously struggled with this conundrum until it came to the reality that an exclusivist mindset around worship is detrimental to the body of Christ when it did not have a pastor for over three years. The church was dying because no one was welcome to it and it did not have a leader. Though it was difficult, this reassessment was beneficial in making Tabernacle more relevant and welcoming to the community it is blessed to serve.

Eileen Southern’s The Music of Black Americans: A History she examines the influence that African Americans had in the holiness churches in music and worship. She initially starts with the landing of the first Africans to the colonies and she creates a phenomenal conversation of the musicians in the new world. She details the progression in the gospel, classical, jazz, rap, blues and the contributions they made.

African American religious music is the foundation of all contemporary forms of so called “black music.” African American religious music has been a fundamental part of the black experience in this country. This common staple of the African American experience can be traced back to the cruel system of slavery. It then evolved into what we refer to today as gospel music. The goal of this paper is to answer three main questions. What are the origins of African American religious music? How did this musical expression develop into a secular form of music? What is the future of African American religious music? These questions will be answered through factual research of African American traditions, artists, and various other sources.

What is African American Religion? – Chapter 3 In the previous chapter of What is African American Religion, we were introduced to the black church and the Nation of Islam. Though these are the dominating black religions in America, as denoted by Joseph Washington, the study of African American religion has been centered on theism, and ultimately the black church (pg. 43).

From this point of view we have essentially four classes, the almost ritualistic prayer songs or pure Spirituals, the freer and more unrestrained evangelical "shouts" or camp-meeting songs, the folk ballads so overlaid with the tradition of the Spirituals proper that their distinctive type quality has almost been unnoticed until lately, and the work and labor songs of strictly significant character. Indeed, in the pure Spirituals one can trace the broken fragments of an evangelical folk liturgy, with confession, exhortation, "mourning," conversion and "love-feast" rejoicing as the general stages of a Protestant folk-mass. It is not a question of religious content or allusion, for the great majority of the Negro songs have this more delicate question of caliber of feeling and type of folk use. The distinctiveness of the Spirituals after all and their finest meaning resides in their musical elements. The characteristic beauty of the folk song is harmonic, in distinction to the more purely rhythmic stress in the secular music of the Negro, which is the basis of "ragtime" and "jazz"; while regarding the one as the African component in them, and the other as the modifying influence of the religious hymn.

Religion is a social construct embedded in the African American experience through the ages. Whether it be Christianity, Muslim, Judaism and many other religions that found itself in the Americas the religions derived from the African diaspora was very mixed, they had traditional belief about magic which are derived from some Yoruba and Muslim belief system, Christianity was something new to them. As their, ancestors were brought to the Americans they brought their own traditional belief system. African American religious institutions served as contexts in which African Americans create a meaning to their experience during their enslavement, thus they interpret their relationship to Africa and charted a vision for a collective future that will

However, a critical aspect of the liberation themes characteristic of Black worship is its ability to refrain from becoming a victim of oppression of time. Although, liberation in African-American Christian worship is also manifest in the way of music performance, with Black singers and instrumentalists seldom being satisfied to render a piece as it exists in print. Consequently, most often they elect to search for music and songs that provokes a responsive exploit in the African-American soul and

By revealing the opposition and obstacles, the black church may seize the opportunity of becoming a force to be reckoned with in our society. America was born with a grotesque, cancerous disease called slavery. This disease lingers to this day in many forms and subtle variations. The plantation mentality is still with us. Sometimes it masquerades as democracy and free enterprise, but the effect is the same on the spirits of the poor and oppressed. When black men moved indoors to work in industry and business, they found themselves imprisoned behind the walls of institutional racism. Nothing really had

Lincoln, C. E., & Mamiya, L. H., (1990). The black church in the African American experience. Durham: Duke University Press Books.

The 152nd Annual Conference of the Grand Ole North Carolina Conference convened at one of the Conference’s historical churches, Clinton Chapel AME Zion in New Bern, NC. Reverend Dr. M. Luther Hill, its gifted pastor, and his great congregation were very gracious hosts and made everyone feel welcomed. They opened their doors on Sunday and ministers, adorned in their priestly, white robes, marched in to open this great Conference in High Church Methodist fashion. The service, filled with high spiritual elements intertwining the liturgical elements, connected our hearts to the ancient tradition of the Anglican Church; however, with an African American twist. Presiding Elder Lester Jacobs, of the Washington District, delivered a soul-stirring

These three perceptions are distinctly different, but ultimately speak to the contextual nature of Black theology—rooting worship, adoration, and discipleship within the notion a (conscious) living G-d. The first perception explored is the image G-d adored through the lens of Sister Sweet and Mother Darling. At first glance, these women appear different in life style and theology—different churches, different abilities, and different approaches to discipleship. But upon further examination, one discovers the same paradigm at work. Both have lost children to AIDS. Both have committed themselves to a praxis centered theology to process their loss. Mother Darling is street missionary and Sister Sweet is a disabled woman confined to a wheel that feeds the birds and attends to the needs of the Little piece of Heaven Church. Both have found peace in their personalized work for the Lord. Their G-d is a “shelter in a time of storm.” The second perception is the image of G-d as seen through Deacon Zee. This G-d is one of salvation and complacence for Deacon Zee. The “White Jesus” he prayed to for his assistance in finding his copy of the Wall Street Journal—a nuanced symbol for prosperity. This G-d speaks to the corporate nature and element of

In reflecting upon the topic of the role of the African American Church leadership the question must be ask. What is leadership? “Leadership is serving others that they might become what God wants them to be.” Leadership is the processes of helping a congregation embody the gospel of Jesus Christ. The church is in desperate need of a different leadership role model. Robert M. Franklin in “Crisis in the Village” points to the seductive danger of the prosperity movement. He demonstrates how the “god of greed” and the “god of entrepreneurial ship” have replaced the good news about Jesus Christ. Therefore, leaders experiences crises of integrity, compromising their churches and breeding skepticism and disillusionment. In one sense, the leadership

The Africans who came to America had a myriad of religious beliefs and practices, including the belief in a transcendent, benevolent God who created the universe and was its ultimate Provider1 and though Europeans did not introduce the God of the Judeo-Christian ethic to Africans, 2 seemingly intractable problems have faced those con tending that African religious beliefs and practices survived both the "Middle Passage" and the effects of slavery.

This essay discusses the differences in the baptism service of Common Worship and the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)1662 in terms of structure, theology and performance.