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The Black Church
The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song | Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
3 posts | 3 read | 8 to read
From the New York Times-bestselling author of Stony the Road and one of our most important voices on the African-American experience, a powerful new history of the Black church in America as the Black community's abiding rock and its fortress. The companion book to the upcoming PBS series. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, segregated West Virginia town, the church was his family and his community's true center of gravity. Within those walls, voices were lifted up in song to call forth the best in each other, and to comfort each other when times were at their worst. In this book, his tender and magisterial reckoning with the meaning of the Black church in American history, Gates takes us from his own experience onto a journey across more than four hundred years and spanning the entire country. At road's end, we emerge with a new understanding of the centrality of the Black church to the American story--as a cultural and political force, as the center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as an unparalleled incubator of talent, and as a crucible for working through the community's most important issues, down to today. 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; it's been a place to nourish the deepest human needs and dreams of the African-American community. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meeting houses were subject to surveillance, and often destruction. So it continued, long after slavery's formal eradication; church burnings and church bombings by the Ku Klux Klan and others have always been a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the struggle for equality for the African-American community. The past often isn't even past--Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in Charleston's Emanuel AME Church 193 years after the church was first burned down by whites following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the vital center of the civil rights movement, and produced many of its leaders, from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. on, but at the same time there have always been churches and sects that eschewed a more activist stance, even eschewed worldly political engagement altogether. That tension can be felt all the way to the Black Lives Matter movement and the work of today. Still and all, as a source of strength and a force for change, the Black church is at the center of the action at every stage of the American story, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.
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Pickpick

Rarely do I want a book to be longer, but I gladly would‘ve read more about the role of the Black church in America.

Gates begins with the conversion of Black slaves and the opening of the first Black churches and links it to the creation various Black denominations. He discusses the role it played in educating former slaves and in the civil rights era. He assesses the current church, prosperity preaching, & BLM. He doesn‘t forget the music! 5⭐️

Cinfhen Sold ♥️#stacked 3y
Megabooks @Cinfhen ❤️❤️🎧 3y
Cinfhen Im SOOO JEALOUS of your AWESOME library system!! Maybe I should pay to be a member of your system...do they do that??? 3y
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Megabooks @Cinfhen unfortunately no. I wish they did!! It‘s only the residents of one county in IN and one in KY. I think that‘s why there are so few lines. Even my friend in the next county in IN that is the same metropolitan area can‘t join. ☹️ 3y
Cinfhen Boo 😝but lucky for you 💚💚💚 3y
Megabooks @Cinfhen 💜💜💜 3y
Cinfhen I requested all 3 audiobooks you recommended to my local Philly library, but they‘re not very good at buying new books 😞#Scribd and #Hoopla doesn‘t have them yet 😡 3y
Centique This sounds amazing. Stacked! 3y
Megabooks @Cinfhen well, they‘re all new releases so 🤞🏻🤞🏻 they show up somewhere!! 3y
Megabooks @Centique I hope you enjoy it!! 3y
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So excited to get to this after I finish Black Man in a White Coat on audio (which is great). I‘m sure Gates‘ book going to be worth my Libro.fm credit!! Has anyone been watching the companion show on PBS? Dad was transfixed last night! I‘m trying to squeeze in a last few #BlackHistoryMonth reads. #bhm #audiobook

Cinfhen Sounds great!! 3y
Megabooks @Cinfhen I‘m excited! I‘ll definitely tag you in my review! 3y
Come-read-with-me Stacked! I haven‘t been watching the show, but will definitely look it up! Thanks for sharing. 3y
Megabooks @Come-read-with-me fantastic! I hope you enjoy both. 3y
Come-read-with-me @Megabooks I was just listening to a news story where they discussed the importance of the documentary. I felt special because I heard about it here first! 3y
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This was so interesting to me (as someone who grew up in almost 98% white baptist churches). The theology/history of the four main Black denominations aren‘t something I know a ton about. #howjessreads2021