Black Church In America - African American Christian Spirituality

This book gives readers a broad understanding of the Black Church in America and a sense of its uniqueness in the wider world.

• Explores the history of the Black Church in America, its African roots, beliefs, practices, politics, and contemporary moral dilemmas
  
• Argues that in the Black Church, individual and communal destiny are bound together
  
• The author is a Priest in the Episcopal Church and teaches spirituality and Black Church studies at Duke University.

Michael Battle served as Assistant Professor of Spirituality and Black Church Studies at Duke University and Rector of St. Ambrose Episcopal Church in Raleigh, North Carolina before moving to Virginia Theological Seminary. He was also Vice Chairman of the board of the Ghandi Institute. He is the author of The Church Enslaved: A Spirituality of Racial Reconciliation (2005), Reconciliation in a Violent World (2005) Blessed are the Peacemakers: A Christian Spirituality of Nonviolence (2004), The Wisdom of Desmond Tutu (1999) and Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu (1997).

Acknowledgements.

Introduction: An Amphibious Worldview.

1. Emergence of What is African.

African Warnings.

What is African?.

2. The Particularity of African American Spirituality.

3. The Black Church in the Shadow of Slavery.

The Scourge of Slavery.

The Survival of Africanism.

The Emergence of Black Denominations.

4. Communal Worship.

The Controversy of Emotionalism.

“Spiritual Song” and the Emergence of Black Denominations.

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

African American Baptists Churches.

National Baptist Convention, USA.

African American Pentecostalism.

Black Worship.

5. Inviting Others to Be Black.

African vs. Black: Dialectic Tension.

James Cone and Desmond Tutu.

African and Black: Communal Synthesis.

6. The Black Church as the Beloved Community.

King’s View: Prophecy and Nonviolence.

African American Responses to King.

King’s Dream of the Beloved Community.

Communal Antithesis for King.

7. Embodying African American Spirituality.

A Churchless Black Church.

A Womanless Black Church.

The Full Embodiment of the Black Church.

Timeline of the Black Church.

Websites for Historic Black Denominations.

Bibliography.

Index