Tamara's attention was riveted on Minister Walker. She felt a bit dazed by the magnitude of the sacrifice that Jesus made, giving up His life for people just like her. "Now, let's go back to our description of love, church. Could you love like that? Could you sacrifice anything that you really cared about?" Tamara couldn't help but think of how often she was resentful about Sienna's intrusion in her life. It wasn't as if she even loved the girl or anything like that, yet she felt ashamed of being so selfish at this moment. Reverend Walker, preaching in earnest, said, "Church, your sadness can't keep you cryin' when you walkin' in love, and your problems can't make you lose your joy when you walkin' in love." Tamara closed her eyes and held her Bible close as she found her feelings again going awry in the sanctuary. The lyrics to the old Negro spiritual touched her heart, and her eyes were wet with unshed tears...All Tamara could do was hug herself as she gently rocked back and forth, listening to the singing that seemed to fill her...

Plenty Good Room lays out in clear terms the hope of democratic socialism for a world ravaged by intensifying racial capitalism and social injustice. Unleash your ingenuity for systems that offer plenty good room--not for just a few but for all. Economic inequality yawns as wide as ever. Capitalism is working as it was designed: replicating an uneven balance of power, constraining life chances, and limiting imaginations. Those of us concerned about injustice often confine ourselves to issue-by-issue activism. The end result? Owners, investors, and a politics of inequality win. But what if there's another way to organize our common life--and what if it's as homegrown as sweet potato pie? What if we could become moral engineers who co-create the world we all deserve? Plenty Good Room helps readers understand Black Christian socialism, a stream of the Black radical tradition, from the perspective of a Brooklyn pastor and political scientist's civic awakening. As the former director of the Drum Major Institute, founded by America's most famous democratic socialist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Andrew Wilkes mounts a challenge to the endless greed, inequality, and profiteering of racial capitalism. Tugging on the threads of history and scripture and pointing to the work of Black radicals like W. E. B. Du Bois, Rev. Addie Wyatt, and Fannie Lou Hamer, Wilkes weaves a narrative of "plenty good room moments": times in which communities and individuals had sufficient resources, human rights, and beauty. He invites us to join a movement that a day-laboring Christ initiated as he organized the dispossessed, the disinherited, and those pushed to the edges of society. Wilkes also introduces contemporary efforts pushing for reparations, community ownership, participatory democracy, and solidarity economies. These stories show us that we can create a world of care and reciprocity by envisioning an economy of enough for all--one rooted in justice, equity, and the God whose spirit falls on all flesh.

Beloved spirituals include such lasting favorites as All God's Children Got Shoes, Balm in Gilead, Deep River, Down by the Riverside, Ezekiel Saw the Wheel, Gimme That Ol'-Time Religion, He's Got the Whole World in His Hand, Roll, Jordan, Roll, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, Steal Away to Jesus, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, This Train, Wade in the Water, We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder, Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? and many more. Excellent for sing-alongs, community programs, church functions, and other events.

I offer this book as an outgrowth of my faith journey in the African American Church and as an ethicist who is deeply concerned about the distorted relationship between the professed theological and ethical beliefs and moral practices with respect to gender in that church. I am concerned with the way that we interpret our beliefs about justice in particular in order to match our sexual gender oppressive practices while maintaining that we received such interpretation by way of the Bible and/or church tradition. - Marcia Y. Riggs In Plenty Good Room: Women Versus Male Power in the Black Church, Riggs discusses African American church life as a case study for ethical reflection about sexual ethics and clergy ethics - the prevailing silence about sexuality in the black church as well as the fact that sexuality is generally a taboo in the Christian tradition. The author feels that sexism has been perpetrated by misuse of the Scriptures and by circumscribing the role of women, and seeks to transform current discourse about sexual behavior and clergy misconduct from a concentration on formulating policy to re-train. Riggs offers both descriptive analysis and normative proposals for transforming the moral life of the African American church - the way of being and doing characteristic of the African American church - in the areas of: · Sexual-gender relations · Clergy ethics · Ministerial ethics · Ecclesial practices Riggs begins each chapter with a scenario and ends each chapter with dialogue questions for further group reflection.

Companion document to: In spirit and truth. Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-84).

Presents the history of gospel music in the United States. This book traces the development of gospel from its earliest beginnings through the Golden Age (1945-55) and into the 1960s when gospel entered the concert hall. It introduces dozens of the genre's gifted contributors, from Thomas A Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson to the Soul Stirrers.

Paul Oliver rediscovers the wealth of neglected vocal traditions represented on Race records.

"Reclaiming the Great World House in the 21st Century: Cross-Disciplinary Explorations of the Vision of Martin Luther King, Jr., does just that. Established and emerging scholars explore Martin Luther King, Jr.'s global vision and his lasting relevance to a globalized rights culture. The editors further explain that this edited collection looks at: King afresh in his own historical context, while also refocusing his legacy of ideas and social praxis in broader directions for today and tomorrow. Employing King's metaphor of "the great world house," with major attention to racism, poverty, and war - or what he called 'the evil triumvirate"--the focus is on King's appraisal of and approach to the global-human struggle in the 1950s and 60s, and on the extent to which his social witness and praxis takes on new hues and pertinence not only in the ongoing struggles against racism, poverty and economic injustice, and violence and human destruction, but also in the mounting efforts to eliminate problems such sexism, homophobia, and religious bigotry and intolerance from the global landscape. The conclusion is that King's ideas and models of social protest are not only alive but also growing in vitality and popularity in the 21st century, especially as humans worldwide are struggling daily with the lingering, antiquated thinking and behavior around race and ethnicity, the widening gap between "the haves" and "the have-nots," the mounting cycles of violence, torture, and terrorism, and the frustrating and growing chasms resulting from religious pluralism and the subordination and marginalization of certain sectors of the human family based on gender and sexuality"--

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