Enslaved Africans brought their music and religion with them to America. They adapted their spiritual worldview into the existing Christian framework for survival. The God of the oppressor was transformed into the God of liberation and justice. Salvation became the conduit for survival. Sacred song was embedded with African spirituality and African American theology to create a religious experience from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century that sustained African American people and became established forms of praise and worship. The Civil Rights movement changed the religious reality of African American people. Sacred song in the twenty- first century has many challenges. Will the legacy and heritage of sacred song survive?

This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto represents the first detailed exploration of an African-Caribbean religion in the context of contemporary migration to Canada. Toronto is home to Canadas largest black population, a significant portion of which comprises Caribbean migrants and their descendants. This book shows how the development of the Spiritual Baptist religion in Canada has been shaped by the immigration experiences of church members, the large majority of whom are women, and it examines the ways in which religious experiences have mediated the members’ experiences of migration and everyday life in Canada. This Spot of Ground is based on a critical ethnography, with in-depth interviews and participant observations of church services and other ritual activities, including baptism and pilgrimage and field research in Trinidad that explores the transnational linkages with Spiritual Baptists there. The book addresses theoretical and methodological issues also, including the development of perspectives suitable for examining diasporic African religious and cultural expressions characterized by transnational migration, an emphasis on oral tradition as the repository of cultural history, and linguistic and cultural hybridity. This Spot of Ground contributes new information to the study of Caribbean religion and culture in the diaspora, providing a detailed examination of the significance of religion in the immigration process and identity and community formations of Caribbean people in Canada.

It is remarkable that African Americans, the descendants of slaves, embrace Christianity at all. The imagination that is necessary to parse biblical text and find within it a theology that speaks to their context is a testimony to their will to survive in a hostile land. Black religion embraces the cross and the narrative of Jesus as savior, both theologically and culturally. But this does not suggest that African Americans have not historically, and do not now, struggle with the reconciliation of the cross, black life, suffering. African Americans are well aware of the shared relationship of Christianity with the white oppressors of history. The religion that helped African Americans to survive is the religion that was instrumental in their near genocide.

Hempton explores the rise of Methodism from its unpromising origins as a religious society within the Church of England in the 1730s to a major international religious movement by the 1880s.

An initial introduction to the study of Christian theology is both exciting and invigorating for students of its discipline. One can become enameled in the classic perspectives of theology without any consideration of a possible alternative. Defining Salvation in the Context of Black Theology is an exit from the classic conviction that trumpets the doctrine of soteriology attributing its substance to the posture of eternity while ignoring the importance of salvation in the existential. Careful not to reject the question of eternal life, but examining the nuances of the term salvation empowers this work to present the like manner essential that having salvation is just as much about now than it is in the here after.

This two-volume set is a thematically-arranged encyclopedia covering the social, political, and material culture of America during the Jim Crow Era. What was daily life really like for ordinary African American people in Jim Crow America, the hundred-year period of enforced legal segregation that began immediately after the Civil War and continued until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965? What did they eat, wear, believe, and think? How did they raise their children? How did they interact with government? What did they value? What did they do for fun? This Daily Life encyclopedia explores the lives of average people through the examination of social, cultural, and material history. Supported by the most current research, the multivolume set examines social history topics—including family, political, religious, and economic life—as it illuminates elements of a society's emotional life, interactions, opinions, views, beliefs, intimate relationships, and connections between individuals and the greater world. It is broken up into topical sections, each dealing with a different aspect of cultural life. Each section opens with an introductory essay, followed by A–Z entries on various aspects of that topic.

Countering dire pronouncements of the irrelevance of African American institutions, Teresa L. Fry Brown celebrates the way African American women continue, often invisibly, the task of passing on moral wisdom in African-American families, churches, and communities. The book begins with the author's analysis of intergenerational transmission of spiritual values as depicted in selected African American women's literature written since 1960 (gospel music, poems, novels, short stories, and autobiography). An interpretive framework is grounded in three ethical presuppositions based on traditional African American spiritual values, African American Theology and Ethics, Womanist Christology and Ethics, and values culled from the author's own experience and religious beliefs.

Gary Campbell received early spiritual guidance and direction from the Pentecostal community in Jersey City, NJ; he participated in music ministries with gifts of singing and playing percussion. He has worked as a counselor with dually diagnosed youth providing insight and preparation to help facilitate independent living skills. In addition he has provided career counseling to youth in the Newark, NJ area. On his journey of self-realization, Gary's creative expressionism lead to freelancing in art and photography. As the thirst for structured truth, wisdom, and creativity increased he was endeared to the teachings of Bishop McKinley whereby he were selected as Assistant Pastor. In the next decade he served as Elder at True Vine Ministries in Jersey City, NJ, teaching and serving under Pastor Roderick Alan. Gary has over 60 articles published on Helium.com and has finished his second book "Quality of Heart" while placing the finishing touches on "Be for Meat" these both will be published in the upcoming later this year. With the advent of the mega-church concept and increased tele-evangelism, noted clergy such as TD Jakes, Joel Osteen, etc... have inspired the conviction that the local churches should align their tenets and agendas to meet the greater goals of mainstream evangelism, as "Where Are The Teachers?" proposes a new way forward that seeks to restructure and retool the discipline of teaching in the church. Gary is available for webinars and teleconferences throughout the year and hosts a blog (www.Whereare.wordpress.com) and website for direct/immediate access.

Excerpts from criticism of the works of novelists, poets, playwrights, and other creative writers, 1900-1960.