Gates, a literary scholar, historian, filmmaker, and best-selling author, looks into how the Black church has molded and transformed the African American experience, from slavery to the present ... Readers will discover how the Black church has prepared African American people for leadership roles in American society, parented the civil rights movement and today’s Black Lives Matter movement, and nurtured numerous talented individuals, including entertainers such as Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Patti LaBelle, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye, who honed their talent in church choirs.
To tell the story of the Black church is something of a risk even to a scholar as secure as Gates, for voices in the arena of racial justice have long diminished religion as overly safe and accommodationist ... Yet Gates writes here as a historian, and the historian can chronicle progress, assess its origins and commemorate its course while noting its incompleteness. 'Violent insurrection would have been a form of racial suicide; insurrection meant death,' Gates writes. So Black Americans used what was at hand (faith and religiously based appeals and action) in the struggle for freedom ... Relying heavily on the voices of myriad scholars and clergy members (often combined in the same person, like Kelly Brown Douglas or Jonathan L. Walton), Gates traces the story back even before Jamestown ... In Gates’s telling, the Black church, too, shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth — as it is in heaven.
A scholarly and intimate look at the Black Church’s prodigious history and potential future ... renowned historian Gates delves into the history of the Black Church, which Harvard historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham called 'the single most important institution in the Black community.' ... Refreshingly, the author’s lens is not uncritical: He writes of a still-relevant church, as diverse as the Black experience itself, with struggles and failings, including its treatment of women and the LGBTQ+ community and its dismal response to the 1980s AIDS epidemic. ... Powerful, poignant, and ultimately celebratory. Let the church say, 'Amen!'
[Gates'] vibrant, incisive The Black Church, a companion book to the new PBS series, leads us along hidden corridors as it unearths revelatory stories while pounding the pulpit with passionate arguments about faith and justice ... With a surgeon's skill, Gates teases out the threads of the various Black denominations ... Meticulously reported, the book is its own rich sermon. Gates is proselytizing us, and it's nigh impossible to not stamp our feet and shout, 'Amen!' ... The Black Church is a marvel, a breezy, illuminating tale of a distinctly powerful institution at the beating heart of the American Experiment, and an invaluable work from a masterful chronicler.
... complex and fascinating ... [a] wonderfully concise and readable companion to a PBS documentary of the same title ... embraces the full range of Black religiosity, from tiny storefront urban churches to the megachurches now rising around the country. In Gates’ capable hands The Black Church is a stirring story, told with compassion, respect, and not a little awe.
...thoughtful, comprehensive ... His nuanced study, backed but not overwhelmed by mountains of research, examines the political as well as the spiritual role of the Black Church, and the way it has both shaped and been shaped by the world outside the walls of individual churches ... Gates doesn't ignore problems within the church, including a certain amount of 'homophobia and misogyny' ... Gates' book is amply illustrated and contains enough references and book recommendations to fuel a rewarding independent study of the subject ... Gates makes an apt guide.
This book, a companion to Gates’s PBS series of the same name, features interviews with scholars and ministers to give a thoughtful analysis of the Black church. A gallery of important Black religious leaders and figures, both historic and modern, is a nice addition to the text ... Readers of American religious and African American history will not want to miss this title.
A a brisk and insightful look at how the Black church has succored generations of African Americans against white supremacy ... Gates details how the Black church carved out support networks and the political tools to fight for full citizenship for Black Americans, and forged pathways into American popular music ... Punctuated by trenchant observations from Black historians and theologians, Gates’s crisp account places religious life at the center of the African American experience.
