A scholarly and intimate look at the Black Church's prodigious history and potential future. In a companion book to a PBS documentary, 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." For centuries, the church has been a source of hope and strength for Black people, first as a way to address the horrific cruelty of slavery. A better life awaited the enslaved; they just had to remain faithful. At the same time, Black Christianity spurred the nation's largest slave rebellion, and, later, the church would become the physical and spiritual home of Black social protest and the civil rights movement. Through meticulous research and interviews with scholars as well as "believers, nonbelievers, musical artists, [and] pastoral leaders," Gates paints a compelling portrait of the church as a source of "unfathomable resiliency" for Black ancestors as well as the birthplace of so many distinctly African American aesthetic forms, including "blues, jazz, rock and roll, soul and R & B, folk, rock, and even hip-hop." With the advent of hip-hop came a "generational shift away" from the traditional church, which now finds itself at a crossroads in an era featuring the rise of both the "bling-bling" of prosperity gospel and the socially conscious Black Lives Matter movement--not to mention the pandemic, which affects Black, Native, and Hispanic people disproportionately. 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. The book also includes generous photos, an engrossing epilogue revealing Gates' personal religious experiences alongside additional research, and chapter-heading quotes from W.E.B. Du Bois, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and other Black icons. Powerful, poignant, and ultimately celebratory. Let the church say, "Amen!" Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In the companion volume to a forthcoming PBS documentary of the same name, Gates (Stony the Road) delivers a brisk and insightful look at how the Black church has succored generations of African Americans against white supremacy. Though whites believed that Christianity would keep enslaved Africans docile and compliant, Gates writes, religion actually enabled them to find the comforts of ritual and music in the only institution they could control. 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. Civil rights titans Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X get their due in Gates's survey, as do early rebel-preachers like Nat Turner and contemporary religious leaders including William J. Barber II of North Carolina and Raphael G. Warnock of Georgia. Gates also explores the roots of Methodism, Pentecostalism, the Nation of Islam, and other faith traditions; how gender and sexual identity issues have roiled Black churches; and contemporary debates over ministers preaching a "prosperity gospel" and the role of religious institutions in protests over police brutality. Punctuated by trenchant observations from Black historians and theologians, Gates's crisp account places religious life at the center of the African American experience. (Feb.)

The Black church is the oldest and most successful organization created by and for African Americans, serving as a foundation for Black religious, political, social, and economic life. The importance of the Black church and its role in Black life and the struggle for freedom and revolutionary thinking cannot be understated. It is within the church that the struggle for freedom, political power, and revolution was nurtured along with an abiding prophetic hope for a better future. Gates (Dir., Hutchins Ctr. for African and African American Research, Harvard; Stony the Road) has written a broad historical survey of the Black church from its origins in the South, as enslaved peoples' religious traditions merged with Christianity to create a new form of praise and worship up to and including modern megachurches. 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. VERDICT Readers of American religious and African American history will not want to miss this title.--Chad E. Statler, Westlake Porter P.L., Westlake, OH

Gates, a literary scholar, historian, filmmaker, and best-selling author, most recently of Stony the Road (2019), looks into how the Black church has molded and transformed the African American experience, from slavery to the present. Gates explains how it has offered a reprieve from a racist society, providing African Americans with a place to come together to advance their aspirations and sing out, pray out, and shout out their frustrations. Gates includes reflections from believers, nonbelievers, musical artists, pastoral leaders, and church scholars. He also provides a personal confession of how church and Christianity played a pivotal role in his life while growing up in a small, segregated West Virginia town. 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. Gates' invaluable illumination of the many ways the Black church has been an ongoing epicenter of inspiration and action is the book component of a new PBS documentary series.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Gates' books are always major attractions, and his vital history of the Black church, with it and its PBS tie-in appearing during Black History Month, will garner lots of attention and requests.