1.1 African cultural retentions

The spiritual heritage of African American preaching is linked to Africana spiritual practices and the vital role these practices play in reinforcing cultural remembrance (anamnesis), shaping cultural identity, and sustaining the lives of practitioners and hearers of preaching. This patrimonial touchpoint is of paramount significance for arriving at an understanding of this genre of sacred discourse. Notable here is the classic debate between white anthropologist Melville Herskovits and famed Black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, which focused on African cultural retentions, i.e. whether the provocations of the transatlantic slave trade and subsequent chattel enslavement of Black people in the American colonies had enduring effects on religio-cultural practices. Herskovitz argued that there was evidence of African cultural forms among Black people that persisted through slavery, and these forms served to differentiate African American culture from European American cultural forms. Frazier disagreed with Herskovits’ thesis and argued that there were few, if any, remnants of African culture in the United States. The distressing effects of slavery that were set in motion, argued Frazier, posed irreparable ruptures that have challenged the cohesion of African American family systems in North America to this day. The most obvious evidence of cultural survivals in the colonies, however, were the drumming codes, which outlawed the use of percussive instruments. The widespread practice of African priest-doctors using homeopathic medicine, even on white patients, further supports Herkovits’ retention claim (Opoku 1976: 74–76). One might also consider as evidence of African cultural carryover the Gullah dialect, an African-based grammar of the African Akan language heard in various parts of South Carolina.

1.2 West African religious traditions and ontological systems

The religious sensibilities and deep resonance with the primal, clan-oriented, monotheistic (if operationally polytheistic) religions of Africa were not vanquished but transformed, taking on new forms, in continental America. Black people did not use Christianity, as white people first introduced it to them, without making certain substantive changes that took into consideration their oppressive condition and other contextual factors. According to Gayraud Wilmore, the religion of the enslaved African was a ‘tertium quid’, a collision of worlds, ‘something less and something more than what is generally regarded as Christianity’ (Wilmore 1998: 24–25, 36). Whether manifested in singing, dancing, speaking in tongues, or in preaching in rural, urban, or suburban African American congregations or storefronts, descendants of enslaved Africans carved out a liberating space for creative expression in Christian worship practices. A seeming lack of concern for doctrinal fidelity to accepted standards normed by Eurocentric Christian worship practices during slavery was not due to a void of theological and moral content in their own West African religious traditions and ontological systems. Rather, their perceived duality revealed that the African’s sacred cosmology – belief in a supreme creator who presides over a pantheon of deities, governs connections between the living and deceased, and orders the spirit world – required no explicit translation in the West. The belief systems of African traditional religious doctrines were not subsumed into the selective canon that white enslavers taught Africans. But closely related to and merged with the orthodox Christian faith were beliefs that did not have to be learned, such as the omnipotence, omniscience, justice, and providence of the Supreme God. The Yoruba peoples’ deity ‘Oludumare’, for example, meant ‘God, the Omnipotent’. A ‘bureaucratic monotheism’, not polytheism, as assumed, more aptly describes African traditional religion (Imasogie 1973: 289). Like the cosmological picture of emissaries working in concert and under the aegis of the Supreme God in a divine council as depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures, the African’s one distant High God held superintendency of many deputy or intermediary deities who performed varied assignments on earth (Imasogie 1973: 289).

In contrast to Western culture’s theological formations, logics of empire, and the erected boundaries of the sacred as ideologically advanced, curated, and codified by Europeans and Anglo-Americans, in slave society the Africans’ Black bodies – not parchment – became sacred texts. The mutilation of the Black body by the white enslavers’ violent practices of flagellation and ritual lynchings correlated with the torture of the crucified Jesus. In viewing the body as a sacred text, the revelation of God to Africans took on a radically different meaning in contrast to the African’s white counterparts. Unlike the brand of Christianity packaged to further a white settler colonial agenda, cosmologically speaking African traditional religions had no missionaries or preachers proselytizing a culture. In actuality, traditional religions are not universal but tribal and national, bound and limited to whom they have evolved. (Olupona 2001) In terms of Christian orthodoxy, theologically and conceptually, Jesus, hell, and the Bible were the only major aspects new to Africans. African American Christians, Henry Mitchell writes, embraced a positive picture of Jesus as the Son of God, a sharer in their oppression, and the ideal path to reconciliation with the High God who was believed remote in Africa. Moreover, the distance between a supreme deity and humanity was not believed to be caused by original sin but was tied to beliefs about divine transcendence or ineffability (Mitchell 2004: 19). Three intermediary entities bridged the divine and human relationship: living dead ancestors; the divinely ordained bureaucracy of sub-deities (for whom memorials were occasionally erected); and supportive social structures tied to the nuclear family, recognized elders, and village chiefs, all of whom were answerable to the High God. The Akans’ view of Asantehene, the name of the supreme deity in this tradition, is accorded such status in their social world (Opoku 1976: 33). Arguably, enslavement in the colonies nearly obliterated this social infrastructure.

In terms of Christian doctrine, for Africans, the belief in the afterlife and the ‘living dead’ is prefigured into their spiritual imaginations. The emphasis on the good news of the gospel is not placed on resurrection but on incarnation-God being with us in the person of Jesus. The doctrine of hell was another new aspect found in Christianity. Eternal hell did not figure into the African’s traditional belief system. Rather, tribal punishment in earthly life was permanent banishment, and if the sin was egregious enough, beyond cessation of community membership the perpetrator’s human-beingness was, in effect, culturally nullified. Relatedly, when enslaved Africans saw that their slave owners seemed to die peaceful deaths despite their cruelty, they did believe that they would receive the full measure of divine justice in the afterlife. Another new element was the affirmation of the Bible as the Word of God. Proverbs, tales, and songs informed their sacred wisdom which was passed on through oral tradition. Because original tribes were divided and dispersed, provoking family separations in the colonies, and the imposition of English into the enslaved Africans’ language structures, much of what was orally preserved in African traditional belief systems dissolved. From the Bible, what occupied the religious imaginations of African American Christians were Moses and Jesus, liberation exemplars who, in the development of Christian faith identity, represented a counterpoise to white Christianity’s use of the Christian Bible as a tool that endorsed their slave status. Because literacy was forbidden and memory was the principal access point to the Holy Scriptures, in some Black churches reciting and interpreting large passages of scripture – which many illiterate enslaved persons had done – is still an encouraged practice. Current controversies concerning biblical inerrancy are a Eurocentric cultural import not indigenous to African American traditions (Mitchell 2004: 20–21). Historically, without the defenders of biblical fundamentalism who have promoted rigid notions of authority and truth tied to literal print, the Bible’s authority and the way truth was handed on came through storied cultural modes deploying biblical language. Powerful truths from the authority of scripture were prefixed and commonly shared in this manner: ‘My grandmother used to say that God is love and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love’ (1 John 4:7–8).

1.3 African orality

African orality is best defined by its communal character, ethical concern, and search for the good. The religious and spiritual commitments emanating from the African continent are quite diverse, but, in terms of rhetorical approaches, eloquence carried an ethics-centred function above all else. For example, the ethical teachings of the Odu Ifa, the sacred text of the Yoruba peoples, teach that human beings are divinely chosen to bring good into the world. The integration of four socioethical concerns informed by African sacred cosmology has brought coherence to African American communicative practice tradition: (1) respect for the dignity and rights of human beings; (2) focus on the well-being and flourishing of family and community; (3) expressed concern about the integrity and value of the environment, and (4) emphasis on reciprocal solidarity and cooperation for the mutual benefit of humanity (Karenga 2003: 14–20).

1.4 The Muntu and cultural signatures

In various parts of Africa, the poet is called a muntu, which among other designations means ‘prophet’. Words were spoken by the muntu to transform things into ‘forces of meaning, symbols, and images’. The muntu’s evocative and creative expression of African rhetoric is defined as nommo – the sacred power of the spoken word to call the world into being and to create and generate reality. Through the African poet, it was believed that God spoke and that what was spoken established the cosmic order. Everything comes into being through the voice, and according to Molefi Kete Asante, ‘the contemporary African preacher in the African American church is probably the best example of the power of nommo’ (Asante 1998: 30). The Christian preacher’s deference to the authority of the Bible as the revealed Word of God is distinct, however, since, from the beginning, the word is with the muntu (Alkebulan 2003: 29).

Numerous cultural signatures – rhythmic cadence, intoning, whooping (pronounced hooping), measured speech, use of metaphor, word picture, playfulness, and gravity – have been retained in certain quarters of Black religious practice. The earliest Black preachers were former African priests and religious specialists (medicine men and conjurers) who operated as diviners and seers, interpreting significant events; as exhorters and pastors rallying the community to unite around common causes; and as charismatic, messianic figures, provoking Black resentment against the oppressive conditions to which they were subjected (Genovese 1976: 255). In assuming these specific roles and responsibilities, the earliest Black preachers emerged as framers and innovators of an indigenous Christianity formed as a result of its diversity of influences – specifically, and foremost, the combination of primordial African culture with the social and religious dynamics of Anglocentric evangelical Christianity.

1.5 Developmental phases in the United States (seven phases)

In tracing the origins of African American preaching, its developmental phases, and the advancement of the African American preacher, what follows is a brief outline of six historical phases – Colonial North America, Revival Period, Reconstruction, Great Migration, Civil Rights, and Post-Civil Rights. It is historically incontrovertible that exponential changes in Black preaching occurred from slavery to Reconstruction (i.e. such advancements relating to literacy, licensing, abolition, and the rise of independent churches), although less research has been done on subsequent phases, which are in some ways less dramatic but are given greater attention.

2.1 Uses of scripture and domains of the Black-lived experience

A predominant interpretive strategy at the heart of African American preaching and the African American preacher’s engagement with, construal of, and functional use of the Bible is a certain conception and expectation of the divine, especially as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. Cleophus J. LaRue maintains that there are four components at the heart of African American preaching: God, the scriptures, the preacher, and the Black-lived experience (LaRue 2007: 64). These components serve as a basis for formulating theological perspectives on topics such as ethics, morality, congregational care, justice, spirituality, and cultural identity. In proclamatory discourse and religious instruction, the Black preacher as textual exegete has historically sought to convey a conception of a God who is wholly sovereign, manifestly powerful, and incarnationally present in the lives of their listeners. With Black clerics’ high regard for scripture, notes LaRue, the Bible serves as the ‘leading force in shaping the content and purpose of the sermon’ and thus holds ‘a central place in the religious life of black Americans’ and ‘is the single most important source of language, imagery, and story for the sermon’ (LaRue 2007: 66). LaRue further maintains that Black preaching is formed, reflected upon, and organized through five ‘domains of experience’ that provide a descriptive vehicle for categorizing broad areas of Black lived experiences, and create a resource-bank for ideas for sermon content. The first domain is personal piety. Sermons emanating from this domain strongly cohere with the tenets of American evangelicalism. Sermons birthed in the care of the soul domain tend to focus on pastoral care matters – the health and wellness of individuals, and encouragement to bereaved families – and are usually prescriptive in nature. The social justice domain is the realm where matters pertaining to local and national public policy, issues of race, classism, and gender equity are of central concern. Sermons originating in the corporate concerns domain raise concerns about more specific crisis issues of the community such as violence in inner cities, wealth and educational disparity among Blacks and their white racial counterparts, Black incarceration and recidivism, and health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and health epidemics such as HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. Finally, the maintenance of the institutional church domain is characterized by an emphasis on the ecclesiastical or cultic life of congregations. Sermons growing out of this domain have a principal concern with matters such as church growth and building projects, financial stewardship, religious education, and missions. Conceived as the Word of God, the Bible has played a critical role within the communal experience of African American Christians and has been central to the formation and sociofunctional identity of Black preachers (LaRue 2007: 68–71).

2.2 Hermeneutical perspectives

Institutionalized in the fabric of antebellum America, slavery received theological justification from biblical interpretations that privileged oppression by assuming inerrancy. With the power to name it as fundamentalism, slaveholders sanctioned the content of public sermons preached to enslaved African Americans, thus the materials for interpretation were also sanctioned. Still, with a historical acceptance of the Bible as the sourcebook of divine inspiration, African American biblicism rejects oppressive interpretations by privileging liberation as a theological construct for interpretation. The earliest encounters with the Bible outside of the direct purview of white supervision occurred during the spawning of independent Black Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal churches, first beginning with the independence achieved by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church. For early readers emerging from these communities, preachers and congregants seldom challenged the veracity of scripture but took exception with readings and interpretive decisions used to deny their humanity. Notably, instead of any strict reliance on systematic theoretical formulations for biblical interpretation, in many Black Christian communities an informed understanding of basic principles and convictions has historically framed hermeneutical approaches. They are (1) the Bible is seen as a diverse collection of sacred books that reveal a coherent story of salvation history; (2) the authorial provenance of scripture is rooted in God and ascribed immediacy and force in some direct manner despite the Bible’s diversity of human contributors; (3) the voice of God can be heard from the Bible when one is spiritually attuned to what its witness attested about the divine and human relationship; and finally, (4) often held are certain presuppositions about divine intent and what it means to be addressed by a God who acts in history and who champions the cause of cultural groups that are socioeconomically oppressed and politically disenfranchised (LaRue 2007: 66–67).

3.1 Rhetorical-poetical and representative works

The rhetorical-poetical school is devoted primarily to oral creativity and performance in preaching and places a strong emphasis on how the Christian scriptures (Word of God) become an event experienced through the Holy Spirit’s power in the speech act. The personality of the preacher, style of delivery, use of illustrations, and attention to sermon form tend to be the reflective academic focus.

Evans E. Crawford Jr’s The Hum: Call and Response in African American Preaching (1995) focuses on the indigenous oral/aural practice of ‘call-and-response’. Crawford maintains that the oral traditions of ‘folk art’ preaching take seriously the connective dynamics among preacher, sermon, and community. Gerald Davis’ work I Got the Word in Me and I Can Sing it, You Know: A Study of the Performed African American Sermon (1985), is an important study of the narrative organizational structure of the performed sermon. Davis argues that African American preachers generally can be considered ‘fundamentalist’ because of the way they structure sermons in performance. Henry Mitchell’s Black Preaching: The Recovery of a Powerful Art (1990) is an outgrowth of two separate works, Black Preaching (1970), and The Recovery of Preaching (1977), based on his 1974 Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School. This landmark text in Black homiletics explores the unique role of preaching in African American culture and is primarily focused on the performative-aesthetical dimension of Black preaching as oral folk art. Teresa Fry Brown’s concise volume on speech communication in homiletics, Delivering the Sermon: Voice, Body, and Animation in Proclamation (2008) combines research in communications, speech pathology, and homiletics with her own experience as a speech-language pathologist.

3.2 Biblical-hermeneutical and representative works

Biblical-hermeneutical school theorists within this framework tend to form two streams. A few theorists have come into the field with dual-disciplinary proficiency, for example, pairing biblical studies with homiletics. They ask how the exegetical process is central to developing sermon content. Others reflect primarily on how scripture and Christian tradition are used within liturgical contexts.

Brad Braxton gives readers a window into the apostle Paul’s profile as a missionary itinerant preacher in Preaching Paul (2004). He explores Paul’s correspondences to the churches he established in the Graeco-Roman world, and names them preachable documents. He closely reads the biblical text for homiletical, biblical, and theological clues that may provide useful and constructive ways to share Paul’s gospel message in the postmodern period. The first words in James A. Forbes Jr’s book The Holy Spirit and Preaching (1989) state: ‘The person who preaches the gospel makes a statement about the Holy Spirit just by entering the pulpit’. This book, based on his 1986 Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale, attempts to bring into focus the role of the Holy Spirit’s anointing on the preachers and the preacher’s message. Forbes addresses how spiritual formation should cohere with the preacher’s sermon preparation. Cleophus J. LaRue Jr’s volume, The Heart of Black Preaching (2000), draws on David Kelsey’s theological framework. LaRue searches for a hermeneutic that will serve as a ‘master lens’ or template for analysing the distinctiveness of Black preaching.

3.3 Practical-pastoral theological and representative works

The practical-pastoral theological school’s theorists focus is, generally, an interdisciplinary one, asking questions about why theological beliefs, practices, and guiding norms are so central to preaching.

Dale C. Andrews’ homiletic interprets the estrangement of Black theology from early and contemporary modes of African American folk religion. His ecclesiological analysis of preaching and pastoral care offers insight into four biblical tenets of faith identity that serve as guiding norms for a comprehensive model of ecclesiology. First, faith identity is rooted in the doctrine of creation and the concept of imago Dei. Second, the development of faith identity in Black churches has traditionally invested symbolic significance in the exodus narrative. The third tenet tied to the development of faith identity focuses on the redemptive nature of the sufferings of Christ and the importance of conversion. Lastly, eschatology and the kingdom or reigndom of God bring these four tenets to a crown (Andrews 2002: 40–44).

Gennifer Brooks’ Good News Preaching: Offering the Gospel in Every Sermon (2009) offers seminarians and working preachers practical strategies for biblical preaching, specifically, how to keep the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ at the centre of the sermon. Brooks believes that good news preaching requires good ‘homiletical exegesis’ – remaining attentive to the gospel preached, the biblical text or topic under consideration, and the manifold needs of an awaiting congregation.

The Journey and Promise of African American Preaching (2011), Kenyatta R. Gilbert’s practical theology homiletics text, analyses the biblical, theological, and sociocultural elements appearing in African American preaching in North America. Apart from its critique of contemporary homiletics, the book asserts that the survival of both Black churches and African America at large is tied to preachers recovering a trivocal approach to preaching that incorporates the scriptural voices of the prophet, priest, and sage: three distinctive hallmarks of the African American pulpit. This work is a constructive effort to examine the historical contributions of African American preaching, the challenges it faces today, and how it might become a renewed source of healing and strength for at-risk communities and churches.

5.1 Creator God and personhood

African American preaching is an art and practice in theological formation and public theology. The theological emphases within preaching stem from a hermeneutic formed in African American culture that includes but are not limited to the relevant needs of Black people. The gospel preached names God as an active interventionist and proclaims Jesus as one who is in solidarity with Black people and knowledgeable of their existential plight. The theologies foundationally expressed in Black preaching lean on these emphases.

The Trinitarian theological construct is a key theme. This is most heard as ‘Father, Son, Holy Ghost/Spirit’ in Black preaching contexts, the Trinitarian identity as the fullness of God, as Creator above, as incarnational presence with us in Jesus Christ, and indwelling us with the Holy Spirit. God is revealed in different forms that relate to Black lived experiences. Black preaching, often emerging from the trials and tribulations of Black life, utilizes God as Creator not only as a reclamation of one’s own self as a creature, but also to emphasize the ongoing creation of God which permits human perception of divine inbreaking in anticipation of the establishment of new world order.

God as Creator – often expressed as ‘creator and sustainer’ – is a central theological concept in Black preaching. Articulating God’s sovereignty and agency remain primary considerations when Black preachers develop their sermons (LaRue 2000: 18–19). If God creates all things, then God is capable of acting on the behalf of God’s people, meeting the needs of Black people, especially the societally marginalized. Creator God operates as the primary source of healing, comfort, and nourishment. God is life and all things created are derived therefrom.

5.2 Jesus and messianic mission

Messianism is an important feature in Judeo-Christian faith traditions. Rooted in Judaism and developed over centuries, it carried with it the belief that there would emerge the ideal Davidic king, a messiah who would appear at the end of time. In Christianity, Jesus is the Messiah whom the prophets had spoken who epitomizes the fulfilment of the Jewish scriptural prophecy. Rabbinically trained in the temple, Jesus recited the Hebrew scriptures as a means of self-disclosure, communicating his messiahship through signs and wonders. Jesus demonstrated his command of the Hebrew scriptures and spoke of the kingdom of God as the path to salvation. When Jesus stood up to read Isaiah 61 in the Nazareth synagogue self-referentially declaring, ‘[t]oday this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’, Jesus was announcing himself as Messiah and herald of a new age. (Thomas 1997: 38). Jesus made explicit connections in his teaching about his messiahship as the promised deliverer of Israel.

As a remedy for the human predicament of sin, salvation is not a theological abstraction in the Black preacher’s theological proclamation but is foundational to Black theology and any other Christian theologies of redemption. In historic Black preaching, the most prevalent model of salvation is penal substitutionary atonement. The vicarious exchange of Jesus’ life on behalf of sinners to procure the re-establishment of right relations with Creator God has not only been integral to the understanding of one’s fallenness and offering mercy to appease a love spurned God who brings wrath upon the apostates who abuse or misuse the freedom God intended for humankind to enjoy. Other atonement theories commonly found in Black preaching are Christus Victor and moral exemplarism. Held together theologically in Black preaching is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The messianic mission grounds Black preaching in the hope that salvation is possible through Jesus’ sacrifice as an expression of perfected love personified. Based on what God has done in Jesus Christ humans can now live in community with God.

5.3 Holy Spirit and proselytizing

The Holy Spirit is the ultimate sign of grace. It reminds Christians that because God dwells within humans they are accompanied by a gracious host. The preaching event itself is a work of the Spirit. The movement of the Holy Spirit in Black preaching is primarily discussed in two ways: the Holy Spirit animates the preacher’s work and Holy Spirit’s operative function is to move within the hearer's hearts to bring about spiritual conversion. Historically, part of the preparation for Black preachers' presumed conversion preceded acceptance of the calling to preach. With limited access to formal education, a keen awareness of and dependency on the Holy Spirit’s instruction demonstrated one’s readiness and fitness to teach and preach from the scriptures. For it is God who calls the preacher and it is God who illuminates the text. (Mitchell 1990: 40). The Holy Spirit navigates the movement from death and hope while also empowering the preacher and inspiring the other moments of worship (Powery 2012: 12). Even with formal theological training, communing with the Holy Spirit is of paramount importance whether the preacher is or is not formally educated.

In many African American worshiping contexts the gift of the Holy Spirit is often interpreted as spirited ‘frenzy’, ‘catching the Holy Ghost’, or in some cases, collapsing into an ecstatic trance. In revivalistic church communities, highly emotive and embodied expressions in the preaching event signal the level of preaching’s impact on the worship experience at large or upon the individual hearer. Central to Black ecclesiology is the recognition that the Holy Spirit is an animating force for imparting the gospel message in time and space. When people join a faith community it is often perceived as having occurred from the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

5.4 Salvation

6.1 Black church worship

Black Church worship is foundational to any conceptual or theoretical analysis of the Black Church. The essential elements of Black Christian worship have often been characterized by what W. E. B. DuBois, albeit reductionistic, is the presence of the preacher, music, and the frenzy (DuBois 1994: 141). These descriptors of Black Church worship suggest that embodied ecclesially are various forms of prayer and the coming together of a people sharing a common cultural heritage. Black Church worship represents the time for the community to gather and grow in their faith collectively. In addition to the sabbath day morning worship, several other services and celebrations are esteemed in Black Church worship rituals. Weddings, funerals, anniversary celebrations, and other important liturgical events, and on such occasions, such services call for a special guest preacher. These include Church Anniversary, Pastoral Anniversary, Women’s Day, Men’s Day, Children’s Day, College Day, and other special affinity days.

While there are commonalities across congregations and denominations, it is essential to note that there are many traditions and practices that differ as well. The Lord’s Supper or Communion and Baptism are central practices in Black congregations, but whether they are interpreted as sacramental or memorial ordinances is dependent on the denomination. Womanist liturgical scholarship adds necessary conversations of power, justice, and expansive understandings of liturgy in Black Church spaces. Chelsea Yarborough’s work interrogates normative ideas of liturgical authority through practices such as testimony and argues for liberative liturgical praxis in Black worship. (Yarborough 2023). In A Womanist Theology of Worship: Liturgy, Justice, and Communal Righteousness (2021), Lisa Allen argues that at the centre of womanist liturgy is justice and the hope towards Black freedom which is critical in Black worship.

Black Church worship is not a monolith, and therefore, as a homiletical practice, preaching forms, emphases, and approaches within worship services differ across traditions as well. (Costen 1993: 95–96).

6.2 Suffering and death

6.3 Ecology

Interest in ecology and reconnecting to the earth continues to grow in various quarters where Black preaching is practiced. A focus on ecology emphasizes God as the creator and humans as co-creators participating in the stewardship of the earth. Eco-womanist theologian Melanie Harris asserts in her work that we must consider the ways that our conversations around the earth and its flourishing intersect with Black flourishing and other systems of oppression (Harris 2017). For this reason, it is critical to consider the unique role that Black women have played in environmental justice, climate change, food insecurity, lack of clean water, and other environmental issues push human beings to consider their interdependency with all forms of life, and to note which participants in society are most negatively impacted. Black preachers, in recent years, have begun to devote considerable theological attention to understanding and reconciling views and perspectives on religious practice, scientific exploration, and stewardship of the earth.

6.4 Public square and social relevance

Preaching is public theology and Black preaching has historically recognized its role in the public square as critical. To lift and address Black corporate concerns requires that Black preachers engage their social world beyond the sanctuary’s four walls. From the early stirrings of discontented Black preachers such as Richard Allen and Absalom Jones in Philadelphia at the turn of the nineteenth century to the freedom and justice movements of the 1950s and 1960s, Black preachers took to their pulpits raising clarion voices to subvert the status quo’s insistence that they come to an acceptance of their social situation as divinely ordained.

When your public is a people that are disenfranchised, the public square is a critical tool of engagement. Kenyatta Gilbert outlines his trivocal theory, which suggests that the priestly, prophetic, and sagely voice, are the three underlying threads in Black preaching linked to scripture that define the best of Black preaching. The prophetic voice is summoned to expose self-serving and self-deceiving practices and systems of injustice, and in view of this, urges the preacher to chasten criticism with the hope of God establishing a new social order (Gilbert 2011: 12). Because of the social realities of many of their hearers, Black preachers have felt some obligation to speak to the relevant needs of the people, which means critically engaging systems and policies that negatively impact the health and wellness of Black churches and communities. When Black life is considered sacred, then all things that move towards supporting that life is important. Black preaching is a practice of socially relevant sacred rhetoric that offers theological assertions in public places where justice and freedom for Black people in a society are under threat.

7.1 Aristotelian logic and enlightenment traditions

Studies of classical rhetoric centre on ancient Greek philosophy and practices for public oration. Greek Sophists viewed speech acts as oral art intended to please and persuade the listener. In this conception, language limited comprehension, and therefore expression, placing a premium on aesthetic pleasure as the goal of civic dialogue and political oration. Consistent with a performative art, Sophists conceived of rhetoric’s elements as a dynamic orator, adorned speech, an audience to be pleased and guided toward belief, common language, and appropriate timing. Plato challenged Sophist rhetoric by appealing for the advancement of knowledge over persuasion through overindulgent speech. Plato believed the way to counteract Sophistic ‘cookery’ (i.e. an aesthetic pleasure to mask undesirable outcomes) was to identify and present truth through dialogue to produce informed civic and political decisions.

Following Plato, Aristotle conceived of rhetoric as ‘the art of discovering the means of persuasion available for any subject’. This foundational definition accepts the rhetorical polarity between Sophists and Plato, identifying methods for engaging in the systematic analysis of a rhetorical event. For Aristotle, reason (logos), emotion (pathos), and character (ethos) are determinative for the rhetor’s identification of the available means of persuasion. Aristotle’s proposal remains the first-to-mind classical conception of rhetoric.

Observers of African communication systems note a more subjective approach to rhetoric, where the art is not defined exclusively by the rhetor, but by its reception within a community. According to Arthur L. Smith, the rhetorical project ‘emphasizes synthesis more than analysis’ and thus ‘contributes to community stability because considerations in the whole are more productive than considerations in detail’ (Smith 1971). Thus, the art of public discourse is a proposal for which the community, including the rhetor, is the stakeholder. African Americans continued this subjective rhetorical tradition in religious contexts through expressive group practices including continuing and developing religious-cultural language, ring shouts, and call-and-response.

7.2 Vocal production

Gerald L. Davis, in I Got the Word in Me and I Can Sing it, You Know (1985), argues for the presence of formulaic systems unique to the production of African American sermons. Davis’ study recognizes that ‘translation of message intent to language structure and mnemonic, the rhythmic structure can be charted’ (Davis 1985: 53). Davis notes that African American sermons can be characterized by smaller units (‘hemistich phrases’) of delivery and are arrhythmic. Davis’ display of the arrhythmic meter includes elongated one-syllable words and staccato punctuation for what he refers to as ‘the secular portion of the preacher’s formula’, over against the use of a ‘contoured oral style’ for the sacred portion; each rhythm rejecting the monotony of either pole.

A feature associated with emotive African American preaching is the celebration which marks the sermon's conclusion. This emotive response may be guttural or smooth, high- or low-pitched, or extemporaneous or structured. According to Mitchell, effective preaching ‘can be accurately evaluated by the interest and attention of the audience’ (Mitchell 1990: 31). With interest and attention in place, the preacher and audience celebrate, together, the text and purpose. With this, the preacher’s vocal impulses are connected to the biblical text, the sermonic content, and the listener’s reception of the sermon’s proposals. An expression of Mitchell’s offer for celebration is the whoop. Clarence LaVaughn ‘C. L.’ Franklin’s distinctive and celebrative vocal production incorporated the blues of his Mississippi formative years in Mississippi and the Motown sound of his adult life in Detroit, Michigan to invite his audiences to anticipate and celebrate the process of meaning-making in community. As Mitchell proposed, a responsible whoop is a celebration of sermon text and purpose.

Jon Michael Spencer’s Sacred Symphony: The Chanted Sermon of the Black Preacher (1987) situates the musicality of contemporary Black preachers alongside the spirituals of enslaved persons and notes the presence of melody, rhythm, call-and-response, counterpoint, harmony, form, and improvisation in both (Spencer 1987: xiii). This close association is a reminder of the significance of musicality for African American preachers and their sermons.

Proclamation, as Lisa L. Thompson notes, occurs as an event for communities of faith, necessarily involving those who proclaim and those who receive. When event observers and participants recognize that more is at stake than ‘simply the mechanics of words, symbols, structures, form, proper images, and analogies’, what becomes possible is ‘the ripples of sacred-in-breaking’ (Thompson 2018: 26). Such awareness may prompt all community members to partake in the possibilities.

7.3 Style and religious context

The styles and religious context of African American preaching involve the generative influences of historical practices of storytelling and meaning-making and the development of new expressions and experiences in America. William H. Pipes describes the social and religious contexts for ‘old-time Negro preaching’ as the requirement of the enslaved for ‘a medium of escape from unpleasant conditions’ and ‘a medium of escape from an impossible world’ (Pipes 1992: 71). Following this, a style of Black preaching accounting for the unique religious context of enslaved African Americans is discerned through the teaching and proclamation of scripture which informed the piety of the enslaved as well as the slave uprisings led by Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner. Vestiges of these styles remain in African American preaching described as folk revival, chapel-lecture, hip-hop lyricism, and contemplative.

7.4 Message transmission

With several cultural shifts in the Western church through the Middle Ages, some linked to the production and use of the Bible, now translated into Latin, preaching became rare. Rhetoric’s role in preaching had diminished considerably by the time of Augustine. In 397 AD, Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine was the first published homiletic textbook. Augustine argued for rhetoric by noting that ‘public orators were engaging and entertaining, while preachers of the truth were ‘sluggish, and frigid, and somnolent. In other words, preachers were boring and were putting people to sleep’. To counter the dismissal of rhetoric and convince preachers to develop rhetorical methods for preaching, Augustine promoted eloquence in the service of proclaiming truth. This motion toward rhetoric in service struck the right chord and convinced homiletic guilds to embrace persuasive rhetoric.

Neither Augustine nor Aristotle, however, analysed listener reception in their approaches to message transmission. This aspect of analysing communications systems had gone largely unnoticed until Gregory the Great advanced an effort to account for audience diversity within the field of rhetoric. For the greatest persuasive effect, Gregory the Great proposed that the teacher ‘ought to touch the heart of his hearers out of one doctrine, but not with one and the same exhortation’. Thus, hearers within a diverse audience are to be ‘admonished’ differently. This is believed to have been the first work to treat listener receptivity as an important aspect of rhetorical systems.

Alain de Lille and Robert of Basevorn were noted for their contributions to the developing synergy between rhetoric and preaching, as during the Middle Ages, preaching structures or forms developed to support themes proposed in sermons. For example, Basevorn’s three-point sermon shifted moralistic, expositional oratory ‘from an inorganic, unstructured narrative to a tightly reasoned argument, developed and amplified with considered care’, a style suited for the propositional doctrines of the Reformation era. While the use of rhetoric supported the formalization of structure in preaching and furthered the cause of doctrinal preaching of the Reformation, there was also a reprise of the earlier Enlightenment rejection of rhetoric. This time, the case was made for ‘the plain meaning’ of scripture.

In the tradition of African American preaching, William H. Pipes, in Say Amen, Brother (1992), observes the delivery of an ‘old-time Negro’ sermon and concludes it is ‘the manner in which the sermon is delivered that determines the success or failure’ (Pipes 1992: 148). Pipes suggests that emphasizing techniques and devices was preferred over developing sermonic ideas. Varied intonation and body movements help to communicate points of emphasis and elicit listener attention which helps to advance the message. In Pipes’ view, these should not be left to chance, and as such, they form the persuasive elements, the rhetoric or ‘manners’ that accompany the transmission of sermons in the African American preaching tradition. Further situating his observation rhetorically, Pipes remarks that the location of the sermon factors into the strategies employed for the transmission of messages. Pipes believed: ‘To understand the delivery of the Negro preacher, the setting and the occasion of the sermon should be pictured’ (Pipes 1992: 148). Open-air but secreted hush arbours, crudely constructed rooms, and modern, eco-friendly worship centres convey different environments within which the preaching moment occurs. Envisioned as such, analyses of the communication systems within which the sermon functions must involve a holistic identification of the effect of location on preacher and listener.

7.5 Sermon methods and theological biases

Alongside the Civil Rights Movement in America, particularly the public ministry of Martin Luther King, Jr., African American preaching’s prophetic impetus thrust Black preaching into the American conscience. Henry H. Mitchell’s examinations of Black preaching, including Celebration and Experience in Preaching (2008) and Black Preaching: The Recovery of a Powerful Art (1990), centred the homiletical tradition, enabling awareness of the academic possibilities of an ongoing investigation of preaching in Black church experiences. Mitchell explored the theological and rhetorical impulses of African American preaching and encouraged the development of sermons through a liberationist lens that embraced celebration. Still, there exists a diversity of homiletical methods, or sermonic approaches, within the tradition.