Review: Swing Low, Volume 2

August 8, 2025August 7, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Cover image of "Swing Low, Volume 2), General Editor: Walter R. Strickland II

Swing Low, Volume 2: An Anthology of Black Christianity in the United States, General Editor, Walter R. Strickland II, Associate Editors, Justin D. Clark, Yana Jenay Conner, and Courtlandt K. Perkins. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514004227) 2024.

Summary: An anthology of primary source writings on Black Christianity in America from the 1600’s to the present.

Last month I reviewed a new history of Black Christianity in the United States by Walter R. Strickland II (review at https://bobonbooks.com/2025/07/02/review-swing-low-volume-1/). So, this volume is a companion to that work, providing an anthology of readings to complement the historical narrative of the first volume. In other words, if you’ve studied history, you understand how important primary sources are. Therefore, this collection is a treasure trove, both for what is represented here and the more extensive sources to which they point.

For example, here are some of the readings included:

Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
Richard Allen “The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the R. Rev. Richard Allen…”
Francis Grimke, “Christianity and Race Prejudice”
Charles Octavius Boothe “Plain Theology for Plain People”
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Our God is Able”
Howard Thurman, “Jesus and the Disinherited”
Fannie Lou Hamer, “To Praise Our Bridges: An Autobiography”
Tom Skinner, “Black and Free”
William E. Pannell, “My Friend, the Enemy”
James Cone, “A Black Theology of Liberation”
Samuel Proctor, “Samuel Proctor: My Moral Odyssey”

Like other anthologies, many of the readings are excerpts of key passages of longer works. In addition, each of the selections includes a brief biography of the author and the context in which it was written as well as the original source of the reading.

Moreover, the anthology follows the organization of Volume One, the history, in two ways. Firstly, the anthology annotates the readings with symbols for the five theological anchors Strickland elucidates in the first volume:

Anchor 1: Big God
Anchor 2: Jesus
Anchor 3: Conversion and Walking in the Spirit
Anchor 4: The Good Book
Anchor 5: Deliverance

Secondly, the sections follow the historical periods of volume one, making it well-suited for use as a companion volume in courses on Black Christianity. These sections are:

Pre-emancipation: 1619-1865
Reconstruction and Its Aftermath: 1865-1896
Civil Rights Era 1896-1968
Black Evangelicalism: 1963 and Beyond
Black Theology: 1969 and Beyond
Into the Twenty-First Century

Finally, the readings in each section are divided into four categories:

Sermons and Oratory
Theological Treatises
Worship and Liturgy
Personal Correspondence and Autobiography

I especially appreciated the Worship and Liturgy selections which included early spirituals like “Go Down Moses” and “Oh! Peter Go Ring Dem Bells,” Civil Rights protest songs like “We Shall Overcome.” and contemporary hip hop like Sho Baraka’s “Maybe Both, 1865.”

In conclusion, this volume is the ideal complement to the history of volume one. Not only that, the readings allow us to listen to Black Christians in their own words. In particular, I found both great comfort in the faith of these believers and great challenge as they spoke of the sins of slavery and racism. For example, consider this excerpt from William E. Pannell’s “My Friend, The Enemy”, from 1968:

“No, this man is a friend. He’s against the KKK, abhors violence, supports the Constitution and is for Negro voting rights. We read the same version, believe the same doctrines, probably have the same middle class tastes, but all he knows about me–or cares to know–is what he sees on the 6 o’clock news.… I wear a suit as good as his, yet he sees me looting a clothing store in Watts. He knows something of my temperament as its mirrored in the behavior of my sons, yet he identifies me with the muggings in Washington or Buffalo. To him, the cause of brotherhood, the disintegration of human relations–civil rights!–is my problem. Mine, because I created it and I perpetuate it.”

Certainly, it does not take a great deal of imagination to draw parallels to our own day. For this reason, this anthology is so valuable. Because the writers are believing Christians who speak biblically into their situation, they offer us a chance to shed our blinders. But will we?

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Smart Suits, Tattered Boots

March 25, 2022March 31, 2022 / rtrube54 / 5 Comments

Smart Suits, Tattered Boots, Korie Little Edwards and Michelle Oyakawa. New York: New York University Press, 2022.

Summary: A study, using interviews of Black Ohio religious leaders and research studies of mobilization efforts to explore whether Black religious leaders are still able to mobilize civil rights efforts, and if so, how, when, and why they do.

The story of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s to 1970’s is a story of a religious movement–marchers mobilized, trained, and inspired in churches, from which many of the marches began, voting rights efforts encouraged by churches, and almost invariably led by Black men in suits, white dress shirts, and dark ties (with many women contributing mightily to the effort).

Fifty years later, it is a new time, where systemic injustices against Blacks remain in different forms–mass incarceration of Black men, police-involved shootings or killings of Blacks, new voting restrictions and redistricting that on analysis seem directed to prevent or dilute the Black vote. The authors of this study ask the question of whether and where Black religious leadership figures into addressing these injustices. The study centers in on Ohio, where the two researchers live, using a case study of the 2012 presidential election and Black voter mobilization efforts as well as interviews with 54 black clergy and eleven faith-based community organization (FBCO) and race-based civic organization heads. All names of interviewees are pseudonyms as are most of the organizations mentioned.

The study discovered that the 2012 election was an example where religious leaders served to effectively mobilize efforts to register and get out the vote. Principal leaders in the religious communities were key–people who were widely respected by other clergy in their networks. When these leaders said to others that they should give their efforts to mobilizing the vote, they did. Furthermore, the researchers learned that a key motivation was actually not re-electing a Black president but rather countering efforts being made to block Black access to the vote, rolling back a key achievement of the civil rights movement.

The researchers also found that Black clergy tended to mobilize in their religious networks around historic civil rights issues but tended to address other effects of systemic racism that disadvantaged Blacks by placing blame on Blacks for failures and urging stronger Black work ethics, rather than addressing the systemic issues. The term this “the Black Protestant ethic.”

They found that the historic influence of Black civic organizations like the NAACP, the Urban League, and others has waned in their organizing capacities, and that many Black religious leaders have turned to FBCOs instead. The difficulty is that these efforts are multi-racial, often directed by whites without sufficient grasp of the community issues, and are funded by foundations, who often are focused on quick, short-term results rather than longer term substantive change.

Consequently, many Black clergy may engage for a time and discover that the amount of work and the real impact do not warrant their continued engagement. This is exemplified in chapter six of the book, which profiles three highly influential leaders (under pseudonyms)–one a civil rights era principal leader, the general, one described as the warrior, who took on racial injustices in his city until he was both excluded and burned out and needed to take care of himself. The third, called the protege’ was a younger leader in the early years of engaging justice issues, and who was both passionate, but also somewhat abstracted in his language.

What I found most striking was the contrast between the general, “Wyoming Brashear,” and the others. The researchers also noted it:

“Brashear stands out from others in this study because he consistently and intentionally aimed to reconcile his worldview, one that was historically and globally situated, with his Christian faith, drawing on biblical references to provide theological bases for his positions. This suggests that Brashear pondered matters, that his positions were not taken for granted. It was uncommon for the pastors in this study to reference specific Bible scriptures when explaining their social or theological views” (p.114).

I thought this significant. “Brashear” was one of those who had been part of the Civil Rights movement, one of the criteria for being a principal leader. In addition to the shared experience, which gave credibility, I wondered if there was a shared ethos of biblically and theologically informed activism tracing back to King, son and father, and beyond them to the likes of Howard Thurman, W.E.B. DuBois, and Frederick Douglass.

One of the questions discussed in the conclusion is whether this religious leader influence will continue when those of the Civil Rights era pass. The researchers propose that one direction is expanding the remit from civil rights to freedom. I think that could be an interesting and important direction. I also find myself wondering if a recovery and renewal of the biblically, theologically, and spiritually informed impetus that fired religious leaders in past mobilization efforts might also be important. I think the researchers raise important questions about the Black Protestant Ethic. This may need to be both deconstructed and re-imagined. I wonder though, if there is to be power to mobilize within the Black Church, whether it must be done within a biblical and theological framework rather than bifurcating spirituality and social activism.

Smart Suits, Tattered Boots raises important questions in the face of movements like #BlackLivesMatter that have arisen outside the church. Has the day of clergy-led, church-based mobilizing efforts passed? What role should faith-based community organizations play? Are movements like #BlackLivesMatter a new wineskin for mobilizing? What if any part should Black religious leaders play? This book has me wondering about all these things.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Black Church

February 17, 2022February 16, 2022 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

The Black Church, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Penguin Press, 2021.

Summary: A companion to the PBS series on the Black church, surveying the history of the Black church in America focusing on why the church has been central to the life of the Black community.

It is practically a truism that the church is a central reality in the Black experience, and in many local Black communities. But why is this? That is the question Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores in this companion book to the PBS series, “The Black Church.”

Gates contends that the church provided a place, first of all, for refuge that they could control and find hope in, when they were brutally subjugated, whether under slavery or Jim Crow. It was fascinating to learn that Spanish Catholics were responsible for the conversions of African-Americans in the early year. Gates also traces the elements of Muslim and traditional religion back to the earliest periods of slavery. White slave owners often were resistant to the conversion of slaves, recognizing the liberating messages to be found in the Bible, Anglican missionaries persuaded slave owners that it could be taught in ways that supported their control. What they couldn’t control was the introduction of music and dance that reflected African heritage, including the “ring shout.” and the unofficial gatherings in “praise houses.”

Many more were converted during the Methodist revivals, but when they were segregated, Richard Allen led the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Gates traces how the church increasingly becomes a force for abolition (and in the case of Nat Turner, for uprising) as well as renewal. Then with Emancipation, Gates traces the further growth of the churches of the south, the Bible women who helped spread the gospel message, and the “frenzy” that presaged Pentecostalism, which can trace its roots to William Joseph Seymour, who led the Azusa Street Revival, leading to the formation of the Church of God in Christ, the largest Pentecostal body in the country.

With the Great Migration, Gates traces the growth of Black megachurches in northern cities like Chicago and New York, and with this the growth of Gospel music from the Fisk Jubilee Singers to Shirley Caesar, and from this, the development of blues and jazz. This led to a growing tension between the music of the clubs on Saturday night and the music of the service on Sunday. The music and the preaching connected, nowhere more so than at the March on Washington when Mahalia Jackson urged King to “Tell them about the dream.” The gospel songs morphed into the freedom songs and sustained the movement.

Gates describes the period after King as a “crisis of faith.” He describes the development of Black theology, including the thought of James Cone and Jeremiah Wright, the pastor who married the Obamas. He observes the tensions around sexuality, the patriarchy of churches, and the conservatism around LGBT sexuality as well as the ascent of Blacks into the middle class, the ministries of pastors like T.D. Jakes, and how Obama revealed different sides of the church to white America. The chapter concludes with the resurgent white nationalism and Black Lives Matter.

An epilogue traces Gates own religious journey, his decision to join the church, his fear of “the Frenzy” and speaking in tongues and the irony that DuBois “Talented Tenth” were less the missionaries of culture than the Pentecostals, whose experience did more to uplift the marginalized. Gates observes that the experiential connected back to the African religious roots of the Black church.

Gates gives us an account of the Black church that both traces history, and enriches it with interviews with contemporary Black leaders and celebrities, drawing out the experienced significance of the Black church. The church that emerges is one of refuge and uplift, of resistance and abolition, of music and ecstasy. It is also an account of Black pulpiteers and the development of Black preaching from Richard Allen to Raphael Warnock. The appendix includes an alphabetical list of the great preachers of the Black church. Here as throughout this history, Gates does not confine his account to Christians, including figures like Malcolm X.

As history, this is more popular survey than an in-depth, scholarly account. Gates use of contemporary interviews interlaced with his history creates a much richer sense of the ethos of the Black church than one might get from a historical narrative alone. He captures the various ways the church epitomizes and sustains the identity of Black people. He concludes:

“It’s that cultural space in which we can bathe freely in the comfort of our cultural heritage, and where everyone knows their part, and where everyone can judge everyone else’s performance of their part, often out loud with amens, with laughter, with clapping, or with silence. It’s the space that we created to find rest in the gathering storm. It’s the place where we made a way out of no way. It’s the place to which, after a long and wearisome journey, we can return and find rest before we cross the river. It’s the place we call, simply, the Black Church” (p. 219).

Review: Reading While Black

February 9, 2021February 8, 2021 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

Reading While Black, Esau McCaulley. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Summary: A study of biblical interpretation in the traditional Black church that emphasizes the conversation between the biblical text and the Black experience and how this sustains hope in the face of despair.

Esau McCaulley describes his journey from southern roots to white evangelicalism and progressive scholarship and back to the Black church tradition. He recognized that both evangelical and progressive traditions didn’t offer the wherewithal to deal with the Black experience of slavery and racism and to sustain hope amid despair. McCaulley found this by going back to the Black church, both its biblically rooted resistance to slavery and injustice, and its message of hope of liberation, not merely spiritual but in terms of bodily status.

McCaulley offers this description of biblical interpretation how one reads the Bible while Black:

unapologetically canonical and theological.
socially located, in that it clearly arises out of the particular context of Black Americans.
willing to listen to the ways in which the Scriptures themselves respond to and redirect Black issues and concerns.
willing to exercise patience with the text trusting that a careful and sympathetic reading of the text brings a blessing.
willing to listen to and enter into dialogue with Black and white critiques of the Bible in the hopes of achieving a better reading of the text.

The next six chapters address issues facing the black community and how the tradition of Black church reading of scripture addresses each. The issues are: policing, political witness, the pursuit of justice, Black identity, Black anger, and slavery. The treatments are not exhaustive but are meant to point toward the resources of biblical interpretation open to the Black community. The concluding chapter centers on hope, which is the outcome of engaging the biblical text and looking for answers to these pressing issues. A “bonus track” goes further into the ecclesial, or church-centered aspect of this approach to biblical interpretation.

I will not go through McCaulley’s discussion of the six issues but focus on the first as an example of the approach he commends. First he begins with context, and his own experience of being stopped by police while at a gas station, as he was driving friends to a party. He then turns to Romans 13:1-2, often weaponized against the Black community. He observes how we often look at the instructions for citizens without considering the powers subject to God, and why, in Paul’s context the recipients of his letter are subjected to an evil empire by God. What the passage raises is a form of theodicy. McCaulley reads this passage canonically, setting Rome alongside Pharaoh (cf. Romans 9:17) in which God is glorified through his judgment upon wicked kings. If Moses was not sinful in his resistance to Pharaoh, then submission to authorities does not preclude calling evil by its name. Furthermore, verses 3 and 4 of Romans 13 speak to the just use of authority, to reward good and punish evil, and not the reverse. Policing that treats citizens otherwise ought to be reformed. It should not engender fear in those who do right, no matter the color of their skin. McCaulley observes then that how Paul deals with the evil Roman empire is not to refer to their evil but to talk about how just rule is exercised in a way that assures rather than arouses fear in the lives of the governed who do what is right.

I look at this and ask the question of how often have I heard the text taught in this way in the white church? Yet the implications for how those with police powers ought exercise them, as well as the obligation of submission, are both in the text. Both Pharaoh and Rome are in Romans. Yet where has this connection been made that speaks of how God judges evil empires and glorifies himself? Those whose social location is in the Black church in America see these realities in the text more readily than many of us.

I cannot read while Black. I read from a social location that makes me more aware of some aspects of scripture while missing others. What I’ve come to recognize as I’ve grown older is how much I’ve been blind to in scripture. I can only understand the whole counsel of God with the whole church. While I cannot read while Black, I can read with the Black church, to listen to their readings, always searching the text to see if these things are so. And what I find in many instances is that they are, and I had not had eyes to see. Open my eyes, Lord!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.