The Heart of Black Preaching

Cleophus J. LaRue

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9781611642452
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Cleophus LaRue argues that the extraordinary character of black preaching derives from a distinctive biblical hermeneutic that views God as involved in practical ways in the lives of African Americans. This hermeneutic, he believes, has remained constant since the days of slavery. LaRue analyzes the distinct characteristics of African American preaching and brings the insights of both theory and practice to bear on this important subject matter.

1

The Search for Distinctiveness
in Black Preaching

What is African American preaching? How do we express the fundamental components of this style of proclamation? Most who have studied black preaching would agree there is no one methodology, style, or expression that constitutes the definitive form of African American preaching. Few, if any, African Americans would claim there is a single style of preaching that is faithful to all it means to be African American and that is appropriate for all its churches. With the inclusion of white religious bodies with significant African American memberships, blacks belong to over two hundred denominations in the United States alone.¹

In many instances, the only connecting link African Americans have with one another in these multiple denominations is color and race. Thus the term “black preaching” describes a rich and varied tradition, covering a broad configuration of motivations, theological points of view, art forms, structures, and styles of delivery. At first glance, the very breadth, diversity, and complexity of this tradition would seem to hamper the search to identify common methods and dynamics. On closer inspection, however, one can detect an integrative force, a common thread running throughout this style of proclamation that clearly provides its spirit and raison d’être, namely, a distinctive biblical hermeneutic.

CHARACTERISTICS OF BLACK PREACHING

Strong Biblical Content

The search for distinctiveness in black preaching can at times appear to be an endless quest. Some have maintained that what sets the African American sermon apart is its strong biblical content, a product of the high regard African Americans continue to have for the scriptures. In many black churches, biblical preaching, defined as preaching that allows a text from the Bible to serve as the leading force in shaping the content and purpose of the sermon, is the type of preaching considered to be most faithful to traditional understandings of the proclaimed word.

Indeed, it is no secret that the Bible occupies a central place in the religious life of black Americans. More than a mere source for texts, in black preaching the Bible is the single most important source of language, imagery, and story for the sermon. Though biblical literacy in black churches is greatly diminished from earlier years, it has yet to reach the state where the Bible’s primacy as a rich resource for black preaching is no longer the case. Depicted in the Bible are the experiences of many black people from slavery to contemporary times. Consequently, knowledge of the Bible, along with the ability to apply Bible verses to every phase of life, are indeed regarded by many African American preachers as crucial ingredients in effective preaching.²

Creative Uses of Language

Others have argued that creative uses of language provide African American preaching with its distinguishing feature. To an extent, this is true. Many black preachers seem to possess a genius for the melody of words and the details of scene. Henry Mitchell has noted the enthusiastic response of African American congregations to beautiful language and well-turned phrases.³ The traditional black church expects and appreciates rhetorical flair and highly poetic language in the preaching of the gospel.

There is little fear in black pulpits of being accused of “pretty preaching.” In fact, seasoned pastors from an earlier generation could often be heard admonishing younger ministers not to be afraid “to preach a little.” Such encouragements were intended to free the poet in the preacher and allow the presence of God through the power of language to lift the sermon to higher heights. To this end, the employment of literary devices such as antiphonality, repetition, alliteration, syncopation, oral formulas, thematic imagery, voice merging, and sacred time continues to be a compelling concern of the African American preacher.⁴ Such rhetorical tools in the hands of a skillful black preacher can evoke a sense of God’s awe and mystery in the listening congregation.

Unlike many European and mainline American denominations, where architecture and classical music inspire a sense of the holy, blacks seek to accomplish this act through the display of well-crafted rhetoric. The listening ear becomes the privileged sensual organ as the preacher attempts through careful and precise rhetoric to embody the Word.⁵ For this reason, the rhythm, cadence, and sound of words as well as their ability to “paint a picture” in the minds of the hearers are very important in the African American sermon. The black preacher’s careful search for the precise words and phrases are continuing evidence of the importance of rhetoric and the modest circumstances that originally gave it a place of primacy in the black sermon.⁶

Appeal to Emotions

Still others have argued that appeal to the emotions is the distinctive feature in African American preaching. At the turn of the century, W. E. B. DuBois described “the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy,” as the three distinct, historical characteristics of the black worship experience:

The frenzy or “Shouting,” when the Spirit of the Lord passed by, and, seizing the devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy, was the last essential of Negro religion and the one more devoutly believed in than all the rest.⁷

This unabashed, emotional fervor, of which DuBois wrote nearly a century ago, continues to impact both the preaching of the sermon and the response of the worshiping community. The highly charged nature of the black worship experience is most commonly associated with the antiphonal call-and-response ritual that the preacher and congregation engage in during the sermon. Many black preachers, contemplating the audible participation of those in the pew, intentionally slow their cadences, time their pauses, and chant or semichant their phrases in a most adept and deliberate manner.⁸ Their timed delivery is structured to meet the requirements of the old adage:

Start slow,
rise high,
strikefire.
Sit down in a storm.

Such affective (emotional) preaching and the vocal response it evokes from the listeners has traditionally met with stiff resistance among learned African Americans as pyrotechnics of the worst sort. The charge of histrionics notwithstanding, it has never lost its appeal among the commoners of the folk tradition. Criticized by African American intellectuals in the first half of the century as lacking logical organization and requiring little preparation, affective preaching and participant proclamation enjoyed a resurgence of interest even among intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s.⁹

Ministerial Authority

Still others who have studied African American preaching have sought to account for its distinctiveness through the presence and power of the preacher. Typically, African American congregations view their preachers as special representatives of God, or, even more, as manifestations of the divine presence and thus worthy of great reverence and admiration. Black congregations tend to bestow great authority upon their preachers, and their preachers, in turn, feel a certain freedom to say and do what they wish while preaching the gospel. Some claim that much of the creative genius heard in black preaching is directly attributable to this longstanding freedom and pulpit autonomy.

This authority, however, does not arise automatically but must be earned by the preacher through earnest and effective preaching as well as through meaningful association with the “folks” over a period of time. When the preacher becomes confident of this authority, he or she then enjoys a certain license in the preaching event that allows the preacher to engage in a creative, thought-provoking exchange between the text, the congregation, and the preacher. The preacher, sensing unrestricted access, soars to unparalleled heights in his or her effort “to make it plain,” that is, to preach the gospel in such a way that the hearers both understand and identify the good news as a word fittingly spoken to them.

This notion of authority originated prior to the transtlantic slave trade in Africa where the priests and medicine men, because of the importance ascribed to their offices, were accorded a high degree of admiration and respect. The responsibilities of those priests and medicine men were transferred in some measure to the slave preachers in the new world.¹⁰

Additional Characteristics

While strong biblical content, the creative uses of language, emotion, and ministerial authority are the characteristics commonly associated with black preaching, in recent years contemporary scholars have sought to describe additional broadly based characteristics at a more systematic level of reflection. Henry Mitchell argued for distinctiveness in the emotive/celebrative encounter between preacher and pew that has historically characterized the black religious experience. Thus he tended to emphasize the celebrative aspects of black preaching and an appropriate homiletic for creating such an atmosphere in the worship setting.¹¹ James Earl Massey, in The Responsible Pulpit, viewed the African American sermon as functional, festive, communal, radical, and climactic. When these five traits were present, Massey believed a distinctive black preaching style was usually noticeable.¹²

Gerald L. Davis, in I Got the Word in Me and I Can Sing It, You Know, explained the genius of black preaching through the expressive devices and techniques of the “performed” African American sermon. He focused on oral formulas, metrical patterns, and organizing principles of folk narrative methodologies. As a folklorist primarily interested in the structural complexities of language, Davis was more concerned with the sermon as “finished product” than with the hermeneutical dynamics involved in its initial creation and organization.¹³

William B. McClain, in Come Sunday: The Liturgy of Zion, considered preaching to be central to the authentic black worship experience and sensed the beginnings of a qualitative difference in black preaching’s passionate words and vivid imagery for a disillusioned and disinherited people.¹⁴ Evans Crawford, in The Hum: Call and Response in African American Preaching, explained the creativity of black preaching through “homiletical musicality,” that is, the manner in which the black preacher uses timing, pause, inflection, pace, and other musical qualities of speech in the sermon’s delivery to awaken in the hearers a sense of wonder and thanksgiving toward God.¹⁵

These recent studies, along with the more traditional characteristics of the black sermon, point to valid aspects of black preaching and make valuable contributions to the field. None, however, has sought to understand what is distinctive about this style of preaching at its most fundamental level, namely, the interpretive process that drives the creation and organization of the content of the sermon. Few who have heard black preaching at its best could deny that a creative mixture and mastery of the aforementioned traits characterize African American preaching.

The problem is that highlighting these traits as foundational properties of black preaching is merely describing characteristics of a process already in motion. It is equivalent to pointing out certain features of a train that has already left the station, without being able to cite to interested observers its point of origination, the fuel that drives its engine, or how it came about that the train is made up of cars that readily identify it. While an exhaustive study of the multifaceted complexity of black preaching is beyond the scope of this work, I do intend to describe the fundamental hermeneutical strategy I believe lends itself to distinctiveness in this style of preaching.

SCRIPTURE AND LIFE EXPERIENCES

To get at the heart of black preaching, one has to understand the interconnectedness between scriptural texts and African American life experiences. While it is true that most black theologizing takes place in the pulpit,¹⁶ it is also true that a certain type of experiential brooding occurs in the embryonic stage of the sermon prior to the actual exegesis of the text. This deliberate, subliminal musing is an essential ingredient in the creation of the black sermon. Since scripture is never interpreted in a vacuum, scripture and the life experiences of blacks always stand in a figure/ground relationship to one another. Scripture and experience interact and play off one another, each impacting the other in a complex interweaving that is difficult to trace and even more difficult to unravel. The primary question that enables us to get at this rudimentary understanding of black preaching may be posed in the following manner: How does the exposition of scripture and the life experiences of blacks encounter, inform, and affect one another in the black preaching event? This question allows us to begin our basic hermeneutical search for distinctiveness by inquiring into the two essential departure points for black preaching: (1) the content of black sociocultural experience, and (2) how that content impacts the sense in which God is believed to be present in and through scripture.

The black church was born in slavery. Thus black preaching originated in a context of marginalization and struggle, and it is to this context that it still seeks to be relevant. It is the interaction of marginalized black experience and biblical interpretation that enables blacks to confront biblical texts in a compelling and creative manner.¹⁷ James Evans argues persuasively that this unique African American sociocultural context of marginalization and struggle is central to the manner in which blacks conceptualize what is important about the gospel:

Since the first Africans set foot on this soil, people of African descent have had a singularly unique experience in the New World. They brought with them an inherent philosophical heritage, including a distinctive religious sensibility; they encountered the most brutal form of slavery in human history; and they...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Search for Distinctiveness in Black Preaching
• 2. The Power Motif in Nineteenth-Century African American Sermons
• 3. A Hermeneutic of Power in Contemporary African American Sermons
• 4. The Basic Dynamics of the African American Sermon
• Appendix: Sermons
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments of Copyrighted Material
• Index