A Pursued Justice: Black Preaching from the Great Migration to Civil Rights

by Kenyatta R. Gilbert

Overview

The narrative of Civil Rights often begins with the prophetic figure of Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. City squares became a church, the body politic a congregation, and sermons a jeremiad of social change—or so the story goes. In A Pursued Justice, Kenyatta Gilbert instead traces the roots of King’s call for justice to African American prophetic preaching that arose in an earlier moment of American history.

In the wake of a failed Reconstruction period, widespread agricultural depression, and the rise of Jim Crow laws, and triggered by America’s entry into World War I, a flood of southern Blacks move​d from the South to the ​urban centers of the North. This Great Migration transformed northern Black churches and produced a new mode of preaching—prophetic Black preaching—which sought to address this brand new context.

Black clerics such as Baptist pastor Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr., A.M.E. Bishop Reverdy Cassius Ransom, and A.M.E. Zion pastor Reverend Florence Spearing Randolph rose up within these congregations. From their pulpits, these pastors "spoke truth to power" for hope across racial, ethnic, and class lines both within their congregations and between the Black community and the wider culture.

A Pursued Justice profiles these three ecclesiastically inventive clerics of the first half of the twentieth century whose strident voices gave birth to a distinctive form of prophetic preaching. Their radical sermonic response to injustice and suffering, both in and out of the Black church, not only captured the imaginations of participants in the largest internal mass migration in American history but also inspired the homiletical vision of Martin Luther King Jr. and subsequent generations of preachers of revolutionary hope and holy disobedience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481304009
Publisher:	Baylor University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	226
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Kenyatta R. Gilbert is Associate Professor of Homiletics at Howard University School of Divinity.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Migration of Hope

Part 1

1. The Exodus: History and Voices of the Great Migration

2. The Promised Land: Social Crisis and the Importance of Black Preaching

Part 2

3. Preaching as Exodus: Prophetic Imagination, Praxis, and Aesthetics

4. Exodus Preaching: Gospel and Migration

5. Exodus as Civil Rights: King and Beyond

Conclusion: Petitionary Truth Telling

Appendix A. Chapter 4 Sermons
Appendix B. Chapter 5 Sermons

Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Kenyatta R. Gilbert offers readers a definitive analysis of the prophetic wisdom, witness, and worth of Black Preaching during the mass exodus of African Americans who moved off of sharecropping plantations and out of the South, beginning in 1910. In A Pursued Justice, Dr. Gilbert makes a forceful argument, backed up by insightful homiletical discourse, about the sacred rhetoric that sustained Black Christians who left the familiar and signed up for a ‘justice ticket’ in search of jobs and freedom.

Katie G. Cannon

Kenyatta R. Gilbert offers readers a definitive analysis of the prophetic wisdom, witness, and worth of Black Preaching during the mass exodus of African Americans who moved off of sharecropping plantations and out of the South, beginning in 1910. In A Pursued Justice, Dr. Gilbert makes a forceful argument, backed up by insightful homiletical discourse, about the sacred rhetoric that sustained Black Christians who left the familiar and signed up for a 'justice ticket' in search of jobs and freedom.

Gary V. Simpson

For far too long, the genius of Black preaching has been relegated to the delivery and performance of sermons alone. Gilbert skillfully shows us that prophetic preaching is not just what a preacher says but also what a preacher does in struggling communities to concretize and incarnate the social indictments of prophetic rhetoric.

Editorial Reviews

A valuable resource for learning about the history and significance of the African American prophetic preaching tradition.

Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society - Matthew D. Kim

With this revealing account of sermonic oratory by women and men in African American Protestantism, Gilbert has advanced understanding of social justice preaching and the sundry challenges against which it has emerged.

Choice

With historical and biblical analytic precision, Gilbert sounds a clarion call for a return to prophetic Black preaching. While the primary audience for A Pursued Justice is the Black pulpit, its applicability to the pew and beyond is undeniable.

Homiletic - J. B. Blue

…the book makes a valuable contribution to academic literature on the history and impact of the urban African American church. The book will be most useful in graduate courses and advanced undergraduate courses on such topics as African American culture, religious studies, and progressive social activism.

Social Science Journal - Robert L. Boyd

In both form and content, A Pursued Justice is a breakthrough work of practical theology and rhetorical analysis. If audience reception follows quality of content, it deservedly will enjoy multiple rounds of printing and critical acclaim.

Sojourners - Rev. Andrew Wilkes

…this is an informative and at times inspirational book which in places is adorned with some of the rhetorical beauty which Gilbert attributes to others.

Baptistic Theologies - Stuart Blythe

Gilbert’s book will be useful for seminary study and for pastors who engage in lifelong learning. In addition to Gilbert’s interesting thesis and analysis of preaching in context, the book contains numerous sermon texts for reading and study.

Horizons - Mikael Broadway

An eloquent, learned, and concise introduction to the social and homiletical phenomenon of the Great Migration.

The Christian Century - Richard Lischer

Kenyatta R. Gilbert offers readers a definitive analysis of the prophetic wisdom, witness, and worth of Black Preaching during the mass exodus of African Americans who moved off of sharecropping plantations and out of the South, beginning in 1910. In A Pursued Justice, Dr. Gilbert makes a forceful argument, backed up by insightful homiletical discourse, about the sacred rhetoric that sustained Black Christians who left the familiar and signed up for a 'justice ticket' in search of jobs and freedom.

For far too long, the genius of Black preaching has been relegated to the delivery and performance of sermons alone. Gilbert skillfully shows us that prophetic preaching is not just what a preacher says but also what a preacher does in struggling communities to concretize and incarnate the social indictments of prophetic rhetoric.

In both form and content, A Pursued Justice is a breakthrough work of practical theology and rhetorical analysis. If audience reception follows quality of content, it deservedly will enjoy multiple rounds of printing and critical acclaim.

...this is an informative and at times inspirational book which in places is adorned with some of the rhetorical beauty which Gilbert attributes to others.

With historical and biblical analytic precision, Gilbert sounds a clarion call for a return to prophetic Black preaching. While the primary audience for A Pursued Justice is the Black pulpit, its applicability to the pew and beyond is undeniable.

From the Publisher