Preaching with Sacred Fire: An Anthology of African American Sermons, 1750 to the Present
Sermons by African American preachers have sustained, inspired, educated, and thrilled their congregations through slavery, Jim Crow and the various permutations of racism, and both good times and bad. Simmons and Thomas, publisher and CEO, respectively, of the African American Pulpit, offer a collection of sermons from the mid-eighteenth-century period of the nation’s First Great Awakening to the present. They begin by exploring the African roots of black preaching and the principles of black preaching, particularly the centrality of the Bible as a living text, though the collection is a cross section of Christian denominations and nondenominations. They explore the traditions of call and response and whooping, as well as the styles that gave inspiration to musical genres from gospel to blues to jazz to rap. Each section offers a brief historical overview and brief biography of the featured preacher followed by the sermons. Overall the editors cite four classifications of sermons: social activist, black identity, cultural survival, and empowerment preaching. Among the featured preachers are Alexander Crummell, Julia Foote, Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, Noble Drew Ali, James Weldon Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Peter Gomes, Jesse Jackson, T. D. Jakes, and Jeremiah Wright. This is a valuable and inspiring resource for readers interested in the tradition of African American preaching. --Vanessa Bush