Henry Louis Gates celebrates the Black church through history and stories

There is a decidedly blessed assurance within the pages of this book. Henry Louis Gates Jr. tells a story that, by his own admission, he hasn’t told until now—in the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, a continuing surge in blatant police brutality, and emboldened White supremacy. It is a song that has echoed for generations, as people of African descent stolen into slavery sought to fashion a faith capable of sustaining them through inhumane and untenable circumstances, many of which shamefully remain to this day.

Along with its companion documentary series, which aired on PBS last month, this book is the culmination of two years of dialogue with a wide range of individuals both within and outside the church—practitioners of the faith along with scholars of history and theology. (For more on the documentary, read or watch Century editor Katara Patton's conversation with series producer/director Stacey Holman.) Woven throughout the text, these voices create a conversational tone as one thought plays against another, reflecting the diversity and density of scholarship that undergirds this ambitious project. Sacrificing neither breadth nor depth, Gates presents a comprehensive history of the Black church in America, paying particular attention to the intersections of race, religion, music, and the struggle for social justice and civil rights.

In the cramped confines of the Middle Passage, people of African descent carried with them a rich cultural and religious heritage which kept them from embracing the Christianity of their captors. Many of their captors had misgivings about encouraging conversion, fearful that it might incite notions about freedom. Nevertheless, in time that African heritage would find its way into the foundation of what would become the Black church. Gates’s attention to the influence of Islam, as well as of Yoruba and Kongo-based religions that amalgamated with Catholicism, is particularly striking.