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Buy this book with The Black Church in the African American Experience by C. Eric Lincoln today!

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If It Wasn't for the Women...: Black Women's Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community by Cheryl Townsend Gilkes $18.00

Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Enduring Legacies of African-American Families by Andrew Billingsley $12.80

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From Library Journal
Billingsley (sociology/African American studies, Univ. of South Carolina) has written a short book on a mighty theme: the black church as a major influencing factor in the black community for promoting the general good and a driving force for equality and righteousness. It is amazing how much ground he covers. Part historical document, part sociological study, part journalistic reporting with numerous case studies, his book transcends time and place to present a narrative that is both compelling and fascinating. Billingsley begins with the many antebellum black churches and their periodic battles against the overwhelmingly powerful advocates of slavery, then carries this story to the modern-day black church and its nearly constant battles to secure political and economic rights for the black community. He then effortlessly ties together the tasks of both churches, showing how they are actually the same. The book reaches another level at the end as it calls for continued and relentless black church activism to tackle the enduring problems of modern American society. Recommended for all libraries.AGlenn Masuchika, Chaminade Univ. Lib., Honolulu
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
Billingsley draws on C. Eric Lincoln's dialectical model of the black church, especially its historic combination of communal and personal orientations, to organize his study. In the book's first part, Billingsley examines two black churches with antebellum roots, one in Savannah, Georgia, and the other in Richmond, Virginia. This most obviously sociohistorical section of the book traces the role of specific churches as ongoing communities of support and resistance to oppression, in which private salvation and communal practice have seldom been mutually exclusive. The second part explores specific congregations in other regions and examines global denominational differences. Billingsley describes three types of black churches: conservative, moderate, and activist. He is an engaged scholar who sees the black church in the future, as in the past, actively participating in the sociopolitical life of its community. The black church has been the cradle and the bedrock of some of the most important U.S. progressive movements, and Billingsley's accessible study provides scholarly support for the hope that it will continue to play that role. Steven Schroeder --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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First Sentence:
When I was growing up in the St. James Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama, during the era of World War II into the 1950s, the focus of this church and all its activities was on helping to prepare its parishioners for life in the hereafter. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
greatest black preachers, black male ministers, black women preachers, first black pastor, contemporary black church, black sacred cosmos, other black churches, activist churches, couples ministry, black religious leaders, housing ministry, one more river, community outreach programs, worship program, black male youths, activist ministers Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
First African Baptist Church, African American, South Carolina, Martin Luther King, New York, Andrew Bryan, United States, Civil War, Los Angeles, Andrew Marshall, Church of God, United Church of Christ, Lott Carey, President Lincoln, Maggie Walker, New Orleans, Robert Ryland, Vine City Housing Ministry, George Leile, Jerena Lee, Laurel Grove South Cemetery, General Sherman, Ralph Mark Gilbert, Third Shiloh, Atlanta University New!
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