Black Churches Quotes

“Rare is the ministry praying that they would be worthy of the giftedness of Black minds and hearts.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“Most people will not be persuaded to become Christians except in their "heart language.”
― Flavil R Yeakley Jr., Why They Left: Listening to Those Who Have Left Churches of Christ

“Back then, Black churches were a small piece of peace. Church was a world where, even with its imperfections, the offer of equality and common humanity was the sustenance needed to make it through the rest of the week in a society that deemed them less than human.”
― Janelle Gray, Echoes of the Struggle

“For all of the alleged benevolence God was supposed to bestow upon us faithful servants, Black people seemed to have been skipped over for centuries. Yet don't nobody in this world love them some Jesus like Black people do. We love him so much, we created an entire genre of music and a style of dance just to augment our praise, because that's what King David did to win his favor. This belief is rooted in a religion that isn't really ours, was forced on us during slavery, reinforced White supremacy throughout the nineteeth and twentieth centuries, and, it must be said, helps to maintain White supremacy today.”
― Feminista Jones, Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets

“..we find some of the deepest traces of Islam and other traditional African religions in places like Sapelo Island, home of the Gullah Geechee people. Islam's strong roots persisted here in ways that creolized Black Christianity.”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song

“Estimates of the percentage of enslaved Africans who were Muslim arriving in North America vary widely...between 8 and 20 percent is a reasonable estimate...”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song

“Active in the antislavery effort, helping enslaved persons, including Frederick Douglass, find safety in the North, the AME Zion Church also counted Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman as members. These abolitionists were believers who framed their powerful arguments for freedom and equality in the language of scripture and an uncorrupted Christianity.”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song

“White planters used the Bible to justify slavery; Black people, held in bondage, used the spirituals to express their own beliefs in God, justice, and freedom. Frederick Douglass called the songs "a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song

“...the great blues musician W.C. Handy said, "I think these spirituals did more for our emancipation than all the guns of the Civil War.”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song