Praying and Plotting, Singing and Strategizing: Black Gospel Music as the Sound of Resistance

In his sermon at the April 2022 inaugural symposium of the Interdisciplinary Program in Music and the Black Church, Bishop W. Darin Moore drew inspiration from both Marvin Gaye and the Minor Prophet Habakkuk, preaching a message he titled, “Makes Me Wanna Holler.” In his message, Bishop Moore laid out the social and political conditions into which Habakkuk spoke his own critiques against various forms of injustice and unrighteousness. These conditions included material problems that caused the prophet to cry out in exasperation, “How long, O Lord? How long?” Moore’s sermon was a natural fit for the symposium context because it allowed him to pivot and to think about the meaningfulness of Black worship–not as an escape from the world, but rather as a space from which to transform the world.

He said: “The Black Church throughout our history has refused to be silent about the pain of our people, but it’s important that no one misinterpret what a person–particularly in the Black Church–means when we say ‘throw up our hands.’ Yes, it can mean, ‘I’m tired and I quit–I give up.’ But don’t get it twisted, because throwing up your hands can also indicate that I’m ready to be lifted higher. And it also can indicate, “ ‘Hey! I got something to say. Hey! I got a testimony. Hey! Let me get a word in.’ And can I suggest that the genius of the Black Church is that we have not segmented those three realities–we can lift up our hands out of exasperation, we can lift up our hands out of exhaustion, we can lift up our hands out of pain, we can lift up our hands out of frustration. But we can also lift up our hands in worship and say, ‘I’m ready to go higher!’”

With these words, Bishop Moore taught those gathered together in person and the hundreds who watched his message via livestream that praying and protest, singing and strategizing–reverence for God and resistance to evil–are all bound up in the songs, the sermons, and the prayers of the Black gospel tradition. In a further nod toward the importance of this duality in Black sacred history, Bishop Moore went on to highlight this truth in relation to key figures in Black history, insisting: “The Black Church… can do both/and! James Varick and Richard Allen [founding leaders of the AMEZ and AME denominations, respectively] both worshiped and worked. Sojourner Truth both prayed and protested. Harriet Tubman both fled and fought. Frederick Douglass both advocated and agitated. James Walker Hood both preached sermons and started schools. Paul Robeson both gave concerts and confronted racism. Martin Luther King ministered from the pulpit and then took it to the streets. Coretta Scott King was both a minister of music and a mentor of youth.”

Near the end of his message, Bishop Moore returned to the book of Habakkuk, pointing to a striking feature of the text–a moment of inflection where the prophet, who was also a musician, establishes a new key, or musical setting, using the Hebrew term shigionoth. Moore likened this moment to the practice of “tuning up,” a concept central to Black preaching and gospel song. In so doing, he not only helped his listeners to better understand the text, but also created a moment of transcendence like that routinely produced within Black gospel–a moment of encounter, when the oppressive power this world seeks to enact has to give way to the force of another world. Bishop Moore went on to “tune up” in F, just as Habakkuk had “tuned up” in shigionoth in his third and final chapter. In this part of the Bishop’s message, scripture and song became nearly indistinguishable from one another. The enduring features of Black gospel, occasionally described as “sacred fire,” were thus reignited in the Divinity School’s Old Refectory. Click here to see an excerpt from this portion of Bishop Moore’s sermon. You can also watch the entire symposium here. 

View Bishop Moore’s sermon here at the 2 hour 37 minute mark.

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