The Hip-Hop Church

The Hip-Hop Church
Author: Efrem Smith
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2012-04-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830869727

Hip-hop is here. The beats ring out in our cities. Hip-hop culture is all around us: in the clothes youth wear, in the music they listen to, in the ways they express themselves. It is the language they speak, the rhythm they move to. It is a culture familiar with the hard realities of our broken world; the generation raised with rap knows about the pain. They need to know about the hope. Enter the hip-hop church. Like the culture it rises from, the hip-hop church is relevant and bold. And it speaks to the heart. In this book, pastors Efrem Smith and Phil Jackson show the urgency of connecting hip-hop culture and church to reach a generation with the gospel of Jesus Christ. They give practical ideas from their urban churches and other hip-hop churches about how to engage and incorporate rap, break dancing, poetry and deejays to worship Jesus and preach his Word. Hip-hop culture is shaping the next generation. Ignoring it will not reduce its influence; it will only separate us from the youth moving to its rhythm. How will they hear Christ's message of truth and hope if we don't speak their language? And how can we speak their language if we don't understand and embrace their culture? Hear the beat. Join the beat. Become the beat that brings truth and hope to a hungry, hurting generation.

The Black Church and Hip Hop Culture

The Black Church and Hip Hop Culture
Author: Emmett G. Price
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2011-11-10
Genre: Music
ISBN: 081088237X

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Black Church stood as the stronghold of the Black Community, fighting for equality and economic self-sufficiency and challenging its body to be self-determined and self-aware. Hip Hop Culture grew from disenfranchised urban youth who felt that they had no support system or resources. Impassioned with the same urgent desires for survival and hope that their parents and grandparents had carried, these youth forged their way from the bottom of America’s belly one rhyme at a time. For many young people, Hip Hop Culture is a supplement, or even an alternative, to the weekly dose of Sunday-morning faith. In this collection of provocative essays, leading thinkers, preachers, and scholars from around the country confront both the Black Church and the Hip Hop Generation to realize their shared responsibilities to one another and the greater society. Arranged into three sections, this volume addresses key issues in the debate between two of the most significant institutions of Black Culture. The first part, “From Civil Rights to Hip Hop,” explores the transition from one generation to another through the transmission—or lack thereof—of legacy and heritage. Part II, “Hip Hop Culture and the Black Church in Dialogue,” explores the numerous ways in which the conversation is already occurring—from sermons to theoretical examinations and spiritual ponderings. Part III, “Gospel Rap, Holy Hip Hop, and the Hip Hop Matrix,” clarifies the perspectives and insights of practitioners, scholars, and activists who explore various expressions of faith and the diversity of locations where these expressions take place. In The Black Church and Hip Hop Culture, pastors, ministers, theologians, educators, and laypersons wrestle with the duties of providing timely commentary, critical analysis, and in some cases practical strategies toward forgiveness, healing, restoration, and reconciliation. With inspiring reflections and empowering discourse, this collection demonstrates why and how the Black Church must re-engage in the lives of those who comprise the Hip Hop Generation.

Wake Up

Wake Up
Author: Rev. Marlon F. Hall
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1426731140

First an expression of black urban youth, Hip Hop music continues to expand as a cultural expression of youth and, now, young adults more generally. As a cultural phenomenon, it has even become integral to the worship experience of a growing number of churches who are reaching out to these groups. This includes not just African American churches but churches of all ethnic groups. Once seen as advocating violence, Hip Hop can be the Church’s agent of salvation and praise to transform society and reach youth and young adults in greater numbers. After looking at Hip Hop’s socio-historical context including its African roots, Wake Up shows how Hip Hop has come to embody the worldview of growing numbers of youth and young adults in today’s church. The authors make the case that Hip Hop represents the angst and hope of many youth and young adults and that by examining the inherent religious themes embedded in the music, the church can help shape the culture of hip-hop by changing its own forms of preaching and worship so that it can more effectively offer a message of repentance and liberation.

Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels

Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels
Author: Christina Zanfagna
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2017-08-29
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0520296206

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In the 1990s, Los Angeles was home to numerous radical social and environmental eruptions. In the face of several major earthquakes and floods, riots and economic insecurity, police brutality and mass incarceration, some young black Angelenos turned to holy hip hop—a movement merging Christianity and hip hop culture—to “save” themselves and the city. Converting street corners to open-air churches and gangsta rap beats into anthems of praise, holy hip hoppers used gospel rap to navigate complicated social and spiritual realities and to transform the Southland’s fractured terrains into musical Zions. Armed with beats, rhymes, and bibles, they journeyed through black Lutheran congregations, prison ministries, African churches, reggae dancehalls, hip hop clubs, Nation of Islam meetings, and Black Lives Matter marches. Zanfagna’s fascinating ethnography provides a contemporary and unique view of black LA, offering a much-needed perspective on how music and religion intertwine in people's everyday experiences.

The Soul of Hip Hop

The Soul of Hip Hop
Author: Daniel White Hodge
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2010-08-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830861289

What is Hip Hop? Hip hop speaks in a voice that is sometimes gruff, sometimes enraged, sometimes despairing, sometimes hopeful. Hip hop is the voice of forgotten streets laying claim to the high life of rims and timbs and threads and bling. Hip hop speaks in the muddled language of would-be prophets--mocking the architects of the status quo and stumbling in the dark toward a blurred vision of a world made right. What is hip hop? It's a cultural movement with a traceable theological center. Daniel White Hodge follows the tracks of hip-hop theology and offers a path from its center to the cross, where Jesus speaks truth.

Networking the Black Church

Networking the Black Church
Author: Erika D. Gault
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1479805866

Provides a timely portrait of young Black Christians and how digital technology is transforming the Black Church They stand at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement, push the boundaries of the Black Church through online expression of Christian hip hop, and redefine what it means to be young, Black, and Christian in America. Young Black adults represent the future of African American religiosity, yet little is known regarding their religious lives beyond the Black Church. Networking the Black Church explores how deeply embedded digital technology is in the lives of young Black Christians, offering a first-of-its-kind digital-hip hop ethnography. Erika D. Gault argues that a new religious ethos has emerged among young adult Blacks in America. To understand Black Christianity today it is not enough to look at the traditional Black Church. The Black Church is itself being changed by what she calls digital Black Christians. The volume examines the ways in which Christian hip hop artists who have adopted Black-preaching-inspired spoken word performances create alternate kinds of Christian communities both inside and outside the walls of traditional Black churches. Framed around interviews with prominent Black Christian hip hop artists, it explores the multiple ways that digital Black Christians construct religious identity and meaning through video-sharing and social media. In the process, these digital Black Christians are changing Black churches as institutions, transforming modes of religious activism, inventing new communication practices around evangelism and Christian identity, and streamlining the accessibility of Black Church cultural practices in popular culture. Erika D. Gault provides a fascinating portrait of young Black faith, illuminating how the relationship between religion and digital media is changing the lived experiences of a new generation of Black Christians.

Hip-Hop Redemption

Hip-Hop Redemption
Author: Ralph Basui Watkins
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2011-10
Genre: Music
ISBN: 080103311X

A sociologist and pop-culture expert offers a balanced engagement of hip-hop and rap music, showing God's presence in the music and the message.

I Pastor Hip Hop

I Pastor Hip Hop
Author: Stacey Jones
Publisher:
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2018-07-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781723182259

My dichotomy between Hip-Hop and the Church has appeared a conflict to many, but to me, it never has been. At the same time that I was falling in love with Hip-Hop, I was immersed and in love with the church. My introduction into Christianity is from the Black Pentecostal Tradition (Church of God in Christ). My life was quite busy as a young person; I played drums, sang lead in the junior choir, and attended Sunday school and Young People Willing Workers (YPWW). I had a strong love for both cultures, but I was told by the church that one could not mesh or intertwine Hip-Hop and the church, and so the lifelong conflict begins! Like many of our religious forefathers on western soil, we continue to shut out different forms of expression due to the fear of becoming "too worldly". Have we ever stopped to think that the issue is even deeper? Some of us want to control the move of God because it doesn't fit into our structure or programmed liturgy! However, during the early inception of Hip-Hop culture, people thought it was absurd and sacrilegious if Hip-Hop shared the stage and the microphone with the Church. Due to the church's rejection of Hip-Hop, the younger people from my generation started to develop a contempt towards people within the Christian Faith community. This contempt brought an even stronger divide, and it seemed as though this separation continued to perpetuate. Part of it has to do with the generational divide and the methodology.

Jesus and the Hip-hop Prophets

Jesus and the Hip-hop Prophets
Author: Alex Gee
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780830832347

John Teter and Alex Gee invite you to explore the world of Lauryn Hill, Tupac Shakur and the "hip-hop prophets"--following their lyrical messages to ultimate fulfillment at the feet of the Prophet-King Jesus.

Political Melodies in the Pews?

Political Melodies in the Pews?
Author: David L. Moody
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2012-09-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0739172379

The book explores the views that Christian theology is a theology of liberation and by means of this spiritual deliverance, an innovative, yet, revolutionary voice (Gospel hip hop) has emerged from the pews of the Sunday morning worship hour in the Black church. It is the author’s contention that the emergence of Christian hip hop based ministries has taken on the role of a new liberating theological theme among youth within the Black community.