Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World (Paper)

"The son of a great preacher called to lead Chicago's historic Trinity United Church of Christ, the Reverend Dr. Otis Moss III has long had the homiletic arts coursing through his veins. With the publication of his Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale, he brings his full imaginative gifts to bear in calling on the world to reject the easy, self-satisfied pietism of Sunday morning for a 'Blues sensibility,' steeped in the history of a Blues people, viewing life from 'the underside' as a struggle all week long. Urging us to meet children of the Hip-Hop generation where they are, Moss draws on a rich cultural legacy, from the griots of West Africa to the poets, playwrights, and performers of the Diaspora, to teach us that transformation can be found only in courageously encountering the suffering that has marked our journey from Calvary through the Middle Passage, to the cotton fields, to the troubled city streets of today. Blue Note Preaching is preaching and reading at its most profound, reconnecting us to those lights of the past who led movements out of the wilderness not by talking down but by lifting up every voice heard between the 'blues moan' and the 'gospel shout.'"
—Henry Louis Gates Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University