163 - "With Bleeding Footsteps": Mary Baker Eddy's Path to Religious Leadership

African American Christian Worship
Melva Wilson Costen
Nashville, Abingdon, 1993. 160 pages. $12.95.

Melva Costen's long-awaited book integrates important scholarship, study, and travel in Africa with the author's life-long experience of African American worship to illuminate a subject that, traditionally, has not been a matter "for discussion or theological discourse for African Americans."

Eight clearly-written chapters consider broad concepts of theology, history, and practices of African American Christian worship. Each chapter concludes with several questions for discussion. At the same time, this book provides lucid and rare descriptions of specific practices such as metered hymns, ring shouts, wandering choruses, and the various categories of gospel music.

The author's skills in cross-cultural interpretation complement her knowledge and experience of the variety of worship practices among African Americans. The reader is helped to see history's important role in shaping religious practices, which are understood to incorporate all of life's experiences, and the predominantly vocal and physical nature of African American worship is afforded theological perspective.

Carol Doran
The Divinity School
Rochester, NY.