660 - Old Ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist Ritual in the African Diaspora

Old Ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist Ritual in the African Diaspora
By Walter F. Pitts
New York, Oxford University Press, 1993. 256 pp. $41.75.

Undoubtedly, this is the best book in print on African American worship in the Baptist and Methodist traditions, and it should be required reading for all seminary students, pastors, and others interested in gaining helpful analytical tools with which to understand this unique phenomenon. I am confident that all students of African American religion will be greatly indebted to Professor Pitts, both for his constructive analysis and his many valuable insights that permeate virtually every page of the book. Further, teachers of homiletics, worship, field education, history, and ethics will find this book a most valuable resource.

As anthropologist and musician, the author has employed the so-called participant-observer method to excellent advantage. In this very concise, readable book, one finds not only a splendid history of traditional African American worship but also an excellent sociolinguistic analysis of traditional African American preaching. Most important, Pitts describes the unique, sequential usage of three different types of English employed by the traditional African American preacher, namely, black English, seventeenth century English, and standard English.

Finally, the author provides much persuasive evidence to support his argument for structural continuity between traditional African religious ritual and various patterns of worship among Africans in the diaspora not only in the United States but also in the Carribean and Brazil. In every respect, this book is a major contribution to African and African American religious studies.

Peter J. Paris
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ.