African American Spirituality Research Articles

Textual Metafunction in The Choir Traditional Spiritual Song “Elijah Rock” By Moses Hogan

This research explores the textual metafunction of the choir song "Elijah Rock" by Moses Hogan through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), employing Suzanne Eggins' model of analysis. By examining the song's lyrical structure, the study aims to uncover how thematic organization, cohesion, and information flow contribute to the overall meaning and emotional impact of the piece. The analysis identifies key thematic elements, such as the recurring motif of "Elijah," as topical theme; the use of other topical themes such as: “come on”, “tell”, “comin’ up”, “Satan”; “He”; and “I”; the use of textual theme “if” and “Oh” highlights the extensive use of repetition and parallelism, which enhance textual coherence. Through a qualitative content analysis, the research demonstrates how linguistic features not only create a unified text but also resonate with the cultural and historical significance of African American spirituals. The findings reveal that the interplay between textual structure and musical expression plays a vital role in conveying the song's message and engaging audiences. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the intersection of linguistics and music, offering valuable insights for future research in both fields.

Demystifying African American Spirituality: Exploring the Measurement of Spirituality in the Context of Medical Decision-Making

Many African Americans experiencing serious illness rely on their faith or spirituality to navigate the complex systemic inequities of the United States healthcare system. Yet, African American patient's faith affirmations, beliefs, and spirituality are seldom explored or understood by their clinicians. Despite the urgent need to improve palliative care utilization by this underserved and understudied patient demographic, limited research has been performed to operationally define and quantify how religious belief and/or spirituality affect medical decision-making in African American patients. While a literature search for a tool to measure the concept of African American religiosity or spirituality in medical decision-making produced no results, this review examines three valid and reliable instruments, the DUREL, the RBEC, and the FACIT-Sp-12, that palliative care clinicians and researchers may adapt or supplement with Patient Centered Outcome Research developed items to investigate the influence of faith, spirituality, and religious belief in medical decision-making within the African American patient population.

“Let All the World in Every Corner Sing”

WikiProject Christian Hymns began as one individual’s involvement in a pilot project to test Wikidata as an identity management platform, but it has continued on as a standalone project to improve the coverage of global Christian hymnody in Wikidata and connect the resulting data to library resources. The complexity of hymnody creates challenges in the Wikidata environment, with tunes ranging from African American spirituals and medieval chant to contemporary Christian worship melodies and adaptations of folk music. The addition of texts from a variety of sources and languages increases the complexity. This paper describes the creation of the project, discusses the difficulties encountered in developing a data model, shows visualizations that explore various aspects of the data, and demonstrates connections with library resources while considering ongoing challenges.

Oh, Don’t You Want to Go? Preparing for the “Gospel Feast” of the African American Concert Spiritual

In recent years, Whites in many circles have been hesitant to present African American spirituals. This tendency is arguably the sign of something positive: not wanting to appropriate African American culture and therefore dishonor that repertoire and its heirs. This author, noticing this resistance, could only remember other Whites proclaiming that they should avoid singing spirituals. It seems that, in an attempt to honor this music, many Whites have done the very thing they try to avoid: depriving African Americans of having the final word in matters of their culture, in this case, usurping them as the gatekeepers of their own music. In choosing for themselves whether the singing of spirituals is offensive, in the opinion of this author, Whites have benignly exerted their own ubiquitous privilege. In this article, the quest of one white singer and choral conductor is documented, and all his sources are African American. This writing does not draw any ultimate conclusions about what is permissible regarding Whites singing spirituals, but offers ways to do honor to this musical trove based on readings of and conversations with African American performers and scholars.

Roots of Lorca’s Black Poetry in Van Vechten’s Vision of the African American Spiritual

Roots of Lorca’s Black Poetry in Van Vechten’s Vision of the African American Spiritual

Bookshelf

Debra Greschner reviews three recent publications. The Empowered Performer: The Musician’s Companion in Building Confidence and Conquering Performance Anxiety by Sharon Stohrer (Monee, IL: KDP, 2022) offers strategies for coping with performance anxiety. A Sketchbook Atlas of the Vocal Tract by Cheri Montgomery (Nashville, TN: S.T.M. Publishers, 2022) provides information about the articulatory process for lyric diction, and provides singers with guided practice on the subject. This is the Voice by John Colapinto (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021) is an overview of the human voice from myriad perspectives: evolutionary, personal, social, and cultural. Guest reviewer Gwendolyn Alfred recommends A New Perspective for the Use of Dialect in African American Spirituals: History, Context and Linguistics by Felicia Raphael Marie Barber (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021) as a useful guide for the study and performance of spirituals.

Civil War Song in Black and White: Print and the Representation of the Spirituals

This article explores how White writers wrote about African American spirituals during and after the Civil War. While these writers tended to view Black speech as deficient, they were willing to regard Black musical expression as simply different, paving the way for its eventual nationalization as “American music”. Noting that White writers were not in the habit of admitting the inadequacies of their preferred modes of representation, the article concludes that the print representation of the spirituals contributed to a transformation of what was meant by the word “American”.

On the Cover: Mary Had a Baby

On the CoverMary Had a Baby Stephen Towns Click for larger view View full resolution Natural and synthetic fabric, polyester and cotton thread, crystal glass beads. Courtesy of the artist. 47 × 36.75 in. 2020 Mary Had a Baby is from a series of story quilts called A Songbook Remembered. Ancestral music is at the heart of this series, a quilted collection of imagined historical narratives with imagery drawn directly from the poetry of African American spirituals. This work represents a deeply personal and emotional evolution within Towns’s quilting practice, as he turned to both spiritual music and the process of quilting as sources of comfort during the uncertainty of the covid-19 pandemic. Towns’s intricate stitchwork is guided by songs of joy, hope, resilience, and protest, and the creative process itself functioned, for the artist, as an act of remaining present in a time of chaos. Mary Had a Baby is inspired by the song that tells the biblical tale of how Mary conceived and raised Jesus to go on to do wonderful things. Te quilt draws from a plethora of portraits of Madonna and child works. In it, Madonna stares lovingly at her child who bears a red cross. Stephen Towns’s quilts can be seen in his traveling solo exhibition Declaration & Resistance at Reynolda House in Winston-Salem, NC from February 18 through May 14, 2023. Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press

“Natural” virtuosos: Paradoxical polysemy and the rhetoric of the Fisk Jubilee Singers

ABSTRACT This article examines the rhetoric of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the famous nineteenth-century choir whose domestic and international performances saved Fisk University from financial ruin, legitimized African American spirituals as high art, and offered a powerful argument for Black American citizenship during the post-Reconstruction era. While scholars have examined reactions to the choir's performances in the nineteenthcentury press, none have studied the organization's own discourse for insights into how the choir's white leaders positioned and promoted the troupe. In this essay, I recover their discourse by examining 35 extant concert programs that accompanied the Singers’ performances between 1871 and 1878. I argue that they work through a rhetorical move that I have termed paradoxical polysemy, a type of polysemy that emerges in contexts beset by ambivalence and navigates multiple, contradictory beliefs within a singular audience. Deploying appeals to the choir's “natural” musical talent that worked in two different registers, the programs negotiated white allies’ inconsistent beliefs about race, appealing both to their desire to help Black people and their wish to maintain white supremacy. Additionally, these dual appeals to the “natural” worked to help the Singers argue for the political and social inclusion of all Black Americans, regardless of their level of education.

Ecumenical and Traditioned Measurement: Measuring Christian Maturation Across Distinct Traditions of Christian Spirituality

The aim of this article is to explore some of the challenges of measuring Christian spiritual development across distinct traditions of Christian spirituality. This presses into questions of what might be universal and what might be particular when it comes to Christian spirituality in how it is understood and practiced. We address the feasibility of a general, ecumenical measure by hearing from representative voices of five traditions of Christian spirituality: African American spirituality, Anglican spirituality, Benedictine spirituality, Pentecostal spirituality, and Reformed spirituality. After noting some of the distinctives of these traditions, we conclude with four strategies for navigating the unity and diversity of Christian spirituality in conceptualizing and measuring Christian formation.

Devil Is Fine, Devil Is Kind: Slave Spirituals, Satanic Black Metal, and Cultural Appropriation in the Music of Zeal & Ardour

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between cultural appropriation, musical protest, and African American history, as foregrounded in the music of avant-garde metal band Zeal & Ardour. Under the leadership of mixed-race Swiss-American multi-instrumentalist Manuel Gagneux, the band gained prominence in 2016 for combining the influences of Satanism and Scandinavian black metal with African American spirituals and blues. Such a combination has allowed Zeal & Ardour to creatively engage the violence of African American historical experience and sonically and conceptually explore the possibilities of an alternative account of African American experience under the influence of individualism and self-determination as promoted in Satanic philosophies. This proposition becomes complicated, however, when the Satanic worldview espoused in Scandinavian black metal articulates not only an aggressive critique of Christianity, but also, in a number of instances, the promotion of white supremacist and national socialist worldviews. The resultant combination of these clashing influences is a complex interlinking of musical traditions and ideological positions through which Zeal & Ardour explores cultural appropriation as a form of protest, and ultimately embraces jarring juxtapositions and messy fusion as a necessary mode of artistic expression amid the racial tensions and culture wars of the early twenty-first century.

African American Spirituality, Grief & Mental Health: Seeking the Church After a Family Member’s Violent Death

African American Spirituality, Grief & Mental Health: Seeking the Church After a Family Member’s Violent Death

After the Protests Are Heard: Enacting Civic Engagement and Social Transformation by Sharon D. Welch (review)

After the Protests Are Heard: Enacting Civic Engagement and Social Transformation by Sharon D. Welch (review) Deborah J. Haynes After the Protests Are Heard: Enacting Civic Engagement and Social Transformation By Sharon D. Welch, New York University Press, 2019. Sharon D. Welch is a senior scholar who has lived her values both professionally and personally. This book is the fruition of a rich and productive life: nearly forty years teaching religion and ethics at several universities, including Harvard Divinity School, University of Missouri, and Meadville Lombard Theological Seminary; twelve years of serving in administrative capacities, including as department chair and provost; six books; thirty‐six published articles; and countless hours of public service for organizations and progressive non‐profits. Grounded in liberation theology and feminist ethics, After the Protests Are Heard traverses rich historical, theoretical, and practical territory. It is both visionary and pragmatic, presenting daunting challenges to meet lofty goals. Welch outlines the historical trajectory of movements for democratic and progressive social change. Theoretically, while remaining grounded in theological and ethical concerns, her work crosses disciplinary boundaries, ranging from political philosophy and sociology to African American spirituality and indigenous religions and cultures. Many evocative themes are discussed, including “the soul of democracy,” which is at risk in this time of exploitative capitalism, authoritarianism, and social regression; and “our Windigos,” seven intrinsic evils based on greed and isolation that are driving these political, social, and economic processes. While offering such powerful historical and theoretical analyses, Welch’s book is also pragmatic: She uses real‐world examples from businesses and non‐profits to highlight good work based on ethical values of reciprocity, generosity, and forgiveness. We get to know people at work in the world who want to foster change. Welch’s book can affect the way one approaches research and constructs teaching. In terms of research methods, Welch demonstrates skillful integration of historical, theoretical, and practical perspectives, alongside first‐person writing, hortatory messaging, interviews, and collaboration. In particular, her work with Reverend Lynda Sutherland concludes with a powerful “Just Living Passport” that is being used within the non‐profit sector and that is a fine resource for both undergraduate and graduate courses in theology and ethics. When I first read this “Passport,” I immediately began to muse about how to engage with others about its themes. Welch has a long history of working with the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, a group of universities and colleges that are committed to new pedagogical models. A fundamental goal of this work is creating mutually beneficial partnerships among faculty, students, and local communities to solve pressing social issues. Given the magnitude of our challenges, helping students undertake deep learning offers them a way not only to receive and grasp new information, but also to challenge preconceived notions behind prior patterns, assumptions, and convictions. Helping students, and all of us, to be wary of moral disengagement—ways that even decent human beings may commit and justify behaviors that we would otherwise consider morally abhorrent—is crucial (159). And not to fall prey to despair when we are strongly aware of both the magnitude of the social problems we face and simultaneously know that efforts to resolve them cannot measure up to the intensity of these issues is a worthy personal and pedagogical goal. As Welch put it so succinctly, “… our educational model is grounded in service, and grounded in insights from engaged Buddhism, Native American traditions, and feminist theory: we do not think ourselves into new ways of acting, but act ourselves into new ways of thinking and being” (162). For me, one of the most engaging, and too short, sections of this book concerns altermodernity and relational aesthetics. Coined by Nicolas Bourriaud in 2002, the term altermodern names “an emerging global formation, a shift in politics, aesthetics, and culture shaped equally by Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the West” (181). New intercultural connections are fueling both artistic and public projects; and Welch discusses public artist Theaster Gates’s work in Chicago, St. Louis, and elsewhere as an example of integrating issues of race, aesthetics, and ethics on the literal ground. Like other public and community artists, Gates embraces a “post‐studio” ethos, working alongside others...

Mapping a New Humanism in the 1940s: Thelma Johnson Streat between Dance and Painting

Thelma Johnson Streat is perhaps best known as the first African American woman to have work acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. However, in the 1940s–1950s she inhabited multiple coinciding roles: painter, performer, choreographer, cultural ethnographer, and folklore collector. As part of this expansive practice, her canvases display a peculiar movement and animacy while her dances transmit the restraint of the two-dimensional figure. Drawing from black feminist theoretical redefinitions of the human, this paper argues that Streat’s exploration of muralism, African American spirituals, Native Northwest Coast cultural production, and Yaqui Mexican-Indigenous folk music established a diasporic mapping forged through the coxtension of gesture and brushstroke. This transmedial work disorients colonial cartographies which were the products of displacement, conquest, and dispossession, aiding notions of a new humanism at mid-century.

The Wild Ones?

The Wild Ones? Christine Leigh Heyrman (bio) Brett Malcolm Grainger, Church in the Wild: Evangelicals in Antebellum America. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2019. 271 pp. Figures, notes, and index. $45.00 John Taylor dreaded that Satan would soon claim his prize. The young Virginian acknowledged the "justice in my condemnation," believing, as he did, that "God hated me before I was born." To hurry his drop into hell, Taylor started walking toward "a lonesome mountain" where he "intended to roam" for what remained of his "wretched life." There, on that "fatal mountain," he would meet his end either by suicide "or by other means best known to him who thus decreed." But during the climb, as he passed "under a high, overhanging rock," Taylor fell to his knees, overcome by the certainty that he deserved "this awful sentence." At that instant the thought flashed into his mind that "the great grace of Jesus Christ, had extended to cases desperate as mine." Glimpsing this mere possibility of redemption was enough: it "changed my resolution as to dying in the mountain." Taylor returned to his family's home on the far side of the Blue Ridge, and, after a long struggle "between hope and despair," he at last gained a fuller assurance of salvation. Taylor described that spiritual crisis, one which unfolded in the 1770s, in a memoir he composed toward the end of his long career as a Baptist minister in 1820s. "I believe I shall never forget the hanging rock while I live," he wrote, "nor even in heaven."1 The natural world loomed large in the memories of many other American evangelicals who strove for faith during the first half of the nineteenth century. They recalled signal events of their spiritual pilgrimages—the searing conviction of sinfulness, the wrenching recognition of God's justice in their damnation, and then the ecstatic release of conversion—in natural settings never to be forgotten. Those fields and forests, riverbanks and rocks became sacred spots to many believers, and the discovery of their fervid engagement with nature has inspired Brett Malcolm Grainger's Church in the Wild. So intense was the veneration of natural spaces, creatures, and objects among so many evangelicals, he finds, that some critics accused them of indulging in superstitions typically attributed to pagans, Native people, or Roman Catholics. [End Page 390] But for most believers—folks like John Taylor, who once wrestled with the temptation to pocket a piece of the tree stump used as a preaching stand by a beloved minister—the veneration of nature was "a tolerable idolatry"(p. 21). As Grainger persuasively demonstrates, early national and antebellum evangelicals, white and black, developed "a popular tradition of nature spirituality"(p. 62). Drawing on a richly diverse range of sources—sermons and journals, letters and poetry, African American spirituals and the shape-note hymnals popular at revival gatherings—he establishes that early nineteenth-century evangelicals of both races enjoyed a profound sense of the natural world as a site of spiritual power and presence. Theirs was "a shared culture of nature," and one that differed radically from the outlook of their contemporaries among deists and liberal Christians (p. 11). Steeped in enlightened learning, those rationalists looked to natural laws and intelligent design to know the mind of God. Evangelicals instead embraced an eclectic set of beliefs and practices unified by a commitment to what they called vital piety, a felt sense of a natural world shot through with the intuited presence of Jesus Christ. Spiritual landscapes such as field preaching, camp meetings, and river baptisms shaped their experiences of conversion. Some enslaved African Americans also took part in these rituals, but more met together in swamps, hollows, and woods, secluded hush harbors for secret praise meetings that syncretized elements from Protestant and West African religious systems. The practice of natural contemplation—meditation on the beauties of the world as a means of prayerful communication with Christ—also found favor among evangelicals, black and white. For some, spiritual awakening could transform the very appearance of the natural world, as their regenerate senses enabled new converts to perceive the immanent Christ in visible creation. Women won a reputation...

Невольничьи песни: особенности и скрытые смыслы афроамериканских спиричуэлс

The African American spiritual is one of the most significant forms of American folklore which have made lasting contributions to global culture. It is considered to have laid the groundwork for the musical genres such as gospel, blues and jazz. African Americans are largely the descendants of slaves who were taken from their African homelands by force to work on plantations in the American South. Coming from hundreds of different tribes, mainly from Western Africa, they brought with them rich West African musical traditions. Away from their roots and torn out of their own cultural heritage, they sought solace in music. It helped them remain hopeful and resilient during the most difficult times. Music was a way for slaves to express their feelings: longing for freedom and home, joy, sorrow. Spirituals were created as a result of the coexistence of African and European cultures. They represented a unique combination of various elements of Puritan hymns, Anglo-Celtic ballads, African folklore and performance style. The author analyzes several songs associated with the Underground Railroad and argues that Black spirituals were regarded not only as expressions of religious faith, but also as a veiled form of resistance. The article presents some results which illustrate that some of the lyrics had a double meaning and coded messages. Spirituals were the means by which slaves could protest against slavery, transmit secret messages and encourage the fight for freedom. The article covers the main themes of spirituals and defines the key characteristics of their origin and history.

Exploring the Heartbeat of the Black Family: Observations through the Lens of Endarkened Epistemology

BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 83, NO. 2 (EXTENDED DIGITAL VERSION) | 19 83 No.2 EXPLORING THE HEARTBEAT OF THE BLACK FAMILY: OBSERVATIONS THROUGH THE LENS OF ENDARKENED EPISTEMOLOGY By: María T. Colompos-Tohtsonie, Shanell L. Walter, and Karina Avila Introduction We are family—a “research family” and kindred souls. We are three scholars of color who are culturally, linguistically, and ethnically diverse (African American and Latina). As undergraduates, we participated in an “Endarkened Feminist Research Mentor Program” for 3.5 years. Throughout our research journey, we explored research frameworks such as (1) Constructivism, (2) Critical Race Theory, (3) Endarkened Feminism, (4) Positivism, and (5) Post-Positivism, as well as quantitative and qualitative research methods. Through the lens of endarkened epistemology, we conducted a mixed-methods research study titled “Borders, Bras, and Battles: Sociocultural Perspectives of Female Scholars of Color in ROTC.” Before graduating, we presented our research findings at conferences, published articles, and co-authored an award-winning book titled Borders, Bras and Battles: A Practical Guide to Mentor Undergraduate Women of Color to Achieve Career Success. The community of caring that we experienced with endarkened epistemology “sparked our genius” and kinship. Currently, we are in doctoral (Educational Leadership and Policy) and master’s (Public Policy and Administration) programs, and we continue our research collaborations. This collaboration is an article for the Black History Bulletin (BHB). The theme for this issue of the BHB is “The Black Family: Representation, Identity, and Diversity”—the 2021 Black History Theme. Because our undergraduate degrees include (1) History, (2) Sociology, and (3) Rehabilitative Services, we incorporate science, history, and sociology to explore the metaphoric heartbeat of the Black family. Additionally, we are including our graduate school programs by adding a splash of educational policy, public policy, and social justice in our observations. The Heartbeat and Arteries of the Black Family Scientists tell us that the heartbeat produces signals through arteries that one can detect using a variety of sensors characterized by the following three major factors: individual variants, environmental variants, and sensory variants.1 Metaphorically speaking, we can liken the individual variants of the “heartbeat” to the self-identity spectrum, emotional state, and cardiac state of African American family members.2 For example, the environmental variants that affect the heartbeat compare to socially constructed policies that hinder the growth of the Black family.3 Sensory variants of the heartbeat—again, metaphorically—might include physical deformations whereby contraction circulates blood through the vascular network of veins and arteries, which damages the overall health of the Black family. Understanding the individual, environmental, and sensory variants of the metaphorical heartbeat within the Black family may help recognize, with greater clarity, the racial, historical, and physiological adversities that formed and deformed the Black family’s cultural formation in the United States. We review these adversities through the lens of endarkened epistemology. 20 | BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 83, NO. 2 (EXTENDED DIGITAL VERSION) 83 No.2 Endarkened Epistemology Cynthia B. Dillard is the architect of endarkened epistemology, a way of knowing that could serve as a means for exploring the deeper levels of the so-called heartbeat of the Black family. Endarkened epistemology is defined as unmasking the traditionally oppressive political constructions and descriptions of sociocultural phenomena and relationships.4 Dillard is also the Mary Frances Early [endowed] Professor and Chair of the Educational Theory and Leadership Department at the University of Georgia, Athens. She was also “enstooled” as Nana Mansa II of Mpeasem, Ghana, West Africa. Her research interests include critical teacher education, spirituality in education, and African American feminist studies.5 When Dillard6 proposed endarkened feminist epistemology, she drew upon the strengths of several feminist and spiritual frameworks: Black feminist thought,7 feminist psychology and standpoint theory,8 the tenets of African American spirituality, and Parker J. Palmer’s9 work on spirituality in education. When describing her interpretation of this heartbeat of the Black family, Josephine Baker, the world renowned African American vocalist, dancer, and activist, vividly mapped the arteries of the Black family in America. Raised in poverty in the Midwest, Baker’s parents were unable to succeed in their respective artistic endeavors due to discriminatory working decrees. Baker was compelled to find jobs to...

“Bold and Ragged”: A Cross-Cultural Case for the Aesthetics of Melodic Angularity

Smaller corpora and individual pieces are compared to a large corpus of 2,447 hymns using two measures of melodic angularity: mean interval size and pivot frequency. European art music and West African melodies may exhibit extreme angularity. We argue in the latter that angularity is motivated by linguistic features of tone-level languages. We also found the mean interval sizes of African-American Spirituals and Southern Harmony exceed contemporary hymnody of the 19th century, with levels similar to Nigerian traditional music (Yorùbá oríkì and story songs from eastern Nigeria). This is consistent with the account of W. E. B. Du Bois, who argued that African melody was a primary source for the development of American music. The development of the American spiritual coincides with increasing interval size in 19th-century American hymnody at large, surpassing the same measure applied to earlier European hymns. Based on these findings, we recommend techniques of melodic construction taught by music theorists, especially preference rules for step-wise motion and gap-fill after leaps, be tempered with counterexamples that reflect broader musical aesthetics. This may be achieved by introducing popular music, African and African Diaspora music, and other non-Western music that may or may not be consistent with voice leading principles. There are also many examples from the European canon that are highly angular, like Händel’s “Hallelujah” and Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Although the tendency of textbooks is to reinforce melodic and part-writing prescriptions with conducive examples from the literature, new perspectives will better equip performers and educators for current music practice.

How successful African-American male leaders in predominately White Organizations integrate spirituality with leadership practice

Using Critical Race Theory, this article presents findings from a hermeneutic phenomenological study to explore the leadership experiences of five African-American men in senior-level positions in predominately White organizations (PWO) located in the U.S. This study will show that as a result of the intersectionality of race, gender, and religion, African-American male leaders encounter various challenges born out of White privilege expressed through racially insensitive micro-aggressions. A phenomenological interpretative analysis of participants’ semi-structured interviews concluded that African-American spirituality provided the self-determination and resiliency to transcend fluid racial narratives, ideologies, and discourse embedded in the culture of a PWO. Findings from this study broaden contemporary leadership theory taking into account the intersecting cultural dynamics and experiences of successful African-American male leaders who integrate spirituality into their leadership practice.

Spirituality and Well-Being in the Daily Lives of African American Women

Abstract Date Presented 04/04/19 The practice of spirituality is believed to be an essential and powerful force in the lives of African American women. Missing from the story of African American female spirituality is a deep understanding of the way that spirituality manifests in daily practices and the corresponding contribution to well-being. This qualitative research reveals the way in which spiritual experience, through the examination of the dynamics between decisions and actions, relates to a perception of well-being. Primary Author and Speaker: Clarissa Saunders-Newton