Mr. John Maxie Bell, the author and guest conductor-clinician for this book/workshop/worship service, is a native Houstonian. Mr. Bell received his formal education from the Houston Public Schools. His early musical training from the late Mrs. Helen K. Woods inspired him to pursue his musical talents while receiving his formal education. The late Ms Mattie E. Thomas and Mrs Joise B. James along with Ms. Mary J. James and Rosetta Burks all who were church musicians at the Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. Also the late Roi Leeland Hopkins who inspired him to write about church music because of his phrase”I could write a book about the church music departments in the black church. The artist holds a B.S. degree and M.Ed. (Educational Administration)degree from Texas Southern University. While attending Texas Southern University Mr. Bell studied piano with Mrs. Thelma O. Bell and studied voice with Mrs. Ruth Schmoll for three years. Mr. Bell successfully attended the Harvard Principal Academy Institute in 1993. Mr. Bell studied church music at University of Houston in the mid 1990’s. In 2011 Mr. Bell became a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars- Phi Theta Kappa chapter at Houston Community College while pursuing a music degree at Texas Southern University. Mr. Bell sang with the Houston Symphnoy Chorale for two seasons under the direction of Mrs. Virginia Babikian, and Dr. Charles Hauseman during the early 1990’s. Mr. Bell taught for over twenty-five and has been an elementary classroom teacher, music teacher, Chapter I Coordinator, Assistant Principal and Principal all in the Houston Independent School District. Currently is Director of Bel-Lin's Music Studio in Houston, Texas. Mr. Bell’s avocation and passion for church music has been around four decades where he has served in the Houston and neighboring communities, and frequently serves as musical consultant for local, state and regional religious and civic organizations. He also is the author of an semi-autobiography about growing up in Houston entitled Kid’s Can’t Be Kids Anymore. He has recorded two CD recordings of inspirational music. He has composed one major religious easter cantata work entitled ‘Hear The Word of The Lord' premeire ecumenical performance in 1987 at the Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Church-Houston, Texas and in 1992 at the Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church-Houston. He also is the composer of many songs sung in the black worship service. His favorite and most well-liked is The Lord Is My Shepherd. He has sung with the Houston Symphony Chorale-Chorus under the direction of the late Virgina Babikian and Dr. Charles Hauseman. He received the National Reading is Fundamental Award...Leaders in Literacy Award in 1994 in Houston, Texas. Those who know the author have often described him as being very talented, inquisitive, very ambitious, a computer whiz-enthuiast, an outgoing fellow, very diligent, and energetic. He always wears an incesasant smile, is quite humorous, and is always willing to help others whenever he can. He is very versatile. Mrs. Elnoir Walton of Houston, Texas, says of Mr. Bell, "the author presents himself as a Christian person who has the love of God in him and reflects this in his conversation and actions. He has a pleasing personality that everyone who is around him enjoys." The author is married to the former Linda Joyce Fuller of Houston, Texas, and is the father of RaKeisha Monet’(Son-Inlaw Cedric) and John (II)Jr.. They reside in Southeast Houston. Mr. Bell enjoys several hobbies for both relaxation and inspiration; they are oil painting, cooking, reading, socializing, and traveling. Some of his future aspirations are to have a showing of his oil paintings, to publish a piano course book, and to establish an urban music academy, utilizing some of the latest developments in the music wor

The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.

Readings in African American Church Music and Worship features important articles and essays on music and worship written by some of the most influential voices of the past century, including W. E. B. DuBois, Wendell P. Whalum, V. Michael McKay, Wyatt Tee Walker, J. Wendell Mapson Jr., and others.

Examines different genres of African American sacred music of the twentieth century, emphasizing the role migration of blacks in the United States played in nurturing and spreading the evolution of gospel music.

Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities. In The Black Church in the African American Experience, based on a ten-year study, is the largest nongovernmental study of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study on the subject since the 1930s. Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive historical overview of seven mainline black denominations, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya present an analysis of the Black Church as it relates to the history of African Americans and to contemporary black culture. In examining both the internal structure of the Church and the reactions of the Church to external, societal changes, the authors provide important insights into the Church’s relationship to politics, economics, women, youth, and music. Among other topics, Lincoln and Mamiya discuss the attitude of the clergy toward women pastors, the reaction of the Church to the civil rights movement, the attempts of the Church to involve young people, the impact of the black consciousness movement and Black Liberation Theology and clergy, and trends that will define the Black Church well into the next century. This study is complete with a comprehensive bibliography of literature on the black experience in religion. Funding for the ten-year survey was made possible by the Lilly Endowment and the Ford Foundation.

Music has been at the heart of Christian worship since the beginning, and this lavishly illustrated and wonderfully written volume fully surveys the many centuries of creative Christian musical experimentation. From its roots in Jewish and Hellenistic music, through the rich tapestry of medieval chant to the full flowering of Christian music in the centuries after the Reformation and the many musical expressions of a now-global Christianity, Wilson-Dickson conveys 'a glimpse of the fecundity of imagination with which humanity has responded to the creator God.' Book jacket.

From Africa through the spirituals, from minstrel music through jubilee, and from traditional to contemporary gospel, "People Get Ready!" provides, for the first time, an accessible overview of this musical genre.