Costen Review African-American Christian Worship:

Costen Review

African-American Christian Worship: A Book Review

The United States emerged from its revolution for independence driven by a fabric of philosophical, spiritual and economic impulses which would ultimately shape a new way of life. A nation grew which at its core, professed to a deeply Christian identity, stitched explicitly into the language of a spiritually deferential Constitution, legal system and social culture. Such would be at odds then with the institution of slavery which, while beneficial to the economic well-being of white landowners, represented a serious moral crisis for the nation. In the midst of this crisis, America's identity trauma had given over to the same uncertainties in its religious structure, which in its variable endorsements and condemnations of slavery, suffered immensely in its endeavor to provide salvation and cohesive direction to its followers.

And yet, in their gravitation to its core principles of community, love and mercy, African-Americans have come to define a form of Christian worship which is distinct from that initial foisted upon them and, moreover, which has come to be of tremendous value to African-Americans through times of great historical suffering.

Melva Wilson Costen's highly regarded 1993 text, African-American Christian Worship, serves well to elucidate the value yielded from Christianity, illustrating that though the faith could be utilized as a terrible weapon in the fight against freedom, it could also provide hope, comfort and direction to the afflicted in the relative absence thereof.

The author's core purpose is captured in the opening of the text, which describes a unification of purpose for those African-American who are gathered together in the spirit of Christianity throughout the United States. Based on the understanding that the African-American experience is a unique historical perspective and recognizing that cultural characteristics have tended to shape many of the forms of worship there applied, Costen's text is informed by the purpose of describing an encompassing identity for the African-American Christian. To the point, Costen tells of the group selected for description, "first and foremost, they gather to offer thanks and praise to God in and through Jesus the Christ, and to be spiritually fed by the Word of God! In response to God's call and by God's grace, communities of faith gather to affirm God's providence and power." (13) This definition points to Costen's success in achieving her aims, most particularly in the regard that she identifies her selected group primarily and dominantly based upon their Christianity rather than their race. It is this type of nuance which distinguishes this work in a crowded discursive field, depicting a group that is culturally united by its shared experience in a racially biased society, by a common heritage in terms of approaches to worship and by collective community experiences but which is most importantly guided in Christ. These other factors, Costen contends with success, comprise a lens "which extends deep into the nurturing center of the African soil." (13) It is thus that Costen poetically paints a picture of an inherently spiritual and devout people channeling their faith in the diaspora. Costen more than adequately achieves the goal of defining a unique, beautiful and empowering culture encapsulated in the intercession of Christianity and African-American heritage.

One of the reasons that the text seemed to be so effective in achieving its aims was in its close emotional connection to the source material. The author writes both with a scholarship and a passion that denote a very clear sense of faith and racial identity, with pride and understanding permeating both. The appeal to biblical scripture for instance is uniquely interwoven with a lucid discussion on the history of the African-American people, from slavery through to the post-Civil Rights Era.

It is in this approach, in fact, that Costen offers the greatest comfort to the devout among this text's readers, endorsing the centricity of community and asserting that "our presence in God's space frees us to be hospitable and open to welcome others. After all, the kindred of Jesus transcends natural (blood) ties of any human family, or those relationships that are already familiar (see mat. 12:46-50; Mark 3:31-35; Luke 8:19-21)." (92) The employ here of scriptural terminology is indicative of a true appeal to the word of Christ in attempting to define the ethos of the uniquely African-American branch of worship. Another unique quality in the text is its appeal to the idea of describing African-American worship not just with respect to the musical praise traditions, the adoption of Pentecostal revivalism, the employ of lyrically masterful biblical oration or even racial isolation in places of worship but more than that, with respect to the way that Christian African-American live in their communities, within their families, within their neighborly and friendly relationships and with themselves.