Networking the Black Church: Digital Black Christians and Hip Hop

Young Black Christians are at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement, pushing the boundaries of the Black Church through online expression of Christian hip-hop, and redefining what it means to be young, Black, and Christian in America. Networking the Black Church explores how deeply embedded digital technology is in the lives of young Black Christians, offering a first-of-its-kind digital-hip-hop ethnography. It argues that a new religious ethos has emerged among young adult Blacks in America, and that digital Black Christians are changing Black churches as institutions, transforming modes of religious activism, inventing new communication practices, and streamlining the accessibility of Black Church cultural practices in popular culture.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 18 January 2022
Publisher: New York University Press

Provides a timely portrait of young Black Christians and how digital technology is transforming the Black Church.

They stand at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement, push the boundaries of the Black Church through online expression of Christian hip-hop, and redefine what it means to be young, Black, and Christian in America.

Young Black adults represent the future of African American religiosity, yet little is known regarding their religious lives beyond the Black Church.

Networking the Black Church explores how deeply embedded digital technology is in the lives of young Black Christians, offering a first-of-its-kind digital-hip-hop ethnography.

Erika D. Gault argues that a new religious ethos has emerged among young adult Blacks in America. To understand Black Christianity today, it is not enough to look at the traditional Black Church. The Black Church is itself being changed by what she calls digital Black Christians.

The volume examines the ways in which Christian hip-hop artists who have adopted Black-preaching-inspired spoken word performances create alternate kinds of Christian communities both inside and outside the walls of traditional Black churches.

Framed around interviews with prominent Black Christian hip-hop artists, it explores the multiple ways that digital Black Christians construct religious identity and meaning through video-sharing and social media.

In the process, these digital Black Christians are changing Black churches as institutions, transforming modes of religious activism, inventing new communication practices around evangelism and Christian identity, and streamlining the accessibility of Black Church cultural practices in popular culture.

Erika D. Gault provides a fascinating portrait of young Black faith, illuminating how digital technology is shaping the future of Black Christianity.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781479805815