Advent Study: Spirituals

During Advent, we have been studying some African-American spirituals with Christmas themes. Our guide for this study has been a book by Cheryl Kirk-Duggan entitled Mary Had a Baby.


Kirk-Duggan makes the point that spirituals combine African aesthetics, Afro-American spirituality, European Christian vocabulary and musical influence, and values formed out of the experience of slavery.


As we study each spiritual, we discover rich layers:

historical context

multi-layered texts

creative musical qualities

and spiritual relevance to our contemporary lives.