Honoring the ancestors : an African cultural interpretation of Black religion and literature / Donald H. Matthews.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Chicago.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-167) and index.

Using "The Negro Spiritual" as a source material, this volume analyzes the methods employed by social scientists, historians and literary critics in studying African-American religion, and makes its own theological statement regarding African-American religion.

Donald Matthews affirms once and for all the African foundation of African-American religious practice. Because the Negro spiritual is the earliest extant body of African-American folk religious narration, Matthews believes that it holds the key to understanding African-American religion. He explores the works of such seminal black scholars as W.E.B. DuBois, Melville Herskovits, and Zora Neale Hurston, tracing the early development of the African-centered approach to the interpretation of African-American religion.

This book poses a challenge to end the battle between Afrocentrists and multiculturalists by acknowledging their common intellectual heritage in the works of DuBois, Herskovits, and Hurston. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of African-American religion and culture and those interested in Afrocentric literature.

Interpretation and the African American situation -- Cultural contact and cultural space: the dialectics of negation and resistance -- A theology of the spirituals: the spirituals as postmodern discourse -- Black literary criticism and narrative hermeneutics -- An analysis of All God's dangers based on the spirituals -- The spirituals: an African cultural narrative theology.

Print version record.

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