Standing in the Need of Prayer
A Celebration of Black Prayer
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- £1.99
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- £1.99
Publisher Description
Striking photographs and powerful prayers drawn from the collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture span the broad spectrum of black religious traditions through the ages.
From the darkest days on slave ships to the defiant times of the Civil Rights Movement, prayer has embodied the most intense expression of African and African-American spirituality. As Mrs. Coretta Scott King writes in her foreword to Standing in the Need of Prayer, "It is said that every prayer is heard and every prayer is answered in some way [and] I still believe that the millions of prayers spoken by African Americans from the Middle Passage on down to today have been heard by a righteous and loving God." This extraordinary volume reflects the struggle, despair, determination, and triumph of the black experience during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Drawing from faiths as diverse as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Vodou, the book also includes prayers from some of history's most powerful voices, among them Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
At once beautiful and evocative, Standing in the Need of Prayer captures the most varied, striking, and powerful photographic and poetic expressions of prayer in a joyous celebration of the rich spiritual roots of a courageous people whose incredible spiritual journey will inspire generations to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This well-designed gift book pairs photographs and prayers to help readers understand the richness and diversity of African-American spirituality, including Muslim, Rastafarian, Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Voudou and Yoruba traditions. As Coretta Scott King points out in the foreword, the book's dedication to a wide range of faiths seems encapsulated by a 1964 photograph of her husband leading a prayer at their dinner table under an irenic portrait of his Hindu mentor, Gandhi. A helpful appendix provides information about the setting of many of the photographs: a Promise Keepers rally, a prison service, a Buddhist meditation gathering, a prayerful university protest from 1960. Most of the photos are memorable, and often cleverly parallel the quote chosen for the facing page. These short quotes are taken from prayers, novels, speeches, hymns, spirituals and sacred texts like the Bible and the Qur'an.