Overcome: Rite, Liturgy & Songs

The Overcome

“The Rev. Dr, Peter Bramble, a black Episcopalian of Baltimore, has written a proposed ritual he calls “The Overcome”, a liturgy of black remembrance modeled on the Jewish Passover. The awesome history of the passage since capture in Africa, invites comparison with the Hebrew exodus and even the Holocaust. Instead of recoiling from the hypercharged distinctions on both sides, scholars might do well to follow the lead of Father Bramble and of Julius Lester...”
Taylor Branch, 1988 Pulitzer Prize Winner,
in New York Times book Review Section,
January 14, 1990


“Central to Dr. Bramble’s concept is the notion that Black people are inherently over-comers who triumph over adversity because they have a propensity for greatness. He acknowledges the tremendous problems facing the Black community, but Overcome...institutionalizes a core concept that Blacks have prevailed over their worst days of oppression, but have not realized it because there is no watershed date or ceremony commemorating that moment of triumph...the Black community has long needed a common story that the entire group could share and use to instill a sense of nationhood in both adults and children.”
R. B. Jones, Editor, Baltimore Times.

“... the book belongs to the general genre of black liberation theology. It is original in conceptualization and thesis...Overcome and liberation when fully understood are present tense positions with a moral imperative to act and to bring to birth...this is not a run of the mill book on religion or a sermon that one can sleep through. Bramble’s basic position is rooted in linguistic philosophy and the work of Gilbert Ryle, in particular, for whom the logical grammar of certain words and concepts has direct implications for the actions they impel.”
Howard Fergus, Ph.D. University of The West Indies.

The Rev. Dr. Bramble is rector of
St. Katherine of Alexandria Episcopa
Church in Baltimore, Maryland