E-grāmata: Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa

Songs of Zion focuses on the African Methodist Episcopal Church, black America's oldest and largest independent church.
Campbell charts the origins and evolution of African American independent churches, arguing that the very act of becoming Christian forced black Americans to reflect on their relationship to their ancestral continent. The book then turns to South Africa, examining the AME Church's entrance and evolution in a series of specific African contexts. The final third of the book is devoted to what Campbell calls "middle passages," to the careers of men and women who moved between South Africa and the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Throughout the book, Campbell focuses on the comparisons that Africans and African Americans themselves drew between their situations, arguing that the transatlantic encounter enabled both groups to understand and act upon their worlds in new ways.

This is a study of the transplantation of a creed devised by and for African Americans--the African Methodist Episcopal Church--that was appropriated and transformed in a variety of South African contexts. Focusing on a transatlantic institution like the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the book studies the complex human and intellectual traffic that has bound African American and South African experience. It explores the development and growth of the African Methodist Episcopal Church both in South Africa and America, and the interaction between the two churches. This is a highly innovative work of comparative and religious history. Its linking of the United States and African black religious experiences is unique and makes it appealing to readers interested in religious history and black experience in both the United States and South Africa.