Finding God in All the Black Places

BERETTA E. SMITH-SHOMADE is a professor in film and media at Emory University in Atlanta. She is the author of Shaded Lives: African-American Women and Television (Rutgers University Press, 2002) and Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Selling Black Entertainment Television. She has also edited two anthologies: Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences (Rutgers University Press, 2013)—a Choice Outstanding Academic Title—and its remix, Watching While Black Rebooted! The Television and Digitality of Black Audiences (Rutgers University Press, 2023).        

THE PROGRAM
CALL TO WORSHIP: God Is...Understanding Spirituality as the Sine Qua Non of Black Popular Culture
INVOCATION: God Is Trying to Tell You Something: Calling Up the Mediated Black Past
PROCESSIONAL: Jesus and Hennessy Go Good Together: Sacralizing the Secular
PRAYER OF CONFESSION: As for Me and My House…Spike Lee’s Negotiation with Christianity as a Sign of Blackness
TESTIMONY: I Got a Testimony: Sistah Blackacademics and God
PRAISE BREAK: Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance All Night! Mediated Audiences and Black Women’s Spirituality
TITHES & OFFERING: I’mma Be Stupid Rich!: Millennials and the Holy Grail of Tech Salvation
PASSING OF THE PEACE: Don’t Play with God! Black Church, Fun and Possibilities
SELECTION: Never Losing Its Power: (Re)Visioning the Roots and Routes of Black Spirituality
MESSAGE: Urgent Like a Mofo: The Sublime Synergy of Sexuality in Black Music Culture
THE INVITATION: I Shall Wear a Crown: Black Oprah the Savificent
BENEDICTION: But God (reflection)