. . . . this study serves as an important contribution in the study of preaching and should be a welcome addition to the libraries of those interested in religion, homiletics, African American history, and activism.

Reading Religion

In this excellent book, Wayne Croft extensively researched “Hope” in black scholarship, in slave preaching pre-emancipation (1800-1864), and in Post-Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson (1865-1896). . . . Croft presses for, “Hope.” Today, amidst re-segregation, racial injustice, and income inequality, we hunger for hope in seemingly hopeless times. We need the courage to claim the freedom we have to gather and publicly proclaim God’s message of Christ’s freedom from oppression. This book should be in many libraries to be accessible for those preparing become not only black but also white preachers.

Currents In Theology and Mission

African American poets, playwrights, protest leaders, and music producers have all addressed the need for and sometimes the absence of hope among African Americans from one generation to the next. In this new book Wayne Croft documents the ways by which African American preachers and religious scholars have added their voices and their energies to the search for hope during the dark days of slavery and the decades that followed. Thank God for those preachers who sought hope in options that ranged from escaping from slavery to slave rebellions, and from seeking hope in this world to looking with hope to the life beyond death. Croft brings to life the words associated with Jesse Jackson that the preacher's job was and is to "keep hope alive."

Marvin A. McMickle, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School

We live in a world where hope is in high demand and where it is often missing. In this book, Dr. Wayne Croft mines African American history to bring hope to the forefront for preachers and readers by examining the motif of hope in black scholarship and preaching. A great addition to your library and for your preaching.

Karyn Wiseman, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

It has long been a trope of African American theological history that while slave religion focused on liberation, the post-Civil War Black Church focused on getting to heaven. Croft brings much needed nuance to the study of these periods by demonstrating that African American preachers in both proclaimed hope for life in this world and the next. Indeed, the nineteenth century homiletical case studies Croft examines serve as a model for preachers offering hearers a “bright side” today.

O. Wesley Allen, Southern Methodist University

The vital role hope plays in African American preaching achieves comprehensive description in Wayne Croft's treatment of a preaching tradition that refuses to name despair as life's final word.
Tracing hope's abiding presence from soul-depleting slave quarters to legal emancipation, in a learned and insightful manner, Wayne Croft gets at the inner workings of a theo-rhetorical tradition that has birthed a legion of poets, prophets, sages, priests, and academics and enlarges the historical canon of Black homiletical scholarship.

Kenyatta R. Gilbert, professor of homiletics, Howard University School of Divinity