Historic Negro Spirituals as Biblical Interpretation

Dr. Christa K. Dixon [1935 - 2003] grew up during the time of World War 2, where her father, a German Confessing Church pastor, regularly visited American POW camps, and young Christa heard African-American soldiers singing spirituals. Her fascination grew, but Dixon’s interests became quite focused on her interest in how the famous spirituals interpreted the Bible. In the mid-1960s, Dr. Dixon earned her PhD working on ＂Negro Spirituals＂ in Germany and published the text that formed from her years of research and long-lasting passion for the spirituals she heard during her visits to the prisoner camps with her father. A work of careful analysis and scholarship, Dixon’s study has since been out of print, but now newly translated and presented for an audience to rediscover. In John Lovell’s important 1972 monograph, Black Song: The Forge and Flame, he wrote, ＂...Perhaps the most intensive study of Biblical influences in the spiritual is found in Christa Dixon’s Wesen und Wandel geistlicher Volkslieder Negro Spirituals...her analyses are not only deeply intensive but quite creative...＂. In this book, Dr. Kim R. Harris and Dr. Daniel L. Smith-Christopher provide not only a translation of the published German work, but also contribute two new essays to accompany this timeless study as both modern critique and long overdue appreciation.

Kim R. Harris is associate professor of African American religious thought and practice in the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University.

Daniel L. Smith-Christopher is professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Loyola Marymount University.