Tongues of Fire

Tongues of Fire is a collection of sermons and other writings by Black preachers that speak directly to lynching in the Jim Crow era. The collection, expertly edited and annotated by Aaron M. Treadwell, features more than forty pastors and fifty sermons. The sermons illuminate how Black churches, particularly the African Methodist Episcopal Church, stood at the forefront of antilynching efforts during the Nadir era as Black clergymen used their preaching to help protect their congregations from danger. Known as theological protectionism, this form of preaching sought to thwart or avert lynchings—and occasionally succeeded. Emphasizing radical, pious, or constitutional forms of theological protectionism, the sermons reveal yet another way that Black Americans fought back against the wave of extralegal executions that swept the nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The collection exposes an early development of African American resistance ideology—a concept that aligned with and perhaps ignited the long civil rights movement. Included are sermons that support the use of self-defense with firearms, the public shaming and condemnation of white churches, and reparation strategies that pinpoint lynching as a qualifier for federal aid. In their efforts to protect their congregations, preachers showed a willingness to utilize a theology that saw beyond the divinity of Christ to encompass his humanity as a fellow victim of lynching. Protection theology highlighted a symbiotic relationship in which serving a lynched deity could motivate Black people to, in the words of a Black hymnist, “make it over.”

In his introduction to each sermon, Treadwell explains and contextualizes the acts of racial caste violence that inspired these Black preachers. Tongues of Fire is the only book-length compilation of these vastly important yet understudied sermons, which reveal how Black churches fought against the scourge of lynching.