Danté Stewart - Shoutin in the Fire: An American Epistle

A revelationGod bless Dant Stewart for telling the truth. By confessing how he was himself captivated by the lies of Americanity, he highlights the gift of the Black Pentecostal tradition that we share.

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, author of The ThirdReconstruction and We Are Called to Be a Movement

Some of us joke about Jesus needing better PR than what todays evangelical church provides. Enter Dant Stewart. With unparalleled candor, vulnerability, and love, Stewart takes us along his personal journey to understanding what it is to be Black, Christian, and American. The church is long overdue for a reckoning with white supremacy, and Stewart has written a brilliant blueprint.

Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

Standing in a centuries-old tradition of spiritual autobiography, Shoutin in the Fire is at once a coming-of-age story and a conversion narrative. From Pentecostal origins, he travels through institutions that hold on to an idea of white Jesus, and finally to a spiritual reckoning in which he recognizes Black life to be not only valuable but holy. I highly recommend this book.

Imani Perry, Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of Breathe: A Letter to My Sons

Shoutin in the Fire is Stewarts debut as both a great spiritual writer and an interpreter of Americas greatest source of practical wisdomthe Black-led freedom movement.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author of Revolution of Values

Only once in a lifetime do we come across a writer like Dant Stewart, so young and yet so masterful with the pen. This work, this Shoutin in the Fire, is a thing to make dungeons shake and hearts thunder. Each line is packed with such glowing wisdom and grounding love that it makes the eyes tear and the hair raise on the backs of necks. It has the lyrical prowess of a good sermon, yes, but the rhythm is entirely ancestral, like it was conveyed by our departed elders from their intimate prayer circles. What is most striking is Stewarts commitment to truth-telling in the Black Christian liberation tradition, which is indeed remarkable given how others who refer to themselves as such eschew truth for the warm embrace of dogma. That, in itself, is what makes Shoutin in the Fire tongue-speak, hosanna, holy, the kind of clarion call that would make Maya Angelou hoot and James Baldwin holler.

Robert Jones, Jr., New York Times bestselling author of The Prophets

Dant Stewart has given us a generational gift. With compelling storytelling, beautiful writing, and incisive, prophetic insight, he gives us a vision of a world that longs to burst forth if we had ears to hear.

Rich Villodas, lead pastor of New Life Fellowship and author of The Deeply Formed Life

Extraordinarya moving wake-up call to us all.

Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers

Theres an old King James Version Bible sitting on my bookshelf. It is black, rugged; the gold lining on the pages shines as light hits it. The jacket is missing, and the threads have unloosened from one another over the years. It has been tried. It has traveled across the South, across time. Now it sits on a shelf where it keeps the company of books written by Black folk. Black folk who have read a similar Bible, who have wrestled with it, been confused by it. Black folk who have held it as tight as I do today.

When I open up this old Bible, dusty words emerge, conjuring up memories of poetic sermons and sweaty mics smelling like old metal and stank breath. I am suddenly surrounded by preachers and mothers and friends and saints and sinners who tried to love and live wellwhile failing, learning, and trying again. When I read these ancient scriptures, I hear the way they flowed from my mommas lips. What was it about this book that kept her up in the middle of the night, calling on the Lord, calling out our names, calling out things that she imagined possible for all of us? What was it that kept her crying out when the world around her was burning?

When she recited scripture, she spoke it poetically, adding the old eth at the end of words like the King James Version did. Those words carried the divine. It was as transporting as fiction, yet nothing like fiction. Something you could only call magical, yet nothing like magic. The words were an entire world, but they were also in her Black body in this white country. These words carried both weight and worth and worship and worry and whatever w words you can describewords that put you back together again when you, your body, and your country are shattered. It was honest, it was close, it flowed from her heart and her lips. This was her language. It was the language of my grandmother, the language of her mother, the language of all the Black folk between our yellow house, my grandmas red brick house, and the white-stained brick church that told us we were somebody. Indeed, to hear this language is to hear the voice of God upon us in a land that has never truly known God or Love or Blackness.

That is the interesting thing about living in America. And being Black. And doing both while being a Christian. We are caught between a terrifying and inescapable reality: the Bible, the country, and the body.

So when my momma prayed this language, she was praying against the country that has been decided for us. She was praying against the same reality that she grew up caught in between. My momma learned this language in 1960s South Carolina, in a world anointed by the sermons of AME preachers, Black revolutionaries, and working-class and poor people. She took this languageborrowed from scripture and sermon alikeand used it to protect us, cover us. She made sure wed learn this language, tooof prayer and hope, of resistance and creation.