Bishop Samuel Thomas of the New Testament church of God explains the history
Black preaching, according to Cleophus J. LaRue, has a theological and a sociological influence that runs deeper than mere preaching technique.
For LaRue, black preaching is rooted in the extraordinary experiences of black people, in particular slavery. He refers to this as the soul of black Christian experience which has brought about a black hermeneutic, which then reflects how the character of God is understood and the ways God works through Scripture and sermons in people’s lives today.1 Every ethnic group and nationality of people has experienced some great misfortune, but it is not simply a matter of what happens to a person. As Miles Jones states: ‘It is how blacks interpret those happenings in light of what has been revealed in and through the word of God’.2 In my view this is what Cleophus J. LaRue is attempting to discuss. He further adds: ‘It is in the vital interpretative encounter between Scripture and the struggle of the marginalised that the search for distinctiveness in black preaching should begin’.3
