Music, and especially the spirituals, is an important part of Duke Chapel Dean Luke Powery’s preaching, scholarship, and Christian faith. A Baptist minister and professor of homiletics at Duke’s Divinity School, Dean Powery says the Spirituals “are musical memorabilia created on the anvil of misery in the crucible of inhumane slavery,” that have become “a wellspring of wisdom quite distinct from so many other sources of knowledge at a university.” In this episode, he listens to recordings of spirituals—and sings himself!—explaining how "the spirituals connect with the human condition of hope, of healing, of suffering, of joy and spontaneity."
