The Negro's Church

The Negro’s Church is a book by Joseph Nicholson and Benjamin Mays. It highlights the origins of African-American religion and how it became a way to cope under racist oppression. It said the songs, hymns, and dances of that culture were a way to "endure suffering and survive as it helped blacks get through heartache with the music of the soil and the soul".
In Chapter VI the authors performed a systematic study of 100 sermons in order to evaluate the "teaching quality" by the minister in each Negro church. They separated the sermons into "three classes: those that touch on life situations, sermons that are doctrinal or theological, and those that are predominantly other-worldly". They then critiqued each of the 100 sermons and worked to further classify them.