Download or read book A Community Text Arises written by Beverly J. Moss and published by Hampton Press (NJ). This book was released on 2003 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Community Text Arises emerges from an ethnographic study of literacy in three African-American churches. These data illuminate the ways that the primary model of a literate text is shaped and used in African-American churches. Chapter 1 examines how the African-American church has operated as a community within the larger African-American communities. Chapter 2 introduces, through ethnographic descriptions, the churches that the authors studies and Chapter 3 highlights the features of the major literacy event and text in African-American churches - the sermon. Through close analysis of individual sermons the author illustrates how the sermon functions as a community text. Chapter 4 focuses solely on the sermons of one minister to highlight rhetorical strategies that are used to create and main community identity. The analysis in chapters 3 and 4 provides a view of a text that calls into question traditionally held notions of text inside and outside the community. Therefore, chapter 5 deals with the implications of this study for how text is defined and the relation between oral and written texts.