The ring shout really becomes kind of the cornerstone of understanding the nexus between African religion and emerging African American religion. It's the foundation of singing, worshipping, praising, getting filled with the holy spirit in the circle, which is a way of identifying the cycle of music, the cycle of life. ...

So these were illiterate people taking the King James bible, interpreting it and setting it to music.

Absolutely. And these songs literally carried them through all the dangerous toils and snares.
....

The spirituals really come out of the folk songs of African Americans. It begins in the 18th century and ... is the collective expression of early African American Christians. A mirror of early thinking about a saving God, a redemptive God, a God who, even in the fiery furnace, can rescue you. And so we understand something about what was important to those early Christians.

—Reverend Dwight Andrews, First Congregational United Church of Christ, Atlanta, Georgia in conversation with Henry Louis Gates in The Black Church, aired on PBS.