Beloved Community Gospel February 2025
St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church
Background
St. Aidan’s has worked with Eric Smith, a Gospel Musician and Music Leader, since 2022 as an occasional guest to teach and lead Gospel Music. Eric will attend and lead music for a weekly Choir rehearsal and a Sunday 10am church service at St. Aidan’s throughout February. His leadership will help our choir and congregation authentically and appropriately offer and take joy in Black Gospel Music. He teaches all of us.
In 2025, we have an opportunity to learn more deeply with a month of Beloved Community Gospel Choir. All are welcome to join the choir for a month of rehearsals on Wednesday evenings (if there is bad weather, rehearsal will move to Thursday evenings) in February. We welcome people who just want to sing in a choir for a few weeks, and those who want to learn and grow in singing Gospel music, and singers of all abilities, ages, and voices!
How you can help:
Invite friends and singers in the community to join this choir for February.
Share the concert flyer and plan to attend on Sunday, March 2, at 3pm.
Preparing for a month of beloved community
To get the most out of this month, take some time to prepare and learn about Gospel music. Here are some ideas of things to watch, a list from M. Mary Kate Rejouis.
Please scroll down for our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
Joyful Noise is a movie (2012) about a Gospel Choir in a small town, and speaks to the role that music plays in the lives of those who sing it.
To learn about black Gospel, and its role in American history, try the four hour series GOSPEL , hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Available on PBS, or for purchase or subscription on Amazon Prime.
The Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story is a 1994 movie about the pastor who preceded Martin Luther King, Jr at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
our guests for Beloved Community Gospel concert march 2, 2025 @ 3pm
Reiland Rabaka is Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies and the Founder and Director of the Center for African & African American Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also a Research Fellow in the College of Human Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA). Professor Rabaka has published 19 books and more than one hundred scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, the National Museum of African American History & Culture, the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Institution, the Eugene M. Kayden Book Award, the Cheikh Anta Diop Book Award, and the National Council for Black Studies’ Distinguished Career Award. His cultural criticism, social commentary, and political analysis has been featured in print, radio, television, and online media venues such as NPR, PBS, BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MTV, BET, VH1, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and The Guardian, among others. He is also a poet and musician.
Eric Smith, of Denver, Colorado was born in Columbus, Ohio raised in Canton. Baptized at 10 years old received the gift of the Holy Ghost at age 13. It was then that he developed a passion for gospel music playing the drums, then piano,organ and bass. He served as a church musician for more than 30 years before retiring to pursue classical music and is a current student of Wesley Leffingwell, St. Aidan’s Music Director.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Beloved Community is a vision of a multi-faith, multi-ethnic community that can sing of God’s love for all people. Embracing a month of Gospel, during a month often associated with Black History Month, is an authentic way to move from consuming a good idea, to participating in the deeper vision of reconciliation and hope.
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Josiah Royce, a philosophy professor at Harvard, developed the idea of Beloved Community. In 1913, Royce wrote, “My life means nothing, either theoretically or practically, unless I am a member of a community.” Royce saw community as an all-embracing, radical idea of unity for the whole human race. Martin Luther King Jr, continued this idea when he wrote “Facing the Challenge of a New Age” in 1956. King wrote: “But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of a beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this kind of understanding and goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles.”
(Susan M. Pollak, The Idea of Beloved Community, Psychology Today, January 12, 2023)
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No. Anyone, of any religious background, or none, or anything between, who wants to learn to sing Gospel with other people is invited to be a part of this Beloved Community.
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No. The Wednesday rehearsals will prepare for the concert on March 2nd. On Sundays during February, the St. Aidan’s Choir will sing for services, as always. You are welcome to join us on Sundays, or just for the Wednesday rehearsals and final performance.
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No. This is St. Aidan’s offering to the community, and it is funded in part by a grant from the Front Range Region of the Episcopal Church.
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Join us and learn more!
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All the music is in the black Gospel tradition, and the songs are worship songs.
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Yes! Here’s a YouTube Playlist of the songs for the concert, plus a couple of others!