Hip-hop embraced as an evangelistic tool

It's hard to get young people into the pews on a Sunday morning, but
several seminaries think they have found a way to grab the next
generation: hip-hop.

"If we're going to take young people
seriously, we have no choice," said Alton B. Pollard III, dean of the
Howard University School of Divinity. "When we talk about what's
happening in the lives of young people, that's a subterranean culture
that some of us just don't know how to get with."

Howard's recent
annual convocation featured the rocking beat of Christian hip-hop
artists Da' T.R.U.T.H. and Sean Simmonds, and professors are using the
spoken word—poetry performed as social commentary—to examine the New
Testament.