Slavery was a very significant issue facing churches because slaves were allowed to go to Church. Few Christian ministers wrote against on slavery. Rural slaves were also allowed to stay after the regular Christian worship services, in churches or, if in plantation, then in so called "praise houses", to sing and to dance in honor of God. But they were no allowed to organize any dancing and playing drums, so frequent in Africa. The slaves also had secret places for meetings where they shared their pains, joys and hopes. They called such meetings "camp meetings" or "bush meetings", depending on the region.

In rural regions, lots of slaves were gathered together to listen to some itinerant preachers and to sing spirituals for many hours long. In the late 1700s for example, they used to sing the precursors of spirituals, called "corn ditties". So, in rural regions, spirituals were sung, mainly out of churches.

About 1850, in cities and towns the Protestant City- Revival Movement founded a new song genre, which soon began very popular. The representatives of the movement organized revival meetings with temporary tents erected in stadiums, where all the attendants sang the spirituals. At church, during the services, different kinds of hymns and psalms were sung. Some of them later were transformed into a typical African American type of songs like "Dr Watts", for example. The Negro spirituals lyrics were normally tightly linked with their authors lives: hard life of the slaves.

While work songs were telling about their daily life, spiritual songs (spirituals) were inspired by the words of Jesus Christ and his Good News of the Bible. They are absolutely different from hymns and psalms - they were the way the slaves shared their hard condition of being slaves. Majority of slaves both in town and in plantations dreamed to run away to a fairy "free country", so called "my home" or in some areas it was "Sweet Canaan, the Promised Land". The country obsessed was located on the Northern side of Ohio River and they called it "Jordan" and some Negro spirituals were also about the Underground Railroad, an organization to help the slaves to escape.

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