Let the Heavens Rejoice: A Framework for Developing Gospel Music Interventions against Intersectional Stress and Moral Injury among Black Women

Black contemporary gospel music provides a womanist method for spiritual care and physical healing. However, little scholarship has examined the capacity for gospel music to heal Black women against the health-reducing factors necessitating their healing, especially the physically and spiritually deleterious effects of stress and, upon accumulation, moral injury. Black women within the United States face particular psychological-spiritual distress resulting from intersectional stress due to the multidimensional oppression imposed on them along race, gender, class, and age. Given that music interventions offer a scalable, cost-effective approach to alleviate physiological stress and psychological stress, this paper proposes the first-ever framework and evidence-base identifying the stress-reducing qualities of Black contemporary gospel music in order to guide the development of gospel music interventions specifically tailored to Black women’s lived experiences with intersectional stress and moral injury.