Ring shout

A shout or ring shout is an ecstatic, transcendent religious ritual, first practiced by African slaves in the West Indies and the United States, in which worshipers move in a circle while shuffling and stomping their feet and clapping their hands. Despite the name, shouting aloud is not an essential part of the ritual.

The ring shout was Christianized and practiced in some Black churches into the 20th century, and it continues to the present among the Gullah people of the Sea Islands and in "singing and praying bands" associated with many African American United Methodist congregations in Tidewater Maryland and Delaware.^[1]

A more modern form, known still as a "shout" (or "praise break"), is practiced in many Black churches and non-Black Pentecostal churches to the present day. Traditionally, ushers in Arkansas and Mississippi form a circle around the church member and allows them to shout within the circle.