I just returned from the wonderful experience of engaging two-dozen graduate students in a week-long course on the history of soul care. One-third of that course focused on the history of African American soul care.

Here’s the thing . . . (as “Mr Monk” from the TV show “Monk” would say): These well-educated men and women, many of them African Americans, kept saying, “In high school and college we read books and had courses on African American history. But we NEVER heard about their Christian faith.”

What’s up with that?

Having read more than 500 primary sources in the research and writing of “Beyond the Suffering,” I am floored by the amount of biased editing that has to occur in order to obscure and down-right leave out the tremendous Christian faith perspective of a multitude of enslaved African Americans.

Here’s the thing . . . as my students communicated, “Now, armed with hundreds of power quotes and true stories, we can go back into our churches, our counseling offices, our youth group, and our homes and tell young Black men and women: ‘You have a great faith legacy!'”

Indeed. Everywhere in African American history we learn of movement beyond suffering to healing hope on the basis of faith in Christ. That’s the thing!

When suffering hits home, embrace it, face it, but always learn how to grow through it and to find God in it. That’s the legacy left to us by African American believers. It is their gift to all Americans.