A Word from Bob: You’re reading Part 2 of a blog mini-series on One America; Two Experiences. I’ve taken my thoughts from chapter 10 of my book Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. You can read Part 1 here: Racial Reconciliation: Understanding 2 Vastly Different Views of America.
We’ve Come This Far by Faith: The Drama of Redemption
Our worldview makes a world of difference. As African Americans journeyed from enslavement to emancipation, they faced the same spiritual questions that we all face when we encounter inexplicable suffering.
Nellie, a former slave from Savannah, Georgia, shared her confusion.
“It has been a terrible mystery, to know why the good Lord should so long afflict my people, and keep them in bondage—to be abused, and trampled down, without any rights of their own—with no ray of light in the future.”[i]
It is difficult enough to endure personal suffering and ponder God’s purposes. The spiritual task grows even more challenging when we, like Nellie, open our eyes to a world of unjust suffering.
Delivered from Bondage: Leaning on the Lord by Gleaning from His Word
African American believers moved beyond the suffering—by entrusting themselves to the God of the oppressed. For example, when her mistress questions her about her faith, a slave named Polly explains her hope.
“We poor creatures have need to believe in God, for if God Almighty will not be good to us some day, why were we born? When I heard of his delivering his people from bondage I know it means the poor Africans.”[ii]
Ponder Polly’s faith perspective. She entrusts her troubled soul to the God of the Bible who reveals himself to be the Almighty, Good Deliverer of the oppressed.
Whether individual narratives, personal letters of spiritual consolation, slave spirituals, gospel songs, public speeches, or pulpit messages, they all focus on the narrative of:
God as the God of the oppressed.
Whether it was Hagar in the Wilderness, the Israelites in Egypt, the children of God in Canaan, or Judah in the Babylonian captivity, African American Christians repeatedly turned to scriptural narratives portraying God’s character as the Father of the fatherless.
“For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help. He will take pity on the weak and the needy and save the needy from death. He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight” (Psalm 72:12-14).
The classic African American gospel song We’ve Come This Far by Faith powerfully and poetically articulates the faith of Polly and her spiritual siblings.
“We’ve come this far by faith leaning on the Lord;
Trusting in His Holy Word, He’s never failed me yet.
Oh, can’t turn around, we’ve come this far by faith.
Don’t be discouraged with trouble in your life,
He’ll bear your burdens and move all misery and strife.
That’s why we’ve come this far by faith.”[iii]
Consider the common denominator connecting Polly and this gospel song. Both glean from the Word narrative images of a good God who is touched by the feelings of our infirmities and moved by our misery to move mountains in response to our faith. It’s all about narratives—about faith stories.
Experiencing the God Who Sets the Captives Free
The faith that Polly shared with her mistress and that African Americans sang about in church gatherings combined God’s character, their situation, and scriptural themes of liberation. Aunt Jane’s counsel to Charlotte Brooks illustrates the intersection of these three components.
“Aunt Jane used to tell us, too, that the children of Israel were in Egypt in bondage, and that God delivered them out of Egypt; and she said he would deliver us. We all used to sing a hymn like this: ‘My God delivered Daniel, Daniel, Daniel; My God delivered Daniel, And why not deliver me too? He delivered Daniel from the lion’s den, Jonah from the belly of the whale, the three Hebrew children from the fiery furnace, And why not deliver me too?’”[iv]
For Aunt Jane, the God of Moses, Daniel, Jonah, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is alive and well on planet Earth. His powerful deliverance then relates to Aunt Jane and Charlotte now because His character never changes. He will deliver them from captivity because He is, in His very nature, a Rescuer.
“One of the sources that sustained Christian slaves against such temptations to despair was the Bible with its accounts of the mighty deeds of a God who miraculously intervenes in human history to cast down the mighty and to lift up the lowly, a God who saves the oppressed and punishes the oppressor.”[v]
God Is a Time-God
Their faith was faith in an in-the-moment God—an immanent God who loves to love His children. Ex-slave Simon Brown explains:
“The folks would sing and pray and testify and clap their hands, just as if God was right there in the midst of them. He wasn’t way off in the sky. He was a-seeing everybody and a-listening to every word and a-promising to let His love come down. . . . Yes, sir, there was no pretending in those prayer meetings. There was a living faith in a just God who would one day answer the cries of His poor black children and deliver them from their enemies.”[vi]
Their faith was in a time-God.
“It looked like the more I prayed the worse off I got. But the God I serve is a time-God. He don’t come before time; he don’t come after time. He comes just on time.”[vii]
Their faith was earthy and real. Ex-Virginia slave, William Grimes, prays to his real God in his real time of need when Grimes’ master orders him flogged.
“I looked up to heaven and prayed fervently to God to hear my prayer, and grant me relief in this hour of adversity; expecting every moment to be whipped until I could not stand; and blessed be God that he turned their hearts before they could arrive at the place of destination: for on arriving there, I was acquitted. God delivered me from the power of the adversary.”
Grimes assures his readers that he “did not make a feeble attempt to induce my master not to flog me; but put my trust, and offered my prayers to my heavenly Father, who heard and answered them.”[viii]
The Rich, Relevant Theology of African American Christians
These samplers teach us a very important truth:
Nothing is more important about us than the image of God that we hold in our minds.
Some people falsely assume that enslaved and free African Americans were a-theological, that they were all about experience in the heart and not biblical insight in the mind. This is utterly untrue. They combined heart and head, experience and theology, faith and fact.
Their theological understanding of God emphasized his unchanging nature as the I Am of Exodus. While running away from slavery in Kentucky, Henry Bibb’s heart trembles within him as he ponders the great danger to which he was exposing himself in taking passage on a southern steamboat.
“Hence before I took passage, I kneeled down before the Great I Am, and prayed for his aid and protection, which He bountifully bestowed even beyond my expectation; for I felt myself to be unworthy. I then stept boldly on the deck . . .”[ix]
The Great I Am can be trusted to set the captives free because it is his enduring, eternal nature. As Bibb explains:
“I never omitted to pray for deliverance. I had faith to believe that the Lord could see our wrongs and hear our cries.”[x]
Life is a story and God is the main Character in that story.
For African Americans, the unfolding plotline in their story, page after page, has been God the Deliverer’s daily deliverance of them. As spiritual friends, they repeatedly turned one another to the faith stories of the Bible so that they could respond to “God’s salvation drama as it unfolds and impacts their lives.”[xi]
The Rest of the Story
You’re invited to join us for Part 3: God’s Chosen People.
Join the Conversation
What biblical images of God control your mind and your outlook on life? Is your God the time-God? The God of the oppressed? The never-Changing, always-comforting God? The in-the-moment real God? The Divine Love and Wisdom God? The Great I Am God?
Endnotes
[i]Coffin, The Boys of ’61, p. 415.
[ii]Reed, An American Diary, p. 65.
[iii]McClain, Songs of Zion, song 192.
[iv]Albert, The House of Bondage, p. 31.
[v]Raboteau, “The Legacy of a Suffering Church,” in Altschul, An Unbroken Circle, p. 81.
[vi]Hopkins, Down, Up, and, Over, p. 107.
[vii]Johnson, God Struck Me Dead, p. 170.
[viii]Bontemps, Five Black Lives, pp. 73-74.
[ix]Bibb, Narrative of the Life, p. 24.
[x]Bibb, Narrative of the Life, p. 69.
[xi]Wimberly, African American Pastoral Care, p. 18.
