Authors and activists Alexia Salvatierra and Brandon Wrencher describe how enslaved Africans interpreted the Bible through their experience and found a promise of dignity and liberation.
By seeing themselves in biblical stories … enslaved Africans engaged the Bible as a living text. They were in relationship with the Bible, talking back to its stories and its God. God was not seen as a distant, malevolent deity. The God of enslaved Africans was ever-present, would deliver them, and would punish their oppressors. The companionship of God was seen especially in how enslaved Africans interpreted Jesus, whom they saw as a friend on the journey with them to survive and be liberated from their oppression. The Spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” depicts the deep friendship the enslaved had with Jesus:
I want Jesus to walk with me
I want Jesus to walk with me
All along my pilgrim journey
I want Jesus to walk with me. [1]
Enslaved Africans demonstrated their resilience and innovation in crafting a folk theology from the Bible in the form of folk songs called Negro Spirituals. They sang the Spirituals in both the hush harbors in the wilderness and the mystical hush harbors of their souls while in the fields and on the plantation. The Spirituals allowed them to put biblical stories in a medium that made them alive, bodily, and thus their own. And it allowed enslaved Africans to offer creative new interpretations of biblical stories.
The Exodus story of freedom spoke in a powerful and particular way to the experience of the enslaved:
In the exodus story, Moses gained power from God to part a sea, allowing the Hebrew people he was leading to escape from their oppressors, Pharaoh and the Egyptians. The sea collapsed on and drowned Pharaoh and his army as they chased the Hebrew people. The Hebrew people were set free with God’s help. In step with their radical interpretation of biblical stories, enslaved Africans would weave their own conditions into the biblical story through song….
One of these mornings, bright and fair
Gonna take my wings and cleave the air
When I get to heaven gonna put on my shoes
Gonna run around glory and tell all the news
When I get to heaven gonna sing and shout
Ain’t nobody there gonna turn me out. [2]
The message is clear: in the same way that God gave victory to the Hebrews over Egypt and to Jesus and the church over Rome, God will give victory to enslaved Africans over their bondage to white Christian American tyranny. And this victory, just like the victory God gave the Hebrews and Jesus and the disciples, will not be in “the sweet by and by” but in the present world. Enslaved Africans believed God would work through them to bring this deliverance.
References:
[1] Traditional, “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me.” See Lift Every Voice and Sing II: An African American Hymnal (Church Publishing, 1993), no. 70.
[2] Traditional, “O Mary Don’t You Weep.” See This Far by Faith: An African American Resource for Worship (Augsburg Fortress, 1999), no. 88.
Alexia Salvatierra and Brandon Wrencher, Buried Seeds: Learning from the Vibrant Resilience of Marginalized Christian Communities (Baker Academic, 2022), 37–38.
Image credit and inspiration: Taylor Heery, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Dynamic movement requires balance and respect, guided by ever-shifting balance points—like riding a tricycle—through a process of constant learning and continual growth.
Story from Our Community:
My husband and I sit very close to the front pew at Mass. After we receive communion, I sometimes offer a prayer of thanksgiving by observing fellow attendees walk up the aisle to receive Christ in the Eucharist. I feel inspired by the reverence and devotion I see in people’s faces. I feel accompanied in my faith when I see my sisters and brothers showing up in faith. It reminds me that there is grace for all in these turbulent and uncertain times.
—Gaelen B.
