Black History is God's History

We humans have created many artificial divisions that we use to mistreat and ostracize others. This is not what God wanted for humanity, but it is what has resulted from our own sinful ways. Think about the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9). It was man’s own hubris that led to God punishing us with language barriers. Barriers, which arguably led to the first major divisions among humankind.

The differences between the various peoples of the world only increased after that, but with the coming of Jesus and through Paul’s work with the Gentiles, God made it clear that such differences did not matter to him. He did not distinguish between people based on race, class, nationality, or anything else. 

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:28

If we Christians truly followed Christ as we should, such distinctions would be meaningless. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. After all, there is an old saying that the most segregated time in America is Sunday morning when everyone goes to church. If there is anything that demonstrates that America is not the Christian nation some claim it to be, it would be the nation’s history with things such as racism, classism, and sexism.

Once again, the Black experience in America perfectly highlights the failures of this nation and the people within. Blacks were slaves in this country and then freed only to be made into second class citizens. Even today, after the nation as a whole acknowledges the wrongs of the past with regards to how blacks have been treated, we still see much of the same problematic treatment directed towards blacks and other disenfranchised groups. Black history in America has been a history of struggling against oppression, cruelty, and discrimination. Some may wonder how any group could have survived through such an onslaught, but Christians should already know the answer.

The previous blog entry (The Double-Edged Sword) acknowledged that God has had a place within the black community ever since blacks were first brought to this country en masse as property. The parallels between the stories of the Jews and Christians in the Bible gave hope to the black slaves in America. The faith that those blacks developed helped many of them survive the harsh experiences that were forced upon them. The faith held by the abolitionists was what drove many of them to fight so hard against the unjust institution of slavery. Eventually, that institution fell, but the struggle of Blacks was not over and neither was God’s work in the community.

Blacks had to deal with government sanctioned discrimination in the form of the Jim Crow Laws, and race based violence perpetrated by the KKK and other groups. The fight against such forces was hard, and, at times, probably seemed unwinnable. Is there any surprise that the church served as the place from which most of the movements against those evil forces sprang? Paul Harvey wrote in a paper titled Civil Rights Movements and Religion in America*:

The civil rights revolution in American history was, to a considerable degree, a religious revolution, one whose social and spiritual impact inspired numerous other movements around the world.

and also:

The civil rights movement sought to achieve specific legal and legislative aims, many of which were achieved with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. To that degree, it can be seen as a successful movement for political reform of the working of basic institutions of American public life. But the movement itself could not have been successful without the spiritual empowerment that arose from the culture developed over two centuries of black American Christianity. In other words, religious impulses derived from black religious traditions made the movement move.

Martin Luther King Jr. is perhaps the most well known figure associated with the Civil Rights movement. He was also a Baptist minister, so it should come as no surprise that he had plenty to say about the church and its role in the fight, even if that part of his message is not always talked about. For example,

The Philosophy of Christianity is strongly opposed to the underlying philosophy of segregation. Therefore, every Christian is confronted with the basic responsibility of working courageously for a non-segregated society. The task of conquering segregation is an inescapable must confronting the Christian Churches.**

Christianity has always had a place in facilitating the black struggle, and God has always been an ally. The story of what African Americans have managed to survive and achieve is just one big testimony for what God can do if the faith is there. The black struggle is not finished. More remains to be done. The same can be said about the Christian struggle. In some ways they are one in the same because both should be rooted in the idea that all God’s children deserve to be treated with love and respect. So when we celebrate Black History, we should absolutely applaud all those men and women who worked to bring us where we are today. However, we should make sure not to forget that God was the one behind them making it all possible. We can’t celebrate them without celebrating Him because the history they made is just a small part of the history He created.




*http://oxfordre.com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-492
**https://juicyecumenism.com/2016/01/18/top-10-quotes-church-martin-luther-king-jr/

Chris Lawyer