Contemplative Comics day 42

Sometimes I am swept away by the miracle that is the African American Church and denominations like the AME.

Here is a people taken from their homelands, forced to live together, learning new languages, adapting their collective cultures, forced into hard lives of labor, regarded as property, sold off and separated from the new communities they forged, and beaten. Under constant supervision and suspicion.

Yet, they are able to hear and receive the Gospel. For many of them, it becomes a means of spiritual and physical freedom. The soul cannot be put in chains. Cannot be bought and sold at the whims of an earthly master.

The Gospel becomes a means of education. Black men and women in the North convert and argue for their freedom. After all, how can they be brothers and sisters in Christ while being kept in chains? Many slave masters are converted by their own slaves and practice gradual manumission of their slaves.

In the South, a truncated gospel is presented to enslaved men and women. A false gospel that emphasizes the role of the master as part of God’s design. They are taught that they must be subservient to the master’s needs in order to obey God. To disobey is sin. To escape is sin. To help someone escape is sin.

The master becomes God-like.

It is a false Gospel.

Yet, with these bits and pieces of the scriptures, many of the men and women in bondage meet in secret to read, discuss, and preach amongst themselves. They find the love of Jesus. They find the justice of God. They find their place in the story of God’s kingdom movement on the earth.

The fact that they did not outright despise this slaveholder religion forced upon them (many did) is a miracle and a true testament to the transformative power of the Gospel.

The light shines in the darkness. The darkness will never overcome it.