Historically, African American spirituality is rooted and grounded in the belief that God hears the prayers of the oppressed.
The capture, forced migration and enslavement of millions of Africans brought about centuries of extreme suffering for the ancestors of modern day African Americans. Throughout the American South, these enslaved Africans were evangelized by Christian slaveholders and plantation missionaries.
Although they were told to love Jesus, they were mainly taught one text from the Bible; “Slaves, obey your masters.” They were not allowed to read the Bible for themselves. In many states slaves were denied literacy and religious freedom by law to prevent them from educating and organizing themselves for rebellion. Under these conditions, at secret gatherings held late at night deep in the woods, the slaves sang and prayed and danced a religion of faith and hope in a God who would deliver them from bondage. Their own preachers spoke prophetic words affirming their humanity and their desire to be free.
The Bible provides many accounts of the call to prophetic witness among oppressed people. For example, in the Old Testament Moses stopped to observe a burning bush in the desert and heard the voice of God calling him to deliver his people from bondage in Egypt. And in the New Testament Jesus read a passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah to announce his divine assignment to preach good news to the poor, proclaim freedom to the captives, recovery of sight for the blind, and to release the oppressed.
Harriet Tubman was called the “Moses” of her people because she led hundreds of slaves from slavery in the South to freedom in the northern states and Canada via the community of sympathetic churches and households known as the Underground Railroad. Her extraordinary prophetic action began with a vision and a call from God.
The prophetic witness for justice, equality and freedom has endured among African Americans from slavery times to the present century. During the civil rights movement Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. arose as a preacher and theologian who felt called by God to confront the social, political and economic injustices experienced by his people in the segregated South. Millions of Americans are familiar with the part of the speech he gave at the 1963 March on Washington where he repeatedly declares, “I have a dream,” but are totally unaware that the same speech began with a serious critique of the nightmare of injustice and racism in America.
King used the prophetic words of Amos 5:24 to give divine sanction to his discourse of discontent and also to his poignant embrace of the American dream, saying, “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Four decades after his assassination, King’s mantle of prophetic witness in America has not fallen on any one person, nor on the black church alone, but on an entire prophetic community, a beloved community, called to be blessed with a thirst for justice for all God’s children.
Dr. Cheryl J. Sanders is professor of Christian Ethics at Howard University and senior pastor of the Third Street Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.
