The validity of Black Christianity, then, arose from the millions of lives it made viable and even joyful despite the difficult circumstances that have marked our sojourn in this country.
Sometimes the path of intellectual development leads us home to the beginning of things. I remained a Christian not simply because of what the faith might be able to do in the world but because of what it might do in me.
My mother recently purchased about an acre of land on the plantation where many of the Black Bones lived and died. She got it for around $500 because it was the slave burial site. Their bodies, never finding rest on land owned by others, now repose on land purchased by their descendants. We hold it in trust for them as their due. If the hope of Christians is true and there is a indeed a resurrection of the dead, they will emerge from those graves as free people, and their last moments on this side of the new creation will be spent on their own soil. That is a hope worthy of my allegiance.
A lot of my African American literary heroes who wrote profoundly about race rejected organized religion. Here is why I stayed in the church.https://t.co/Yss1uEZwbV
— Esau McCaulley (@esaumccaulley) September 27, 2023