Calling the Oppressors to Account for Four Centuries of Terror‪.‬

This 1902 statement by Francis Grimke, an ex-slave and Princeton Theological Seminary graduate, is an apt summary of the major themes of justice, hope, and love in African American religion from slavery to the present. These themes were created out of the African slaves' encounter with biblical religion (via the white missionaries and preachers) as they sought to make meaning in a strange world. To make meaning in any world is difficult, because human beings, like other animals, are creatures of nature and history. We can never be what we can imagine, but to be slaves in a foreign land without the cultural and religious support of a loving family and a caring community limits human possibilities profoundly. Because Africans were prevented from freely practicing their native religion, they merged their knowledge of their cultural past with the white man's Christian religion. From these two sources, Africans created for themselves a world of meaning that enabled them to survive 246 years of slavery and 100 years of segregation--augmented by a reign of white terror that lynched more than 5,000 black people.