Losing Their Religion?
Disability, The Historically Black Church, and a legacy of Justice
I’m always researching. I’m always writing. I’m always looking for ways to investigate the intersection between race, religion, and disability.
With that being said while I’m waiting on the release of my highly anticipated next book, How Ableism Fuels Racism (releasing February 2024 with Brazos Press), I’ve already been back in the lab working on a follow that will investigate influences of the Black Church on American History, specifically on issues of justice in society and politics and how the disability justice movement within Christianity can learn from the historically Black Church.
One primary element that I’ve found that is missing is the necessity for adapting and evolving. Below is a lengthy but informative section of a new book I’m working on to follow up with my forthcoming book. Enjoy
Losing Their Religion?
For many enslaved Africans, the journey to the new world was one of trepidation. Imagine being corralled into holding cells, separated from your parents or from your children. Imagine being held in captivity with no knowledge of what your captors wanted or where they might take you. Imagine having to hear the sounds of moaning and weeping over the physical brutality of being rustled like livestock onto ships bound for a land that would become synonymous with pain and despair.
Contrary to what some believe, the Transatlantic Slave Trade was more than an operation built on brute force and extreme brutality. While slave sellers, slave traders, and the slave holders practiced brutality that is unconscionable, perhaps the most brutal aspect of slave trading was the intentional destruction of all aspects of African culture to gain control over the minds and bodies of enslaved Africans. The late Albert J. Raboteau, a scholar of African and African-American religions, writes about this in his seminal book, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South, saying “In the New World slave control was based on the eradication of all forms of African culture because of the power to unify the slaves and thus enable them to resist or rebel.”[i]
Slave holders understood the significance of eradicating African culture in order to maintain control over their slaves. In addition, they understood the power that culture has to motivate resistance to oppression. This is important to note because while much of the language, social and political systems, and family structure was intentionally destroyed during slavery, one aspect of African culture that adapted and survive the horrors of slavery was African Traditional Religion(s). Raboteau writes, “One of the most durable and adaptable constituents of the slave’s culture, linking African past with American present, was his religion.”[ii]
Adaptation is perhaps the most important aspect of the story of the Black Church because it shows the necessity of evolution as it relates to religious beliefs and practices being able to survive oppression. In a later section of this book, I’ll return to the idea that adaptation is in fact a hallmark of the Black Church which can provide the Christian church in America with a potential path toward a greater role in the anti-ableist movement, but for now I want to highlight how African Traditional religion(s) didn’t remain completely untouched by the influence of the new world and the new challenges it faced. According to Raboteau, Africa religions did not remain unchanged, but they continued to develop and grow with time “not because they were preserved in a ‘pure’ orthodoxy but because they were transformed.”[iii]
If you’re anything like me and you have had any significant time submerged in Western evangelical culture, then you know that preserving “pure orthodoxy” is one of, if not the highest pursuit of, American evangelical theology. Here in the West, we are often challenged with playing the role of gospel guardians and gospel gatekeepers, positioning ourselves to believe that is our duty and distinct pleasure to determine what is considered orthodox and use that criteria to measure the sincerity and accuracy of a person’s Christian faith and fidelity.
If that has been your experience, then hearing that enslaved Africans kept their religion alive by engaging in syncretism it may be a cause for pause. No matter the denominational affiliation, most branches of Christianity in the West rely heavily on their certainty that they remain doctrinally pure. I used to also hold this position; I mean one way that we have been taught that we can prove our loyalty to Jesus is to shun syncretism, and remain as orthodox as we could be, but I believe we believe this because we have overlooked the natural progression of religion including the evolution of Christianity in particular.
That faith evolves may feel like an uncomfortable thought to read, however, the vast majority of us have had significant life experiences that have caused our own faith to develop, not suddenly, but often subtly. When I was diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and again in 2022, I faced the reality that my faith needed to grow in order to manage the new challenges that I was facing. Evolving faith more often than not requires the need to accumulate new resources, accommodate new ideas, and attempt to answer uncomfortable questions. While my story is one that many people who face life altering circumstances share, we should also understand that the same was true for the children of Israel and the biblical text is full of examples of how the nation's faith developed over the years.
Before I continue, let me explain what I mean by evolving faith. Evolving faith is the process by which our ideas about God change, often in ways that feel like progression, strengthening, or clarity. In addition, growing faith means that we often find new ways to talk about God and about our relationship with God. We discover new language, new imagery, and new definitions to describe our understanding of God and how God relates to the world. Growing faith is not an abandonment of core beliefs and core ideas about the Christian faith, evolving faith is the recognition that adjustments are a necessary part of faith and in embracing the need to adjust we are in fact respecting the enormity of God’s power and presence in the world because we ultimately confess that our language about God is limited and in constant need of expansion and evolution.
Peter Enns, a professor of Biblical studies, author of several books, and co-host of the popular podcast The Bible for Normal People, writes about this in his book Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming, saying “When the twists and turns of history came their way, Jews did not simply by holding on tooth and nail to old ways of thinking, but by adjusting the faith of old-no doubt with great soul-searching and debate in order for the ancient faith to make sense for them there and then, and thus to ensure its continued vitality.[iv] There are many places in the story of Israel that provide examples of what Enns expresses, so I’ll provide just two quick examples from scripture where the Israel encountered moments where their faith and their ideas about God were challenged to evolve.
The first example comes from the Old Testament book of Jonah. In this story, Jonah is called upon by God to travel to the city of Nineveh and to preach repentance. According to Enns, this assignment would have been egregious to any Israelite who would have remembered that it was the Assyrians, whose capital city was Nineveh, were a nation that terrorized the good people of Israel for decades. It’s no wonder Jonah resisted God’s calling. Preaching repentance to the Assyrians would ultimately mean that the God of Israel had intentions to offer forgiveness to them.
Jonah wasn’t having it. We all know how the story progresses. There’s rebellion, then after some time in the belly of a fish, Jonah relents and obeys God’s command, only to be utterly disgusted at the fact that their God seemed to be intent on showing compassion to their enemies. According to Enns, the story of Jonah isn’t necessarily a history lesson but “rather, the story of Jonah is an object lesson-a story about Israel adjusting its understanding of God: God now has compassion on a nation that moved, assimilating, and making disappear roughly 80 percent of the Chosen People (not to mention harassing the remaining southern nation for a few decades thereafter).[v]
Like Enns, I believe that the story of Jonah gives us a glimpse into a moment in Israel’s history where they were confronted with the idea that the god they once saw as a warrior that wielded power against their enemies on their behalf was actually a god who desires to include everyone in his plan of compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. The God of Israel proved to be a god of grace, and while it would have been incredibly difficult to see God that way, both Jonah and Israel had to grow. They had to adjust their understanding and their language about God in order to forge forward in the practice of their faith.
The second example of Israel having to adjust their faith to fit a new narrative about God comes from the New Testament. The story of Peter’s vision in the book of Acts provides another illustration of how the faith of Israel evolved. Let’s inspect this story.
9 The next day, as Cornelius’s messengers were nearing the town, Peter went up on the flat roof to pray. It was about noon, 10 and he was hungry. But while a meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11 He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. 12 In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. 13 Then a voice said to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat them.”14 “No, Lord,” Peter declared. “I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean.[b]”15 But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.” 16 The same vision was repeated three times. Then the sheet was suddenly pulled up to heaven.17 Peter was very perplexed. What could the vision mean? Just then the men sent by Cornelius found Simon’s house. Standing outside the gate, 18 they asked if a man named Simon Peter was staying there.19 Meanwhile, as Peter was puzzling over the vision, the Holy Spirit said to him, “Three men have come looking for you. 20 Get up, go downstairs, and go with them without hesitation. Don’t worry, for I have sent them.”21 So Peter went down and said, “I’m the man you are looking for. Why have you come?”22 They said, “We were sent by Cornelius, a Roman officer. He is a devout and God-fearing man, well respected by all the Jews. A holy angel instructed him to summon you to his house so that he can hear your message.” 23 So Peter invited the men to stay for the night. The next day he went with them, accompanied by some of the brothers from Joppa.24 They arrived in Caesarea the following day. Cornelius was waiting for them and had called together his relatives and close friends. 25 As Peter entered his home, Cornelius fell at his feet and worshiped him. 26 But Peter pulled him up and said, “Stand up! I’m a human being just like you!” 27 So they talked together and went inside, where many others were assembled.28 Peter told them, “You know it is against our laws for a Jewish man to enter a Gentile home like this or to associate with you. But God has shown me that I should no longer think of anyone as impure or unclean. 29 So I came without objection as soon as I was sent for. Now tell me why you sent for me.”
Peter’s vision wasn’t merely about dietary restrictions. According to Peter, Jewish law prevented him from consuming anything that was unclean or impure, but behind the idea of abstaining from certain foods was the association that these foods had represented people groups that Jewish law also forbade its people from associating with. This is why Peter tells Cornelius that it is against Jewish law for him to enter his home or to associate with him. While this was certainly true, and it completely shaped Peter’s understanding of who God was and what God required of his people, Peter’s vision unveiled the need to adapt and adjust their religious beliefs and practices.
His vision was a nudging from God to evolve in his ideas about who God accepts and which people groups are included in God’s plan for forming a new family. Once Peter grasped the concept that Gentiles, or non-Jewish people, were no longer to be impure or unclean, he learned to see God in a new way, see people in a new light, and practice his religious beliefs that made room for adjustments and accommodations for those formerly considered enemies. This encounter would lead to what would ultimately be one of the greatest strengths of the emerging Christian faith, the expansion of the faith by emphasis the inclusion of a variety of many people from many backgrounds.
These two examples help us understand the reality that religions that survive and thrive in adverse conditions are those that adjust and accommodate those who have different religious backgrounds and different cultures. In creating an environment for disability inclusion, these two attributes will prove important if not absolutely necessary. I will examine these attributes later in this book in the section about the lessons that can be learned from the historically Black church about disability inclusion, but for now we need to take note and take notice that the ability for enslaved Africans to adjust and adapt their understanding of God and the practice of their traditional religion(s) had a tremendous influence on the development of the Black church in America. Africans who adopted Christianity did not simply lose their religion, they adjusted it and, in doing so, created a culture that would serve as a foundation for the successful survival of the Black church in the future.
[i] Raboteau, A. J. (2004). Slave religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South. Oxford University Press, USA. Pg 4
[ii] ibid
[iii] ibid
[iv] Enns, P. (2023). Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming (or How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God). HarperCollins. Pg 48
[v] Ibid 41
Dr. Hardwick, this is a compelling article with an important and life-changing message for our times.