Black God

It's obvious to me that we all have our own unique conception and understanding of God. Even if we have the same idea, if we were to explain it, order the priorities of "godliness" and spirituality and what is helpful to us to know and how we center ourselves or in what ways we are helped by the idea of a higher power, or if we were to talk about how we came to this idea, or heard of this idea, or our experience or personal confirmation of a higher power or understanding of creation, existence and the trials of man and the lessons we have to learn or what sin is or forgiveness, or how we recognize these ideas and ideals with how we operate or how the world works or politics or racism or culture or society, it's clear, that regardless of how similar our ideas are, they are all unique and different, in the same way as the proverbial and literal snowflake.

whew!

The surviving ideas, concepts, culture, tradition, rights, ethics, morals, and society of native and indigenous African culture and the mish mash of traditions that occurred through the diaspora and within individual journey's, teachings, collisions, exchanges and understandings between peoples on the shores of what is now known as the United States of America.

The application of the new religion of Christianity, and it's basis in the old testament, and the ways in which it has come to be understood, is a demonstration to it's power. Rooted in God, but moreso rooted in the trials of man, the inclusion of reality in the suffering and persecution, and the yearning for understanding. The mythic allusions to God, Man, the Quest, the finding, Identity, universality, redemption, humanity, sharing, charity make Christianity, regardless of whether it is spread by death, or by life, by charity, or by oppression, whether the intent is control, liberation, exploitation, or whatever, only serves as a testament to it's malleability and also completeness.

The fact of it's living nature as a living word, is what has allowed us (as African peoples) to take this word, and our understanding of this word, and to make it uniquely understandable to our plight and eventual salvation from the condition of slavery.

Black religion, like Christianity, can not be divorced from the circumstances of the situation of Blacks in America, thus, the ideas of the bible that were gravitated towards, were those that assisted the most spiritually and resonated most clearly.

Ideas of the suffering and redemption of Christ. Of forgiveness, of everlasting heaven, of the holy spirit, of spiritual visitation, of charity, of perseverance, of resurrection, of the trials in Egypt, the salvation, the lost tribe, of the fall of pride, of the rapture, resisting the temptations of the devil, of re-birth, baptism, the virgin mother, the birth in a stable manger, the three wise men, the forgiveness of Joseph, the son of God, the "way"... all of these ideas, resonated deeply within the bosoms of the Africans rendered into slavery.

What has developed, evolved, and survives to this day, is a different religion which is the synthesis of Black African traditions, Black American Suffering, and Black America salvation in the present day.

It is a wholly different religion than any other form of Christianity practiced anywhere else in the world.

The ability of the African sons and daughters to take what exists in America and was at one time foreign to them, and make it into a fully expressive element and vessel for the most meaningful cultural aspects of Black culture is one element of the African, that has never, and will never diminish.