Dr. Paul Dixon, the president of Cedarville University, the Christian college Holly and I attended in the early 1990’s, regularly preached during our mandatory, weekday chapels. He spoke with a Midwestern drawl that gave the effect of a folksy, down-home preacher. He was once an Evangelist, and you certainly heard that urgency in his chapel messages. By the way, he was a white dude, in his 50’s... like me.
During his
chapel messages, he’d often lead the students in an acapella singing of a Black
Spiritual.
Amazingly,
I was able to find online an example of a Cedarville College chapel service led
by Paul Dixon where we sang that spiritual. This is from March 30, 1992:
Holly and I were there! It’s kind of neat to think that among those voices singing that Spiritual some 30 years ago were Holly and my voices. Hers was much better, of course.
That chapel
rendition is good, I’d say. But it lacks a certain spirit that comes with Spiritual
tradition. Here’s what I mean…
There’s a danger in us singing Black Spirituals that I don’t think we should ignore.
Without an
understanding of the significance of Black Spirituals, we don’t do the music justice.
We really need an understanding of where
the music came from and what it signified. I’d like to do my best here to help
us understand. And through this understanding, it is my prayer that a deeper
faith is moved in us.
The Black
Spiritual was the earliest example of African American music forged on this
continent, and it set the stage for African American music from then on. That
said, we should remember this - the enslaved Africans brought here against their
will arrived with their own culture of music. Indigenous African music was sung
on slave ships, sung to somehow survive the brutalization and torment.
The earliest
music African Americans expressed on this continent was forged in Africa and
brought over. And eventually, the enslaved despite their plight forged a new
music, adapting Christian stories and fusing them with African sounds. This new
music – the Spiritual - is what we discuss and sing this morning.
The enslaved
people adapting Christian stories – this is important to consider. We might
have the idea that enslaver missionaries preached their white Christianity to
the enslaved, and the enslaved simply took that tradition at face value
initially, and that it morphed over time to become what it is now. That is a misreading
of the history.
Historian Henry
H. Mitchell in his book, Black Church Beginnings, writes, the enslaved people’s
“adaptations of Christianity is due very largely to [their] own initiative, not
to missionary labor for the most part.”
In other words,
the enslaved didn’t simply take in the Christianity of their enslavers. No,
they took it in, and cross-examined it, and eventually created their own slant
on Christianity, one infused with a truer light, a freer light. They in some
sense transfigured the Christianity they were handed.
They highlighted
the Exodus story of Moses and the Israelites, a story of chains gone, the Pharoah’s
army drowned, and the year of jubilee known. In that Exodus story, they saw
themselves. They highlighted the human Jesus, the one rejected and despised, one
of constant sorrows, one whipped and tormented and hung on a tree, yet one whom
death could not keep down. In Jesus, they saw themselves. They highlighted the
early church, seen in figures like Paul and Silas who were beaten down and
persecuted, placed in chains, and imprisoned by the powers that be. In the
early church, they saw their own plight, and believed the chains would come
off, the prison doors would be tossed open, and freedom would be felt one day.
See, the enslaved
internalized the biblical stories, Jesus and the early church, along with Christian
hymns, and they adapted all of it to their own understanding, experiences, and
worldviews. From the very beginning, there was transfiguration going on – European
Christianity, with its condoning of slavery, that came in; but Black Christianity,
with its subversive call for freedom, that came out.
And, yes, if
we look with open eyes, we see Black Christianity’s subversiveness in the Spirituals.
Black Liberation
Theology icon, James Cone, in his powerful book The Spirituals and the Blues
discusses this subversiveness. I’d like to quote from this text at length…
“It is the
spirituals that show us the essence of black religion, that is, the experience
of trying to be free in the midst of a "powerful lot of
tribulation."
Oh Freedom! Oh Freedom!
Oh Freedom, I love thee!
And before I'll be a slave,
I'll be buried in -my grave,
And go home to my Lord and be free.
The spirituals are songs about black souls, "stretching out into the outskirts
of God's eternity" and affirming that divine reality which lets you know
that you are a human being—no matter what white people say. Through the song,
black people were able to affirm that Spirit who was continuous with their
existence as free beings; and they created a new style of religious worship.
They shouted and they prayed; they preached and they sang, because they had
found something. They encountered a new reality; a new God not enshrined in
white churches and religious gatherings. And all along, white folk thought
the slaves were contented, waiting for the next world. But in reality they were
"stretching out" on God's Word, affirming a new-found experience that
could not be destroyed by the masters. This is why they could sing:
Don't be weary, traveler,
Come along home, come home.
Don't be weary, traveler,
Come along home, come home.
My head is wet with the midnight dew,
Come along home, come home.
The mornin' star was a witness too,
Come along home, come home.
Keep a-goin', traveler,
Come along home, come home.
Keep a-singin' all the way,
Come along home, come home.
Jes' where to go I did not know,
Come along home, come home.
A trav'lin' long and a trav'lin' slow,
Come along home, come home.
In the spirituals, black slaves combined the memory of their fathers [and mothers] with the Christian gospel and created a style of existence that participated in their liberation from earthly bondage." (James H. Cone. The Spirituals and the Blues . Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.)
As I wind things down, I go back to Cedarville College and to that Spiritual I began with. By the time I sang in that chapel service in March of 1992 with Holly singing somewhere in that space along with me, I had heard a reworking of that same Spiritual, Woke Up this Morning. Earlier that year, around Dr. King day in January, I decided to study Dr. King’s work and the Civil Rights Movement. This wasn’t part of any class, just my own curiosity and eagerness to learn. Part of that self-study was a viewing of the landmark documentary, Eyes on the Prize. In that 14 part series, a song appeared regularly. It went something like this:
From Jesus to Freedom. You might think it a big change. But not really. The Black Spiritual tradition makes it clear that Jesus and Freedom go together. In some sense, Jesus and Freedom are interchangeable. Jesus, after all, is the liberator, and not just spiritually.
That Jesus
and Freedom go together, this is a truth white American Christians need to
hear. We can’t preach Jesus on Sunday and then Monday through Saturday ignore
the reality that Black Americans don’t experience the freedoms we do. Here’s
just one example – the freedom of invisibility. I go into a supermarket, and I
do not worry about being noticed, stared at, worried about, or even followed
around. I am in some ways invisible as a white person in most aspects of
American life. No one pays me mind. Ask most Black Americans, and they will
tell you, this freedom of invisibility in white America is not a thing for
them. People pay them mind. They are not free from that. And that is
exhausting! Living in South Korea, and being noticed everywhere I went, I can
attest to how exhausting this is.
Here's another
– economic freedom is a freedom still not experienced by most Black Americans.
The disparity between white and Black Americans when it comes to economic
security remains a sinful reality.
Following
Jesus means following Jesus in the work of liberation, the work of lifting up the
oppressed and the unfree.
So, as we continue singing Spirituals this morning, let us stand in solidarity with our Black brothers, sisters, and siblings for whom those Spirituals mean everything. In this time of whitewashing our difficult history, let us feel and internalize the pain and sorrow and hope out of despair heard in these powerful songs. As we acknowledge the genius and the power of this music and of the people who moved this music, let us join in the struggle to make all people free, especially those whose fore-parents knew the ravages of human bondage. As we close out this month devoted to Black history, may Jesus the liberator free us here of racism and racial hatred and bias, and may we see the creation of a better history going forward, a history beginning now where "justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."
