to the Spiritual Growth Study on Exodus: The Journey to Freedom.
Christine Keels and the Rev. Bernard Keels have provided a deep
river of content to draw us through the historical journey of African
American Methodists in the United States. For these modern-day successors
of the ancient Hebrews whom Moses led out of slavery in Egypt, there
is a river between their desert wandering and the promised land;
it is the river Jordan, and those traveling to the promised land
have to go through it.
can be read as an ancient history of the Hebrews, showing the power
of our God, whom we worship in church each Sunday. This is important.
But the United States has its own Exodus story to tell, and we have
not crossed over Jordan yet. Many generations have passed since
our Civil War, and many have forgotten the story of how freedom
was won for an enslaved people in this country. There is no annual
commemoration like that of the Jewish Passover. No bread is broken,
no wine is spilled, and no story is told about why "this night
is different from all other nights" in remembrance of the African
American freedom story. There is no solemn celebration to remind
the people of the present about the lash and chains suffered by
their forebears and about their ancestors brave resistance
and long journey toward freedom.
This more recent
freedom saga is complex. The story of Black Americans cannot be
told without the story of White Americans. The stories of Native
Americans, Spanish descendants, and a multitude of immigrants -
the Germans, Irish, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and a
host of other transplanted people, some willing, some coerced -
are entwined with the story of a nation founded on the genocide
of the peoples native to the land and on the slave labor of the