Word: biblee
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This reinterpretaiton of the Bible was more than a psychological escape from the pains of this world. Rather, it was a practice that eventually defined as "sacred" traditionally secular spaces, such as the cotton fields.
What the slaves did with the Bible is the key to understanding how Bell's otherwise radically pessimistic work nonetheless exhibits an unabiding faith in redemption. As historians such as Lawrence Levine have shown, the Black slaves reconstructed a text designed to justify their servitude into one that brought about...
JUST AS Blacks took the white man's religion and made it their own, Bell argues, it is necessary for them to take the white man's law and make it Black folks'. As Crenshaw says in the book's final chapter, "If our slave ancestors could do so much...
After redefining the white man's words, the slaves hurled them at him from all corners of the plantations with raised voices. The Negro spirituals became what Bell calls "a theology in song," and everywhere it challenged those masters who professed to believe in the Bible most deeply.
This reticence is especially ironic on this campus, founded to educate future Puritan ministers. Puritans found religion a part of every moment of their lives. They discussed and debated their beliefs endlessly, not just amongst themselves but with the world at large. In college, they learned Greek, Latin, and Hebrew...