The existence of chattel slavery in a nation that claimed to be Christian, and the use of Christianity to justify enslavement, c
onfronted black Evangelicals [Protestants] with a basic dilemma, which may be most clearly formulated in two questions: What meaning did Christianity, if it were a white man’s religion, as it seemed, have for blacks; and, why did the Christian God, if he were just as claimed, permit blacks to suffer so? In struggling to answer these questions, a significant number of Afro-Americans developed a distinctive evangelical tradition in which they established meaning and identity for themselves as individuals and as people. Simultaneously, they made an indispensable contribution to the development of American Evangelicalism."
The historic experience of centuries of slavery in the US has had an important influence on the rise and activities of Black Evangelicalism. The narrative of Evangelicalism has been traditionally dominated by White Evangelicalism, and the stories and the existence of Black Evangelicals have remained in the peripheral vision of White Evangelicalism. The latter usually focuses on issues such as abortion rights, the war on drugs and others. For Black Evangelicals, racial issues are very important, too. This has been so even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1963, the National Black Evangelical Association was created to promote the interests of Black Evangelicalism. It´s done a lot of work. Its motto is "unity in diversity without forced conformity." But there is also Woke Evagelicalism, which has made great contributions. It is associated with the ideas and causes of the Black Lives Matter movement and its concerns about discrimination, social injustice that affects minorities, excessive use of police force against blacks and police killings of black people and other topics.
