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Bible and African Americans (Facets)

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Vincent Wimbush provides a history of African American interaction with the Bible in his book The Bible and African Americans. He uses a metaphor of a circle to discuss the various "readings" of the text throughout history.

The first reading is where African sensibilities cause Africans to look at the book with ambivalence. The second reading incorporates the period of the Negro Spirituals in slavery and emphasizes how Africans took on the Bible as a world to live in that allowed Africans in America to communicate with one another when all of their language and world was removed from them. The third reading is called by Wimbush "establishing the circle." Here is the period of activism against slavery where the African American readers used the scripture to find liberation as God's purpose. This is the reading of the establishment of the churches like Black Baptists and Black Methodists. The fourth reading is called by Wimbush "reshaping the circle" which is taking the circumstances of urban African American life and using it to interpret the Bible. In this "reading" we see such diverse groups as Father Divine's, the Nation of Islam, and even the Pentecostal movement.

The fifth reading is a Fundamentalist reading called "stepping outside the circle." In this reading some African Americans buy into the interpretive framework of hermeneutics independent and of race. In this it is a distinct break from all the other readings that took African American life as its point of departure. The Bible is seen as racially neutral and universal. The sixth reading is an addition of the women's reading and thus "makes the circle true."

This book is very valuable in providing a scheme for looking at how the Bible is operating in an African American sermon. More effort and work would have been appreciated in distinguishing the Pentecostal movement from the other movements in its group and understanding why it was not placed in with other fundamentalists.

The Bible and African Americans: A Brief History. A Review

Wimbush's basic purpose is to sketch "how African American engagement with the Bible can best understood over its many centuries and radically diverse circumstances" (ix). The book is divided in six short readings or chapters. The term "readings" is consistent with the content of the book. By consequence, this volume revolves around six major ways (or "phases") in which African Americans have engaged with Scriptural interpretation during slavery up to the modern era. African Americans' interaction with the Bible has been shaped by the dynamics of social-cultural, economic, political-educational, yet religious conditions of the African American community. The gist of the book is so "provide the framework for a different kind of interpretive history of African Americans--based not on great individuals or prestigious institutions , but on the people's interpretations or sensibilities and orientations as evidenced in their engagements with the most important, most accessible, and most influential text in our culture" (9-10).

To help us get a good grasp of the subject matter, Wimbush presents the issue in a convenient manner by bringing our attention to the Sitz im Leben which gave birth, shaped and structured such phenomenon to occur. It was a setting that "was understood to be partly biblically inspired, violently secured "New World"--the "New Israel" that would become the United States -the Bible was the single most important centering object for social identity and orientation among European dominants," Wimbush observes (4). In other words, the issues of social location and interpretation are invaluable resources. These have become criterion of authencity in the New World . To a great measure, among the African slaves, the Bible have become a venerated document, an object of great significance that was read through the lenses of a language-world and translated in their context. A "world" in which African and former slaves and disenfranchised individuals could find rest, identity, and self-affirmation. Evidently, the process was deemed gradual, yet uninterrupted and has not still come in its fruition. The Bible was and is still history in the making in the African American community. Each reading, which we will briefly discuss below, corresponds to various time periods; and each stands in response to "historical situations and collective self-understandings" (8).

In Reading 1, (" African Sensibilities as the Center of the Circle: First contact" ) Wimbush contends that African American engagement with the Bible did not initiate in the New World, the soil in which Africans were involuntarily brought in as slaves, rather should begin with their contact, "as far aback as the fifteenth century, with Europeans on African soil" (12). How did Africans react in their first encounter with the Biblical Text ? According to Wimbush, Africans' reception of the Bible was expressed in terms of a mélange of reverence and awe, disdain and bewildernment. Why were such complex attitudes toward Scriptures? Wimbush notes that the Bible as cargo was rightly identified with the Europeans along with other cargo, and a host of differences the Westerners brought in with them. These include their appearance, speech and worldview. They presented themselves to be "other" in the world of the Africans and thought themselves to be powerful, superior, and civilized. Beyond what has been stated; Africans could not be persuaded the "sacred" could be located in a book as the European missionaries believed and maintained. Inevitably , as Wimbush comments, it was not the European's perception of the sacred nature of the book that was problematic to the Africans. "It was instead the Europeans' claims regarding the boundness and the exclusive authority of the book and their emphasis on the past and on the discontinuous, or single, nature of the revelation associated with the book" (17). Indeed, it was a clash of two different worlviews; these two were irreconcilable.

Reading 2 ("Creating the `New World' Circle: Folk Culture") directs our attention towards the mass exodus from Africa to the New World; Africans were involuntarily brought in to a new setting. Wimbush rightly interprets, "the new setting meant slavery... a forced presence in the United States" (21). During the eighteenth century era significant number of Africans began to embrace Christianity, Wimbush comments. This period also was critical to the extent religious expects commented that a type of African American folk religious ethos had occurred in the New World. Hence, black slaves were being converted abundantly to the Christian faith due to Europeans' evangelical preaching and piety occurred on plantations and in camp meetings. The thrust of this mode of evangelization revolved around two factors . Emphasis on conversion experience was an ostensible indication of, (1) God's acceptance of the worth of the individual, and (2)formation of communities of the converted for fellowship and mutual affirmation (22). Therefore African slaves voluntarily (?) adopted the religion of their masters and received their God.

In addition, it is also very important to draw our attention to the content of the faith proclaimed to the slaves. By centralizing the priesthood of the believer (personal freedom) to read the Bible and interpret it according to one's interpretation, African slaves began to conceptualize the sacred text and incorporated it in songs, prayers, sermons, spirituals, dance, testimonies, addresses, and ultimately controlled it for self-affirmation. So the Bible became a subservient document to anyone's hermeneutics. Wimbush says Scriptures "came to represent a vitual language world that the enslaved folk, too, could enter and mainupulate in light of their social experiences" (23). For example, events in the Old Testament recounted God's deliverance of the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, prophetic denunciations of social injustice and call for social justice were all incorporated and interjected in their spirituals, their sermons, and in their testimonies. As Wimbush remarkedly notes "The spirituals reflect the process of transforming the book religion of the dominant peoples into the necessary more complex rendering of perspectives and sentiments of the Africans who were slaves" (25).

At this juncture, African Americans have gained their own authority on Scriptural interpretation respectively and created their own texts and hermeneutical system. Quite a different approach to their whites' teachers!

Reading 3, ("Establishing the Circle: National [ist] Identities and Formations) this period precedes the Civil War. Wimbush discusses the following factors. First, for many blacks, this period symbolized somewhat opportunities, the highway to freedom and social-political interaction with the rest of the culture. Blacks began to participate considerably in the American dream; making critical decisions that would later not only affect the Black community and image but also how African Americans were being treated in the American society. However, a relatively small number of African Americans were allowed education opportunities and were becoming acceptable US citizens. According to Wimbush, it was also an apt moment for African Americans, particularly those who identified themselves with the "Black nationalist" movement, to begin engaging the culture in intelligent dialogues on the morality, social utility, economics, and politis of slavery. However, the Bible continued to be used as a "weapon" by former slaves to arouse the consciousness of the US Government on several critical factors. African Americans alluded to Gal. 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slaver nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ" to pronounce prophetic judgment against the American Government for enslaving Africans and dehumanizing children of Africa. For many blacks, the Galatian passage was understood to celebrate the notion of Christian unity for all children of God. Wimbush says "This reading of the Bible among African Americans extends at least from the nineteenth century to the present. It has historically reflected and shaped the ethos and thinking of the majority of African Americans" (38). In part, this was the ostensible core message of the Black nationalists. It was also during this era that many spiritual figures in the Black community established autonomous "protonational denominational" religious bodies independent from white institutions (35).

In the subsequent year, in the early twentieth century, Wimbush, once again, observes the rise of another form of bible reading; occurred in the large urban areas disseminated by a host of various groups in the African American community. Reading 4 is rightly entitled "Reshaping the Circle: Re-mixes and Re-formations." By this concept, Wimbush informs us that the Bible and other sacred writings were used complementarily by blacks. Groups that were connected with the movement claimed to have "esoteric knowledge or principles" of the Christian Bible. Wimbush also reports that they "lay (laid) claim to the absolute legitimacy of such knowledge or principle, claiming exclusive possession and knowledge of other holy books, or previously apocryphal parts of the Bible and having in their midst practitioners of healing and other miracles and wonders" (50). Rightly observed, various readings of Scripture were expressions of different attitudes about the society and culture African Americans inhabited. It was also during this critical period a swarm of prominent religious bodies were created by blacks such as the Garvey Movement, Father Divine and the Peace Mission Movement, the Black Jews, the Nation of Islam, the Spiritual churches, and the Pentecostal Movement (55).

The fifth reading ("Stepping Outside the Circle: Fundamentalism") took a radical shift in the African American biblical interpretation. The fundamentalist movement was prominent during 1940s and 1950s respectively. Many Blacks were closely associated with it. What was the basis for African Americans' appeal to Fundamentalism? Wimbush remarks this had to do "with fundamentalism [itself] and an attraction to white fundamentalist communities" (62). Wimbush also discussed the rise of historical criticism in the sphere of Biblical scholarship during this epoch. Scholars from that perspective began to approach the Bible Text from a pure historical-critical point of view, contended that the Bible was written in "social context and different times by different human authors" (65) and must be studied, analyzed in such background. So Fundamentalism was born in reaction to this critical reading of the Bible, and out of concern to protect the veracity of the Old and New Testaments and maintain its universal salvific message. By consequent, black and white Christians rejected robustly this (historical-critical approach) modernist approach driven Biblical hermeneutics.

Reading six ("Making the Circle True: Women's Experiences) represents another big shift in the history of African American biblical interpretation tradition. African American Women became more vocal in terms of their theological expression and social and cultural engagement. They raised concerns about their inclusion in positions of leadership and authority in society and in the church. Black women wanted to be acknowledged in the public sphere, as well as in religious communities (76-77). Wimbush is right by noting that, "... women have historically had less access to the public stage and forum, but they have nonetheless came to expression in different genres and media, such as in journals and diaries; some in artistic works, such as poetry, fiction, and music; others in public speeches, including sermons; still others in scholarly works" (78). Black women (i.e. from Philis Wheatley to modern womanist) in particular have been successful participant interpreters throughout the history of African American readings of the Bible (76). In due course, this contention would give birth to what so-called Womanist Biblical interpretation, an aspect (or a subset?) of Black liberation theology.

In the session entitled "Ongoing Engagement," the author recapitulates the content of the book by reemphasize the relationship between the Bible and African Americans. As previously noted, the Bible has always had a prominent place in the African American community, "in shaping the forms and content of the African American imaginary" (83). In the history of African Americans' interactions with Scriptures, the Bible reflects both agency and social power, Wimbush informs us (ibid). Wimbush also reminds us that "The Bible was embraced and continues to be embraced to help build others worlds of language, discourse, and imagination..." in the black community (84). On the other hand, he acknowledges that not all African Americans have effectively embraced the Bible. Finally, we are advised that the chief issue is not the meaning of the text, it is rather "meaning and text that are at issue," Wimbush concludes (84).

In The Bible and African Americans, Vincent Wimbush provided a succinct historical analysis of African American interaction with the Bible. The Bible and African Americans has enabled us to consider African American readings of the Bible and allowed us to reflect upon various conditions that gave rise to such approaches. Wimbush gave us a window to look at the Bible through the lens of African American experience, a mix of vital facets of faith and life. A window that is colored with memories, values, ideas and historical reality. It is also a world that represents both the crisis of identity and struggle for identity for people of African descent in the New World.

In this reading, Winbush endeavored to demonstrate that the Bible has always played a significant role in the formation of the black community, and continues to have an unending impact on the African American imagination. The author has effectively exhibited how interpretations of ordinary African Americans of the Bible have revolutionized their world, the struggle for freedom, equality and recognition.

The Bible and African Americans must be read contextually; in various phases each reading occurred. That is in their historical, social-political, communal, cultural-historical, ethnological and geographical level (8-9). A handful of helpful endnotes is included. The book did not address various ways in which the Bible has been engaged by African American Biblical scholars. Granting that, Wimbush stimulated our thoughts of various strends that would later develop into (or give birth to) liberation theology in 1960s but has not given us a successful treatment of the topic itself. After all, one should not expect too much out of this small volume.

Seminary and religious students as well as ministers and people in the academia will find this short book valuable and informative. The Bible and African Americans is not simply an account of African Americans' encounter with the Bible but also a report of their own history as they sought to find hope and freedom; through the testimony of Biblical texts in the American society. Vincent L. Wimbush also edited a full treatment of the topic in African Americans and The Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures published by The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc, 2003. Both volumes are highly recommended.