"Slavery seemed destined to last for generations, but now their [the slaves'] patience has had its perfect work, history can not afford to lost any portion of its record. There is no parallel instance of any oppressed racethus sustained by the religious sentiment alone."
                                               -- General Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Hold ON
Luke

Anyone who attends a church that uses a lectionary--a cycle of Bible readings that last for an entire year--will, over time, become familar with the verses of scripture that present the life and sayings of Christ from the gospels, and will know the more common verses that share the teachings and beliefs of the Christian faith, expressed by St. Paul, in the epistles. These two pillars, the acts of Christ and their meaning for believers, are the twin foundations of Christian experience. They mark the boundaries of Christian life. They act as a guide for the behavior, outlook, attitudes that are to be expressed as believers encunter dificulty or success. Many books of daily devotion also follow the lectionary. These present silhouettes and daily occurrences which are changed and filled with new meaning when seen through the eyes of people whose hearts are filled with the power and grace of God's spirit, these shared, personal relationship is at the very heart of the experience Christians revere, celebrate, and seek. This initmate and personal relationship with a living God--one who is powerful, caring, and always acting--is the most precious and sacred experience of living, and provides assurance that after life, there is life, another life, different, unknown, bu offered through the sacrifice of Christ, the promise of his spilled blood, and felt in the heart of the believer as he and she come to undertand the acts and presence of God in their own lives.  

Yet these texts take on new meaning when they are given a close reading  as expressed in the everyday spirituals sung by the Africans of the South Carolina lowcountry. Interpretated as theology--a cogent body of belief and practice, a oral text blessed and transmitted by God, formed from Christ's words and life, experienced by the Africans in America during the --this theology offers the story of how those enslaved heard the story of Christ from their masters, and then accepted and practiced Christian virtures in the face of highminded hyposcocsy and denial by their masters.

Dressed in osnaburgs, or Russian waistcoats, or maunas (a high waisted gown), waering negro shoes, the singers of these songs the powerful songs elaborated and simplified the designs of Christian preachers, communicating the expectation, joy, meaning of salvation; explaining how a believer became justified and sanctified, supporting the faith in which belief blossomed, recording both the Biblical trails and the everyday hardships of life during slavery. 

The songs eloborate, extend, weave the meaning into the substance of daily life. The spirituals take from the diviine, and pour out the unseen powers of God into the chosen human vessels, giving those who receive an annoiting, or a call, or his special protection, or any of his gifts of strength, patience, peace, steadfastness, wisdom. The songs acknowledge and witness God's intercessory role in the large and samll of human affairs.

ANd one such song that turns around its meaning, moving from adomonition to promise, from warning to a command of praise, from dissembly to a design of united strength to overcome all forces of destruction.Hold on!