James Cone’s The Spirituals and the Blues is one of most
important theology books of the twentieth century. If Faulkner
is right that the past is always present, African American
Christianity, indeed Christendom in the South, is forever marked
by the experience of slavery. Over the years, persistent myths
about the religion of these slaves grew up like weeds in our
cultural understanding; and so, it takes a mind as sharp as
Cone’s to clear a path towards the truth. One of the modern
biases that Cone corrects is the characterization of African
American spirituality as “compensatory” in the sense that
religion was merely an opiate in Marxist terms–a “pie-in-the-
sky” faith. Whereas an otherworldly faith would seek an escape
of historical reality, Cone believes that slaves directly
engaged their experience through their religion, specifically
their quest for freedom. He points out that Harriet Tubman, the
famed leader of the Underground Railroad, used the song, “When
the Chariot Comes” to let her relatives and fr