Within evangelical circles, we are currently enjoying what might be called a “retrieval revival.” Many believers are working to retrieve parts of our Christian heritage for the sake of enjoying a richer relationship with God and a deeper fellowship with his people.
For some, this looks like rediscovering older traditions of liturgical worship. Others are reading books like John Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way, which introduces ancient spiritual formation practices to a new generation. And Christian publishers are pumping out titles about the value of early church and medieval theology for God’s people today.
When we give a fresh hearing to forgotten or silenced voices, we honor the past while expanding possibilities for the future. Just as the church is “always reforming,” as the Reformation adage says, there is a sense in which it should always be retrieving. These are shared synapses, meant to fire together.
In the American context, perhaps the most urgent work of retrieval relates to African American Christianity. Even many well-read believers—regardless of ethnicity—have too little knowledge of this tradition. African American Christianity is a significant story within the singular story of church history. When we lack familiarity with its contours, we know less of God’s faithfulness. In retrieving it, however, we allow it to reform our faith and practice.
This is part of the gift Walter R. Strickland II presents to readers in Swing Low, his massive new treatment of the Black church in America. Strickland’s groundbreaking book amplifies a story we have tended to ignore or, at best, grant a selective hearing to.
Strickland, a theology professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, unfolds his account over two volumes: one subtitled A History of Black Christianity in the United States and the other An Anthology of Black Christianity in the United States (which gathers a wealth of primary source writings). Taken together, the two volumes immerse readers in the grand narrative of the Black church experience, educating and edifying as they magnify the God who makes a way out of no way (Isa. 43:19).
Many writers and scholars have tackled the story of African American Christianity, taking a variety of approaches. Previous efforts have applied the lenses of historical survey (Paul Harvey’s Through the Story, Through the Night), denominational development (C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya’s The Black Church in the African American Experience), African and cultural origins (Albert J. Raboteau’s Slave Religion), and pastoral lament (Thabiti M. Anyabwile’s The Decline of African American Theology).
For its part, Swing Low takes a comprehensive approach, blending history, theology, and firsthand testimony from prominent Black church figures. Surveying events from 1619 to the present, Strickland proposes five theological “anchors” of Black Christianity—core commitments that “emerged from the nascent days of African American faith” and endure to this day.
The first anchor is “Big God.” As Strickland describes it, the Black church tradition stresses God’s sovereignty as Lord over all, emphasizing his capacity to “do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20).
The second is “Jesus,” portrayed as the Man of Sorrows, friend of sinners, and Savior of the world. The suffering of Christ and the atoning power of his blood are vital to any understanding of Black Christian faith.
Third, Strickland notes the importance of “Conversion and Walking in the Spirit.” Here, he highlights Black Christianity’s early roots in the revivals of the First Great Awakening, which infused it with a passion for conversion and sanctification.
Fourth, Strickland highlights “The Good Book,” emphasizing the Bible’s centrality to Black faith, from its oral rehearsal in slave songs to the insistence on “telling the story” that pervades Black preaching.
Last, and crucially, Strickland cites the theme of “Deliverance.” This fifth anchor is rooted, he writes, in the fact that “God is a liberator.” Deliverance, Strickland argues, has a multifaceted meaning. The theme originates in the Old Testament, with Israel’s rescue from Egypt and the observance of Jubilee years, when slaves are freed and debts forgiven. But it reaches a climax in Christ’s atonement, which frees his people from sin and death and assures their victory in “God’s eschatological kingdom.”
Throughout Strickland’s narrative, the five anchors give readers handles by which to grasp, appreciate, and evaluate the trials and triumphs of Black faith in America. They offer a framework for seeing the development of this faith across historical eras, illustrating both where Black Christians speak with one voice and where elements of diversity remain.
As Strickland shows, various Black Christian leaders have sought to revise our understanding of certain anchors, prioritize one over the others, or integrate them in different ways. In one example, he argues that modern Black liberation theology reflects a desire to heighten themes of deliverance while departing from widely held conceptions of the role of Scripture and the work of Christ.
A picture emerges, then, of Black Christianity beginning mainly as a single trunk, from which various branches and limbs have grown in response to scholarly trends, the ravages of systematic racism, and major shifts in Black and American life. Swing Low is valuable for understanding, historically and intellectually, the “birth story” of Black Christianity and the beauty and diversity that marks its development. Even as that diversity, at times, stretches beyond the bounds of historic orthodoxy, Strickland commendably tells the full story, giving space to even dissenting writers in his anthology.
The African American Christian tradition is never merely intellectual. It is inherently celebratory and participatory, its doctrines culminating in praise and action. Likewise, Swing Low embodies the very theological tendencies it describes, which is perhaps its greatest strength. Beyond telling the story of African American Christianity, the book offers a vivid encounter with the Lord at its center. It radiates God’s faithfulness to his church, no matter the oppression or obstacles it faced.
In particular, Strickland’s narrative demonstrates the enduring witness and gift of Black faith on American soil. Early on, American colonists were frequently hesitant, if not outright unwilling, to evangelize Black slaves. One missionary, Francis Le Jau, insisted that slaves sign a pledge, wherein they promised not to “ask for holy baptism out of any design to free [themselves] … but merely for the good of [their souls].”
This form of Christianity, to borrow the language of Strickland’s fifth anchor, was purposefully devoid of deliverance. Out of this truncated gospel, however, African American Christians recovered the deliverance motif that runs through Scripture, setting “trajectories for African American Christianity that are evident among Black Christians today.” In refusing to accept a slaveholder’s gospel, Black believers cultivated a more biblical expression of Christian faith on American soil, one rooted in the love of God and neighbor. They advanced a gospel that touches body and soul.
In such ways, the advent of Black Christianity played a pivotal role in fusing orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice). In a famed second-century apologetic for Christianity, the Epistle to Diognetus, the anonymous author states that “the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body.” Reading Strickland’s account, one can hardly help concluding that God, in his providence, appointed the Black church as a corrective conscience to its white counterpart—a cleansing ecclesial soul to a compromised ecclesial body.
As Strickland puts it, African American Christianity is not impressed with an orthodoxy severed from orthopraxy, for “the simple affirmation of biblical concepts is not the goal of a doctrinal statement.” Statements like these help explain why Swing Low covers the robust yet forgotten history of African American missions. Strickland highlights the neglected stories of Betsey Stockton (a missionary to Hawaii), John Marrant (who witnessed to Native Americans in the 1770s), and Lott Carey, “the first recorded American missionary to West Africa.” For these and like-minded figures, knowing the gospel meant doing something with it for the good of others.
The thematic throughline of Swing Low is Strickland’s portrait of African American Christians as “a determined people driven by faith to pursue spiritual and social uplift for themselves and others to God’s glory.” I found his account of this drive for spiritual and social uplift in the modern era (1969 and onward) particularly riveting.
Strickland wisely devotes multiple chapters to narrating the development of Black evangelical theology in response to racists, riots, and other 1960s-era tumult. He then offers multiple chapters recounting the development of modern Black liberation theology, which occurred along a similar timeline. Strickland’s meticulous yet concise retrieval introduces readers to overlooked figures like Tom Skinner, William Pannell, and William H. Bentley. Broadly speaking, these figures sought to free themselves “from uncritical dependence upon White evangelical theologians who would attempt to tell us what the content of our efforts at liberation should be.”
Movements like the National Black Evangelical Association worked to emphasize the anchor of deliverance, attempting to counter Black liberation theology with a socially conscious evangelical alternative. Strickland observes that this movement “started strong but did not persist,” in part because “many of its primary proponents were ministry practitioners, not academics.” Since academics can focus more attention on writing than ministers, Strickland observes, Black evangelical theology couldn’t produce a body of written work to compete with the Black liberationists.
As he ranges across the modern evangelical landscape, Strickland’s narration and analysis are trenchant—and painfully relevant. Readers see how efforts to seek distance from white evangelical institutions in the 1970s foreshadow more contemporary dynamics, such as those considered in a 2018 New York Times article titled “A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Believers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches.”
I have only a few minor quibbles with Swing Low. Because Strickland’s occasional moments of prescriptive analysis are so insightful, readers might benefit from more of them, especially in the form of a longer concluding word or epilogue.
In the final chapter of volume 1, “Into the Twenty-First Century,” Strickland gives a brief assessment of where Black Christianity is headed. Strickland sees three major movements: “the anchored, conscious, and culturally liberated Christians,” “Black liberationists,” and “Black evangelicals.” The final chapter centers on the first group. As Strickland notes, believers in this category worship and serve in a range of church contexts, but they have largely broken away from white evangelicalism. Today, you can find them returning to Black churches or other ecclesial contexts that are “socially conscious and celebrate Black cultural expression,” even as they remain rooted in the five anchors.
Strickland briefly hypothesizes that this movement will develop in contrast to liberationists and “adjacent” to Black evangelicals. He suggests that “the major question for their future is not regarding doctrinal commitments,” but instead “where these believers will find their homes in terms of local churches, established Christian ministries, and institutions and church-planting movements.” This is fascinating terrain, and I’d like more of Strickland’s thoughts on it.
My other critique pertains to volume 2, Strickland’s anthology. It is, to be sure, remarkable in its depth and breadth, with genre headings that include “Sermons and Oratory,” “Theological Treatises,” “Worship and Liturgy,” and “Personal Correspondence and Autobiography.”
I was enthused to see such a wonderful range of voices and texts but surprised that Strickland omitted the fiery Jeremiah Wright sermon that caused campaign trouble for Barack Obama in 2008. Wright, Obama’s former pastor, sparked great controversy for his “God damn America” refrain decrying American militarism. For many American Christians, though, this sermon represented their first encounter with a certain strand of Black prophetic Christianity or liberation theology.
Missing as well are the contributions of African American Roman Catholics, whom the scholar Raboteau once called “a minority within the minority.” Strickland notes in the opening pages why Black Catholicism is beyond the scope of his project, but one can hope that his work will spur others to retrieve the story of Black belief in all its ecumenical dimensions.
These small constructive notes aside, Swing Low is poised to become a standard guide to the history of African American Christianity. Strickland has blessed the church with a thorough and much-needed work of retrieval. With this book’s inspiration, we can give ourselves more passionately to the reforming work of orthodoxy and orthopraxy for the spiritual and social uplift of all, to the glory of God.
Claude Atcho is pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the author of Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just.
This article appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "The Black Church's Big God".
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