How do you talk about George Washington’s slave? What’s more, how do you illustrate it?!!!

To me this story illuminates the civil religion box we are in. We aren’t limited to Voldemort in terms of what must not be named.

We hear tales of rigid oppressive religious dogma that closes out the sun and shuts our mouths, but in a world without the Christian God there is little that can challenge the law and the justice it requires.

What makes Christianity thrive is how strong grace meets strong justice.

The most shocking think about American slavery is how it produced the black church and how it is the black church that has brought forth to this day the racial demographic most reliably identifiable as Christian. Is the incarceration rates of Blacks a coincidence in the ongoing presence of the church? How often don’t I meet pastors with prison records?

In the incarnation God brings glory into the darkest places. On Good Friday darkness fell upon Jerusalem. The Roman cross becomes the Christian cross when the darkness of the tomb is broken. pvk