By the Rev. Dr. Jin Cho, C4SO’s Canon for Racial Diversity and Justice
“It started with the hush harbor,” she explained.
My friend Joy is a self-described activist, pastor and a public theologian; a daughter of sharecroppers from Oklahoma; and a proud grandmother. She has become a wise older sister in the Lord to me—a significant category within my Korean heritage. She’s had more than a significant role in helping me see American Christianity from a Black perspective.
“Hush harbors” were secretive, secluded spaces in which slaves would gather to worship in freedom, away from the masters’ controlling and manipulative religion of the Slave bible. The Slave bible, as you might be aware, was a redacted version of Scripture that was permitted for use by enslaved men and women. Various versions were circulated, but the general idea was that while “saving of souls” was important—and was in fact used as a justification for slavery itself—there were certain parts of the Bible deemed “not necessary” for enslaved people to know, specifically the connection between our spiritual salvation and our material/earthly liberation in all spheres of existence. In so doing, the masters conformed Christianity to justify and support their depraved actions and ideologies.*
While in the masters’ church, the preacher told slaves to obey their masters and sing softly, but in the sacred space of hush harbor, enslaved persons found their bodies affirmed by God, incorporated African cultural expressions of spirituality, and were fed in their imagination by the whole Bible. It was in the hush harbor where they would hear stories of the exodus of the children of Israel from slavery, and then imagine their own exodus into freedom.
Hush harbors are more than just a historical precursor to the development of the Black church. They continue to “do work.” In creating a space of subversive resistance against the cultural supremacy and political ideology of so much American Christianity, Black church spaces in America have long carried the whole gospel, fueling the imagination of many of our heroes, such as Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr., and John Lewis. This subversive resistance would famously fuel the imagination of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose time at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church would be critical for his resistance in the confessing church movement against German state Christianity. Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates notes that the largest slave rebellion, led by Nat Turner, was, in fact, motivated by Scripture, most likely learned secretively in a hush harbor.
In other words, despite the best attempts of the enslavers, the gospel of Jesus Christ was not neutered of its power to spark an imagination for living into God’s justice and peace in this life, as well as the next.
“We still need the hush harbor,” Joy challenged me. She was talking about sacred spaces to subvert the powerful of this world, where our imagination for the whole gospel can be renewed and fostered.
The subjugation of Christ’s gospel to the Empire’s purposes is nothing new. But there is something new about the most recent attempts to co-opt the name of Christ to serve political purposes. I, along with many of you, have been stunned by the mainstreaming of Christian Nationalism, while pastors and priests are being assailed for calling for greater empathy and mercy for the oppressed and marginalized. Our vice president has justified the current administration’s brutal tactics against immigrants and refugees, as well as wholesale cutting off the most basic humanitarian aid, by appealing to the “Christian concept,” he says, of only loving those who are closest to us.
Sadly, such justifications are gaining traction among Christians, even those who sit in our pews. I don’t know too many priests or pastors who have spoken out against such blatant blasphemy and not received some sort of pushback. At the very least, most of us who are called to parish ministry are aware that there is danger in speaking out. Why are you being so partisan? Why not just stick to the gospel? You are being divisive.
How then do we foster an imagination to make sure we preach the whole gospel? How do we find our courage?
The example of hush harbors tells me that we cannot be satisfied with the partial gospel imposed upon us by the powerful. We need to make our way toward the margins, to those who experience life from the margins, so they can wake us from our stilted imagination of the greatness of God.
The hush harbor, and later the Black church, models for us spaces of safety and generativity, of finding our authentic voice. The hush harbor serves as a rest stop for the weary, a new sort of Underground Railroad. In these spaces, people can flourish in the unabashed flow of the justice and mercy of God.
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* In the particular version of the Slave bible I picked up, the Exodus story begins at chapter 19, long after Moses’s epic struggle to free the people of God from their enslavement in Egypt, long after the word “Exodus” finds its meaning in a very not-metaphorical journey of liberation.
In Paul’s letters, there is no mention in Ephesians of the Christ who destroys “the dividing walls of hostility” and thus creating a “new humanity,” because the editors decided it was not noteworthy information; instead, the epistle starts with chapter 4, which changes the whole tenor of even what remains.
Galatians conveniently skips over the Apostle’s admonition to remember that we are “all children of God” and that there is “neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.” It is no wonder, then, that Howard Thurman would note that his grandmother, who had been born a slave, was not particularly fond of Paul.
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The Rev. Jin Cho is a C4SO priest and Canon for Racial Diversity and Justice. He is currently serving as Interim Rector at Church of the Resurrection L.A. He received his doctorate of ministry from Fuller Seminary, writing on “Race, Evangelicalism, and the Local Church.” He has 20-plus years experience as a pastor and a church planter, but in recent years consults with churches and non-profits to have courageous conversations around various justice issues. He and his far more interesting wife Esther have been married for 25 years, and they have two extremely extroverted middle-schoolers.