Christian apologist Adam Coleman recently stopped by ARB TV to discuss the history of African Americans and religion with Jamaal Bernard.
Coleman’s two-part interview went in-depth into the area of Urban Apologetics as he highlighted some of the common misunderstandings and misconceptions skeptics have of Christianity. One frequent argument he has encountered is the notion that many see Christianity as the white man’s religion and that African American’s were forced to practice Christianity by their slave owners as a form of subjugation.
“They believe it to be that Africans had no dealings with Christianity prior to the slave trade, plantations [and] so on and so forth,” he explained. Coleman admitted that he too did not know how to address this concern initially. However, after conducting research into the history of Christianity and Africa, he learned that Christianity existed within Africa, and was practiced by Africans long before the Transatlantic slave trade.
“There’s nearly two thousand years of Christian history on the continent of Africa within about fourteen hundred of that coming before the Transatlantic slave trade,” stated Coleman. He also noted that Christian communities were developed in Africa as well.
The podcaster further explained how a special slave Bible was created for enslaved Africans, where most of the books in the Bible were removed. Given this revelation, Coleman posed a poignant question, “If Christianity was the white man’s religion [and] the Bible was so harmful to African American’s, why did they take out ninety percent of the Old Testament and sixty percent the New Testament to subjugate people?”
Coleman answered his own question by pointing to the liberating nature of the Bible specifically, and Christianity more broadly, and how they run contrary to the slaveholding culture.
“They know that if they gave them the entirety of it, you can’t get around the liberation that comes from surrounding your identity in Christ and knowing what your real value is,” Coleman stated. “You can’t get around the passages about God liberating His people out of the bondage of Egypt.”
For the full discussion, head over to ARB TV.
