Where a belief came from and whether it is true are two different questions. Keeping them apart is the work of this study. The question behind it is a hard one: if Scripture was twisted to justify slavery, should you judge truth by whether it comes from your own heritage? The answer argued here is no. Origin tells you who held a belief. It cannot tell you whether the belief is right. That rule cuts both ways. It keeps you from accepting a belief because your ancestors held it, and from rejecting one because your oppressors abused it.
The material comes from the New Age Spiritualism chapter of Faith That Makes Sense, a Jude 3 Project curriculum. You can work through it alone in about an hour, or with a group in one longer session. Each section asks you to do something: map an argument, test a premise, read a passage closely, or name what evidence would change your mind. Bring paper. Most of the work happens in writing the reasoning down.
Begin with the honest version of the argument
A fair test starts with the strongest form of the position. The curriculum describes the pull plainly. People learn how the Bible was used to defend chains, and a hard question follows. In the curriculum’s words, many begin to wonder, “Did I choose Jesus, or was He forced on me?” Some then turn to African spirituality, Kemeticism or related practices, hoping to find a faith untouched by oppression.
The curriculum calls this search “a deep, soul-level ache” and asks readers to honor the hunger for identity behind it. Any response that skips that step loses the argument before it starts.
Here is the reasoning, laid out in steps:
- Christianity was used by enslavers to justify slavery.
- So the Christianity handed to many Black Americans came through the hands of oppressors.
- A belief that came to us through oppressors is suspect for that reason.
- The spiritual practices of our ancestors before slavery did not come through oppressors.
- So we should return to ancestral spirituality.
Try this before reading on. Copy the five steps onto paper. Mark each one T if you think it is true, F if false, or ? if you are unsure. Then circle the step the conclusion depends on most.
The step that carries the weight
Step 1 is a matter of record. Steps 2 and 4 are historical claims too, and both are open to testing. Did Christianity reach Africans only through enslavers? Jude 3 Project holds that the faith took root in Africa centuries before it reached much of Europe, which would complicate step 2. Did the practices people now call ancestral reach us untouched by oppressors or outsiders? The next section raises a question about that. Revisit your marks on both steps as you go.
Even if steps 2 and 4 held, the argument would still turn on step 3. The conclusion follows only if a belief’s path to you decides whether it is true.
The curriculum’s name for this way of judging truth is ethnic epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how we know things. The curriculum defines this version as the idea “that the truth of a claim depends on the race of the person saying it.” Its glossary adds that this logic treats a worldview as true because it comes from one’s ancestors, “rather than because it is supported by evidence.”
The curriculum credits apologist Adam Coleman with an analogy. You are on a beach searching for a plastic spoon buried in the sand, and you are sweeping with a metal detector. You could search all day and never find it. The spoon is there, and your effort is fine. You brought a tool that cannot detect what you are looking for.
Ancestry is a real tool, and it finds real things. It can tell you what your great-grandparents practiced, where they lived and what they hoped for. Whether their beliefs about God were correct is a different kind of question. Faith That Makes Sense says it directly: “Just because our ancestors believed something doesn’t make it true.” The same chapter adds, “We need to judge faith by evidence, not just heritage.”
Look at step 3 again. If a belief is suspect because of the hands it passed through, that rule has to apply to every belief, including the ones we like.
Testing the test on both sides
The curriculum states that many primary texts behind modern Kemeticism, such as the Book of the Dead, were translated and popularized in the nineteenth century by white European figures it names as E.A. Wallis Budge and Gerald Massey. It concludes that much of modern Kemetic and New Age practice fuses ancient symbols with modern European metaphysics. Treat this as the curriculum’s account and check it against the history. Scholars and practitioners dispute how far modern Kemetic revival depends on those translators, so hold the claim loosely.
Its reach is narrow even if it holds. Used to declare Kemeticism false, it would be the same faulty tool in reverse, judging a belief by the race of the people who passed it along. What it can expose is an uneven rule. Someone who leaves Christianity because it came through white hands, then builds a new practice on texts that also came through white hands, has applied step 3 to one side only.
The same caution applies to the point about Christianity’s African roots. That history answers the charge that the faith is foreign to Black people. By this guide’s standard, though, African roots cannot make Christianity true, any more than European missionaries make it false. Faith That Makes Sense states the principle in both directions: “A worldview isn’t true just because it is African, and it isn’t false just because it is European.”
If heritage cannot settle the question either way, something else has to.
What the text asks of its readers
Read these passages slowly. For each, write down who is speaking, to whom, and what they are being asked to do.
Acts 17:11 describes Jews in Berea hearing Paul, a traveling preacher from outside their town: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” This is narrative, so it describes rather than commands, but Luke clearly approves. Notice their method. They checked Paul’s claims against something outside both him and themselves, neither trusting him for who he was nor dismissing him as an outsider.
Paul gives a short instruction in 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” In older English, prove means to test, as metal is tested. The order matters. You test first and hold on afterward, and the testing covers everything.
Proverbs 14:12 warns, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” A proverb is a wise principle, not a guarantee about every case. Its point here is modest and hard: feeling right and being right can come apart. Faith That Makes Sense makes the same distinction when it says that “while our emotions can tell us what hurts, they cannot always tell us what is true.”
Then read 1 Corinthians 15:12-19. Paul stakes the whole faith on one event: “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). He rests the faith on what happened and names the finding that would prove it false. This is why the curriculum points to a faith “that relies on evidence like the resurrection.” Jude 3 Project teaches that Jesus rose bodily from the dead in space and time, and that this is the hinge of the faith. That makes the resurrection the right kind of question to ask, because it concerns an event, and anyone’s ancestors can investigate it.
The strongest objection
A thoughtful skeptic can push back. You are making this too tidy. The misuse of Scripture is evidence. If the people who taught this faith used it to enslave, why trust anything they taught?
This deserves a real answer. The abuse is evidence of something. It shows those teachers were untrustworthy guides, and that their reading of the Bible needs independent checking. It is a strong reason to take no slaveholder’s interpretation on authority.
Whether the text says what they claimed is a separate question, answered by reading it in context, as the Bereans did. The curriculum’s leader guide draws the line this way: “The misuse of Christianity by oppressors does not reflect the gospel itself.” That claim can be checked passage by passage.
Something stays open, and it should. Heritage carries real weight as evidence. What your ancestors saw, suffered and passed on is testimony, and testimony counts. The question is what it is testimony about. A grandmother’s witness can show how a faith held people up, or how others used it to hurt them. By itself, it cannot show whether the God she prayed to exists. Jude 3 Project draws a related line on ancestral practice: memory and honor of the dead, yes; veneration and spiritual contact, no. Heritage earns honor. Truth still has to be tested.
An exercise: map it, then name what would move you
This is the main practice of the guide. Give it twenty minutes.
- Choose one spiritual belief you hold firmly. It can be Christian or not.
- Write one sentence on how you came to hold it: who taught it to you, and where.
- Write a second sentence on why you think it is true. If the second sentence restates the first, you have found a belief resting on its origin.
- Write down one piece of evidence that would make you give up this belief, if it turned out to be real. Be specific.
- Do the same for a belief you reject. What evidence would make you accept it?
Step 4 is the hardest. If no possible evidence could move you, ask honestly whether you hold the belief because it is true or because it is yours.
Debrief. Go back to your marks on the five steps at the top. Which ones changed, and what changed them? Which stayed the same, and why?
Questions for discussion
- Where have you seen someone accept or reject an idea mainly because of who said it? Was the conclusion right anyway? Does that matter?
- The “white sources” point can expose an uneven rule without disproving Kemeticism. Why does keeping those two things apart matter in a real conversation?
- Could someone use the African roots of Christianity in a way that repeats the same faulty test? What would that sound like, and how would you avoid it?
- The skeptic’s objection says abuse is evidence. Where do you think that evidence reaches, and where does it stop?
- What is the difference between honoring a heritage and treating it as an authority on truth? Is there any point where the two blur for you?
If you are leading a group
For one session of about ninety minutes, a workable pace is: ten minutes for the five-step map, thirty for the middle sections and the Scripture readings, twenty for the exercise and its debrief, twenty-five for discussion, and five to close. If time runs short, protect the exercise and the objection section.
Some people in the room may have parents or grandparents who practice ancestral or traditional spirituality. The curriculum’s advice to leaders is simple: “Don’t mock the relative they love.” Talk about ideas and practices, not people. Make the exercise private by default. Invite people to share what they learned about the shape of their reasoning, not the beliefs they examined. Nobody should have to say aloud what they would need in order to leave or keep their faith.
Expect the history of slavery to bring up grief or anger. Let it. A group that hurries past the pain to win the logical point has missed why the question gets asked. Your job is to help people find the step in the argument that carries the weight.
A question to carry this week
Pick one belief you hold mainly because of where it came from. Ask what you would need to see in order to know it is true, apart from who gave it to you. Then go looking for that, the way the Bereans searched their scriptures daily. The curriculum’s line is short enough to remember: “The truth doesn’t have a race.” No heritage can make a belief true, and no history of abuse can make the truth false.