Ask what the Black church believed, and the first evidence is a refusal. The Unspoken curriculum from Jude 3 Project notes that Black Christians tolerated segregation at water fountains and lunch counters for almost a century after emancipation, yet refused it around communion tables and baptismal pools. That refusal came from doctrine. The curriculum names four core convictions behind it: every person bears God’s image, God is sovereign, God is a liberator, and God is making one people in Christ. Each has roots in Scripture, and each left visible marks on how Black Christians worshiped, organized and endured.
This guide takes the four convictions in order, gives you short observation tasks in the key passages, and then asks the harder question of whether real doctrine is also sound doctrine. It closes with a practice for reading the theology underneath a church’s actions. Work through it alone in about an hour, or split it across two group sessions, with the convictions in the first and the discussion and practice in the second.
Where the misunderstanding starts
Theology can live outside a textbook. The curriculum defines it as disciplined reflection on God’s self-revelation in Scripture. That reflection can be printed. It can also be preached, sung, and acted out in decisions that cost people something.
The curriculum gives two reasons the charge has persisted. It says the critique has mostly come from white evangelicals who read emotion and activism in Black worship as a lack of intellect and evangelism. It also says much of the Black church’s theology never reached widely available print. Its example is Charles Octavius Boothe’s Plain Theology for Plain People, a systematic theology first published in 1890 that covers God, humanity, last things, the Bible and the church. The curriculum notes it became widely available only in 2017, and points to the barriers Black Christians faced with major Christian publishers.
Then comes the central claim: “In fact, it was their theological formation and their understanding of Christ’s call to make disciples that shaped their charisma and desire for social change.” The sentence runs from cause to effect. Doctrine came first, and the activism grew out of it. If that is right, you can read the beliefs off the actions. As the curriculum puts it, “We are not left without a record of what they believed and why.”
Observe first: Write down one practice you associate with the Black church, such as a song, a style of preaching, or a public action. You will come back to it in the final practice.
Conviction one: every person bears God’s image
Read Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Before reading on, note who receives the image in this verse. Is it limited to any people or nation?
The image belongs to humanity as created. Theologians call this the imago Dei, Latin for “the image of God.” The curriculum puts it first: “The belief that all humans are created in the image of God is the cornerstone of the Black Church.” This is the doctrine of humanity, and the rest depends on it. If Black people were lesser, segregation in church would be a social arrangement. If they bore God’s image fully, segregation in church was a lie about God’s creation.
The curriculum’s account of the church’s origins shows the conviction at work. In Philadelphia, Black worshipers at St. George’s Methodist Church were physically removed during prayer for sitting in a section reserved for whites. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones went on to found what became the African Methodist Episcopal Church, starting Bethel Church in 1794. In Savannah, the enslaved preacher Andrew Bryan kept preaching through whippings and jail, and founded African Baptist Church the same year.
The curriculum also reports that Rev. Francis J. Grimke, a former slave, preached in 1910 that race prejudice contradicts every known principle of Christianity. Its conclusion about why the church fought: “They fought for equality, not only for their own preservation, but also to preserve the truth of Christianity and the Bible.” That is a doctrinal motive. They believed the faith itself was being misrepresented.
Conviction two: God is sovereign
The second conviction moves from who people are to who God is. Sovereignty means God rules, and he is able to act when and how he chooses.
According to the curriculum, Dr. Mika Edmondson described two truths the Black church held: God is good, and God will make a way out of no way. Edmondson explained that God takes the raw material of oppression, injustice and suffering and somehow makes a way out of it. The curriculum describes the effect of that belief: “It was this belief that God can do whatever He wants, when He wants, that keeps black people faithful and hopeful even in the midst of what appeared to be setbacks and slow progress.”
The order matters. Image-bearing tells you the injustice is wrong. Sovereignty tells you the injustice will not have the final word. The curriculum’s example is the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began in a church meeting and was sustained by local ministers for 380 days of walking, carpooling, lost jobs and police pressure on Black cab drivers.
Observe: The curriculum mentions the song “Didn’t My God Deliver Daniel” as one this conviction kept on people’s lips. Read Daniel 6. Mark the verse where Daniel enters the den and the verse where he is delivered. What happens in between, and what does that sequence suggest about how this conviction sustained people who had not yet seen their deliverance?
Conviction three: God is a liberator
The third conviction moves from God’s rule to God’s action in history. Read Exodus 14. God does more than sympathize with enslaved Israel. He brings them out through the sea. The curriculum says this deliverance made the Black church certain that God opposed slavery and every form of oppression.
Slow down here. Exodus is narrative. It describes what God did for Israel, and it does not by itself dictate what methods later readers should use. That distinction explains something in the curriculum’s own history. Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey, it notes, found in the Bible a God who acted through signs, miracles and even violence, and they took up a physical fight. The Civil Rights Movement held the same conviction but chose nonviolence based on Christ’s love ethic. The belief about God was shared. The application differed, because one read Israel’s story as a model for action and the other read it in light of Jesus’ teaching.
The curriculum then brings in Psalm 127:1: “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” Churches organized marches, taught people to read so they could register to vote, and trained sit-in volunteers. They also called for fasting and prayer. The curriculum’s reason: “They trusted in God to liberate them, not merely the work of their hands.” In this theology, people joined a liberation that God himself was carrying out.
Conviction four: God is making one people
Observe: Read Ephesians 2:14-18 before the commentary below. List who is divided in these verses and what divides them. Then list what Christ does, and what both groups receive as a result.
Verse 14 reads, “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.” Paul is writing about Jews and Gentiles, two groups divided by deep hostility, made into one new people through the cross. Verse 18 adds, “For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” The curriculum notes that early Black Christians had no doubt Christ had given them the same access he gave white believers. Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21 shows the purpose of that oneness: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
The curriculum makes a strong claim: “Nothing authenticates the Christianity of the Black Church and its activism more than its emphasis on unity.” The lesson states the aim: “The goal wasn’t just to overcome oppression and segregation but to overcome racism.” The curriculum reports that Rev. C.T. Vivian described the Movement as a spiritual declaration of independence for Black people and many white people too: freedom from oppression for one group, freedom from hate for the other. That vision fits the one new humanity of Ephesians 2, where the goal includes the oppressor’s repentance.
Put together, the four form one argument. People bear God’s image, so treating them as lesser is false. God is sovereign, so that falsehood will not last. God frees the oppressed, so his people can join his work. God’s aim is one reconciled people, so freedom includes reconciliation. Each claim rests on the one before it, and each shows up in practice.
Real doctrine and sound doctrine
Showing that the Black church holds coherent doctrine does not settle whether every teaching in it is sound. A theology can be consistent and still wrong in places. Soundness has a different test: faithfulness to Scripture, read in its context. That is the standard Jude 3 Project applies here, honoring the Black church as a guardian of historic Christian faith and a witness for justice while calling it, like every tradition, to continual faithfulness to Scripture. The four convictions pass that test where they stay close to the passages above. Genesis 1, Ephesians 2 and John 17 say what the curriculum draws from them.
The harder cases come at the point of application, and there faithful Christians have disagreed. Turner and Vesey and the Civil Rights Movement drew different conclusions about violence from the same belief in a liberating God. Christians still differ over how directly Exodus applies to modern political struggle, and over how far a church should go in public action. The Black church is also many congregations and denominations, and particular strands of teaching within it can be weighed and found wanting, as in any tradition. The curriculum itself asks which tenets in the Black church have been harmful or unhelpful. A sound tradition is one that keeps asking that question with an open Bible.
A misreading to avoid
One common mistake is to treat “God will make a way out of no way” as a guarantee of a particular outcome on a particular schedule. The sovereignty conviction is a claim about who God is. The people of Montgomery walked for more than a year without knowing when or how it would end, and the conviction sustained them because it did not depend on seeing results. If you bring a hard situation of your own to this doctrine, bring it as trust in God’s character and rule.
Questions for discussion
- Before this study, where would you have looked to decide whether a church has sound theology? Would you look anywhere different now?
- Black Christians refused segregation at the communion table while tolerating it at lunch counters. What does that difference tell you about how they understood the church?
- Why does the image of God have to come before sovereignty, liberation and unity? What happens to the other three without it?
- Turner and Vesey and the Civil Rights Movement shared a belief that God is a liberator but chose different methods. How should a Christian decide how to apply a narrative passage like Exodus?
- Psalm 127:1 holds human labor and God’s work together. Where do you tend to lean too far toward one or the other?
- Are there teachings in your own church tradition you think have been harmful or unhelpful? How would you weigh them against the passages in this guide?
- If someone read your congregation’s theology from its actions alone, what would they conclude it believes?
A practice: read the theology off the action
This exercise trains you to see what the curriculum claims is there. Do it alone on paper or in pairs within a group. Facilitators, give the last step the most time. If someone names a practice they consider unhealthy, let the group weigh it honestly. That habit is what the guide is meant to build.
- Choose one action from this guide: the walkout at St. George’s, Bryan’s refusal to stop preaching, the Montgomery boycott, the prayer and fasting campaigns, or the call for white Christians to be freed from hate.
- Write down which of the four convictions the action requires, and explain why in a sentence or two. Some actions need more than one.
- Return to the practice you wrote down at the start. Ask what a person must believe about God or people for that practice to make sense.
- Test that belief against a specific passage of Scripture, read in its context. Decide whether the passage supports the belief, qualifies it, or fails to support it, and write down the verse that decided it for you.