Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology

Hopkins contends that the lives of enslaved African Americans were the foundational source of liberating faith and practice for African Americans today. Down, Up, and Over draws on their religious experience, and the example of their faith and witness, to develop a constructive theology of liberation. "African American belief structures and hope practices blossom from the black folk's religious encounters with God," Hopkins contends. The first half of his ambitious work reconstructs the cul...