ABSTRACT
African-American worship is the ritualized legacy of persons who have lived for nearly four hundred years in a nation in which they persevere and thrive even as they continue to suffer discrimination and scorn because of the color of their skin. Africans were brought to this country as chattel, beasts of burden. Their captors tore them from their families, land, and religious traditions, forcing them to construct anew the meaning-making structures of human existence. A random group of individuals thrown together in the terror of kidnapping, sale and bondage, Africans in the North American colonies of Great Britain forged themselves into a people.1 Together they established new religious practices that reflected their condition, provided comfort and healing in the midst of daily trauma, and offered a vision of an alternative future that empowered them to join and sustain their struggle for liberation.
