Abstract
This paper will review the political roles of the black church, black religion and black religious leaders in the struggle against oppression in the U.S.A. The topic is extensive and this survey necessarily brief; nevertheless, it is hoped that this will provide an introduction to the significance of the black church in African American history. The context is the political economy of the U.S.A. characterized by multiple systems of domination and subordination: specifically racism, sexism, and class oppression. As such, it provides a framework for the
study of black history focusing on questions of power and powerlessness and allows us to assess the impact of the black church on the structures and mechanisms of domination as well as on the efforts of the powerless to resist that domination. For the purpose of illumination, black church history will be divided into four periods, an admittedly risky but useful periodization offered previously by Professor Gayraud Wilmore (unpublished paper presented at the 1984 Martin Luther King, Jr. Seminar in Havana, Cuba) and used here to facilitate a discussion of a few key political roles performed by the black church.