Adult Education

In winter 2025, the Sunday morning course covers one of the most remarkable stories of the Christian church in America: how enslaved African Americans learned about and embraced Christianity, in the process changing the way other Americans experienced and understood the faith. The course discusses how an enslaved people survived 250 years of bondage and how their descendants survived and combatted a century of Jim Crow. It also tells stories about little-known heroes of our faith. 

During the first century of slavery in the southern United States, most slaveowners and clergymen avoided sharing the Christian faith with enslaved people, out of fear that the gospel message would undermine the slave system. This fear proved prophetic. Ellen Tucker leads this course, using resources developed for a new digital atlas of American history.

If you cannot attend on Sundays, you can watch videos for each lesson.  Click here for the videos