My ancestors could not even read the Bible, on pain of death, for about 246 years. The Bibles that they were preached to from were missing 90 percent of the Old Testament, 50 percent of the New Testament -- any possibility that they should know that God freed His people, again and again, was denied them, along with the restrictions on how Christian masters in all times were ordered to behave without cruelty or beating, and certainly never allowed to rape and murder their slaves (Ephesians, Colossians) and that a curse had been placed by God on those who had their fields reaped without paying proper wages (James 5). They could be lynched for even going into the wrong church building -- no less a person than Robert E. Lee had to prevent that once upon a time in Virginia, late in the 1860s. People went to churches in one place and bombed Black churches in the Civil Rights Era. Only two denominations -- the Quakers and the Mennonites -- had a track record of honoring their fellow African American Christians' right to read and worship and be with their fellow Christians from 1619 to 1865, and that can be pretty much extended down to 1965. Today, certain people are trying to deny the Christianity of African Americans if we vote Democrat -- Donnie Swaggart is a leading proponent of this idea, but he is hardly alone.

There were in 1865 approximately four million enslaved Africans in 1865, and the census numbers suggest there are 12 times as many African Americans now. We have primarily identified as Christian pretty much the whole way ... so there is your massive exception, well documented for 400 years.