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Were You There? Godforsakenness in Slave Religion. By DAVID EMMANUEL GOATLEY. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996. xiv + 129 pp.
In the brief volume, based on a dissertation done at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, David Goatley applies fundamental questions of theodicy to the experience of enslaved African Americans. Based primarily on an analysis of narratives left by ex-slaves to WPA interviewers in the 1930s, and on the lyrics to slave spirituals, he argues that "the theology of the slaves is that God was presumed to be the one who never...