An investigation into the phenomena and practices of spiritual ...

slavery. Groups and subgroups established their own language and way of life on the basisof what they learned from their slave masters and from their own cultural origins. Thedrama of black liberation came about during the years 1800-1890, the time ofcampaigning, legislating and actively freeing slaves. Riggs (1994) outlines the primaryreasons for the socioeconomic classification of slaves as that afforded them by theirmasters, their family and their colour. Although they were of different socioeconomicstanding they were still in subordinate positions to the white plantation owners. Riggs,however, moved beyond the outline of how the socioeconomic classification of blackpeople divided them towards an analysis of their struggle for their liberation, throughpersonal reformation and rejecting the oppressive images and roles, to be replaced bysocial betterment. Riggs claims that her realization of the powerful myths that had beeninternalized by black people came as a result of her own exploration of her life and writingand teaching about race, gender and class to promote equality, and justice in contemporarysociety.Riggs argues that it is God‟s justice that liberates the oppressed, and God‟s justice issacred. God‟s vision and justice allows the oppressed to campaign for liberation and abetter social standing. It is this kind of liberation that Riggs discusses that could be viewedas a propelling force which enabled people from the commonwealth to take up theinvitation by Britain after the second world war.The Black majority churches were forced to become financially and socially self-sufficientas a result of the rejection and the refusal to help them to integrate into mainstream societyby much of the white population. People descended from Africans who were in slavery inthe Americas and the Caribbean, who make up the black majority West Indian churches115