introduced to blacks in the Americas in the context of slave trading and slaveholding. Albert J. Raboteau contends, “From the very beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, conversion of the slaves to Christianity was viewed by the emerging nations of Western Christendom as a justification for enslavement of Africans.”18 Cone introduces the background of black religious thought by noting: Black religious thought has been primarily Christian, but strongly influenced by its African background and the struggle