Consider all the terrible suffering imposed upon slaves held in bondage by power-driven dictators, tyrants, slave masters, wicked kings and magistrates. Surely Satan is behind those terrible acts and the countless deaths, pain and suffering imposed by wicked men upon others. Knowing that Satan rules in hell, it is reasonable to suppose that one who ends up in hell will find himself under Satan’s power and/or that of other devils. This book is intended to alert its readers to the belief that Satan will likely continue to impose bondage and slavery on those who find themselves under his power. Free agency will not be practiced there. You will not be the one in control in hell. You will suffer. You will be miserable. Horror, misery, terror and woe can be expected in hell. Free agency, love, peace, happiness and joy will not be practiced there.

According to Hebrews, the Son of God appeared to "break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil--and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." What does it mean to be enslaved, all our lives, to the fear of death? And why is this fear described as "the power of the devil"? And most importantly, how are we--as individuals and as faith communities--to be set free from this slavery to death?In another creative interdisciplinary fusion, Richard Beck blends Eastern Orthodox perspectives, biblical text, existential psychology, and contemporary theology to describe our slavery to the fear of death, a slavery rooted in the basic anxieties of self-preservation and the neurotic anxieties at the root of our self-esteem. Driven by anxiety--enslaved to the fear of death--we are revealed to be morally and spiritually vulnerable as "the sting of death is sin." Beck argues that in the face of this predicament, resurrection is experienced as liberation from the slavery of death in the martyrological, eccentric, cruciform, and communal capacity to overcome fear in living fully and sacrificially for others.

Drawing on slave narratives found in forty-one volumes of interviews and one hundred autobiographies by former slaves, these contributors explore how enslaved African Americans received the often oppressive faith of their masters but transformed it into a gospel of liberation. This classic work demonstrates how an authentic black theology of liberation today must listen to the divine spirit that once fed and continues to feed the black religious experience. This second edition includes three additional provocative essays.