On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglas, escaped slave and abolitionist, asked an audience of freedom-loving white Americans, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” The history that followed answered the question. It is an answer that requires sober reflection and has profound implications for our understanding of the gospel. Israel’s liberation from slavery is the Old Testament story from which the New Testament idea of salvation is derived. From the crucible of black slavery in America, “liberation theology” emerged.