American stories in ‘This Far by Faith’

The six-hour documentary series “This Far by Faith: African American Spiritual Journeys” is reminiscent of the best of its ambitious genre. Like Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” or Henry Hampton’s “Eyes on the Prize,” it continually rewards faithful viewers with eye-opening lessons in an American history they may have thought they already knew.

What’s not surprising is the quality of the project, since it was launched by the late Hampton, perhaps best known for “Eyes on the Prize,” the landmark 1987 civil rights series. “This Far by Faith” was co-produced by Hampton’s Blackside Inc. team and the Faith Project.

The series, airing in back-to-back episodes each night tonight through Thursday at 9 on KCET and KVCR, starts with “There Is a River,” the stories of Sojourner Truth and Denmark Vesey.

Both were born into slavery and both used the Gospel to shape their identities; however, they used their voices in different ways -- one chose retribution, the other, engagement. Vesey led a violent uprising against slavery, which he saw as a clear violation of God’s will; Truth took that name because she believed she was on a mission from God to travel and spread the word about the evils of racism.

Tonight’s second installment, “God Is a Negro,” takes place after emancipation, when minister-turned-journalist Henry McNeal Turner used the church to engage blacks in the political realm. Denied access to the institutions of society at large, black religious communities maintained their own schools and universities, banks, insurance companies, printing presses, nursing homes and hospitals.

Wednesday and Thursday, the series looks at the roots of gospel music, the civil rights movement after World War II, the growth of the Nation of Islam and a multiracial pilgrimage from Massachusetts to Africa aimed at helping to heal the wounds of slavery.

One moral of these stories is that faith can be twisted, as by the slave owners who believed they were following God’s natural order, but the series also gives us a richer understanding of the uplifting power of religion in black America.

“In evangelical Christianity, not only am I human, I can shout, I can feel. My body mattered, my hands mattered, my ideas mattered,” said the Rev. Alonzo Johnson. “It wasn’t just the doctrine, the creeds that you believed in. It was what you felt.”