The imagery and assumed theo-existential truth of the above passage has both explicitly and implicitly haunted and guided the ethical sensibilities of the dominant modalities of African American religion in the United States—i.e., African American Christian churches—for centuries. African American Christianity has drawn its vocabulary and grammar, its imagery, symbolism, and posture toward the world from the rich stories that make up the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Perspectives on the complex nature and framework of human relationships are given their weight and content in large part from the workings of situations outlined in scripture. In this regard, African American Christianity, as Ephesians 6:10–12 (above) would suggest, presents life struggles as tension between physical forces and non-physical forces, between transcendent realities and mundane presences intertwined within human history—angelic and demonic personalities.

Theological imagery and doctrinal assertions, in various regions of the United States, speak to this arrangement of synergy between celestial and mundane forces. This is certainly the case within African American evangelical circles, where this rhetoric and perception of the workings of the world are most vividly expressed.