NEW YORK — A new exhibit at New York’s Museum of Biblical Art makes one point clear and inescapable: Biblical narratives and imagery have been an underlining constant in the life of African-American Christians.

From the days of slavery onward, “African-Americans felt the Bible was a powerful tool that established their quest for freedom and identity amidst the madness they were living in,” said guest curator Leslie King-Hammond. “The Bible was the constant.”

King-Hammond is the founding director of the Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art and helped organize the exhibit, “Ashe to Amen: African Americans and Biblical Imagery.” (The “ashe” in the exhibition’s title derives from the African Yoruba language and refers to an artist’s power or “inner eye.”)...