Religious Studies Over the last thirty years African American voices and perspectives have become essential to the study of the various theological disciplines. Writing out of their particular position in the North American context, African American thinkers have contributed significantly to biblical studies, theology, church history, ethics, sociology of religion, homiletics, pastoral care, and a number of other fields. Frequently the work of these African American scholars is brought together in the seminary curriculum under the rubric of the black church studies class. Drawing on these several disciplines, the black church studies class seeks to give an account of the broad meaning of Christian faith in the African American experience. Up to now, however, there has not been a single, comprehensive textbook designed to meet the needs of students and instructors in these classes. Black Church Studies: An Introduction will meet that need. Drawing on the work of specialists in several fields, it introduces all of the core theological disciplines from an African American standpoint, from African American biblical interpretation to womanist theology and and ethics to sociological understandings of the life of African American churches. It will become an indispensable resource for all those preparing to serve in African American congregations, or to understand African American contributions to the study of Christian faith. Looks at the diverse definitions and functions of the Black Church as well as the ways in which race, class, religion, and gender inform its evolution. Provides a comprehensive view of the contributions of African American Scholarship to the current theological discussion. Written by scholars with broad expertise in a number of subject areas and disciplines. Will enable the reader to relate the work of African American theological scholars to the tasks of preaching, teaching, and leading in local congregations. Will provide the reader the most comprehensive understanding of African American theological scholarship available in one volume.

Black Church Studies

An IntroductionBy Nancy Lynne Westfield

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2007 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-33265-6

Chapter One

BLACK CHURCH HISTORY

INTRODUCTION

This chapter is not a typical history, full of names, dates, places, and statistics ready for memorization and repetition. It certainly has those elements, but it is more than that. Rather than strictly being a chronological account of the emergence of particular African American church denominations, our goal is to tell the story of the evolution of Black Christian faith. Having been denied presence and rendered invisible in the broad scope of Church history due to enslavement, segregation, and the persistence of racism, Black Christians have been believers much longer than they have had access to institutional modes of religion and worship. African Americans came to Christianity not simply through the church but through a faith in the God of love and liberation. From slavery to freedom, Black Christians have historically upheld the cross of Jesus because it affirmed their humanity in a world that sought to deny the equality of all God's children. This history reflects that Black Christians' faith in God's love and liberating power led to the establishment of the institution and tradition known as the Black Church.

Historian Gayraud Wilmore asserts that the radical nature of the historic Black Church tradition is defined by three factors: the quest for independence from white control; the revalorization of the image of Africa [and African peoples]; and the acceptance of protest and agitation as theological prerequisites for Black liberation and the liberation of all oppressed peoples. From its origins in traditional African societies to its contemporary manifestations, religion has permeated every dimension of African American history and culture—from art, music, and literature, to the formation of social institutions, economic collectives, and political philosophies. Prior to the incursion of Europeans into sub-Saharan Africa, most Africans participated in religious practices that were not only indigenous to the continent but were also specific to their family or kinship group, and society. Even before the United States came into existence as a recognizable nation, the conundrum of what it meant to be Black and Christian was intensely connected in both law and social practice. From the moment Africans were imported to British North America and enslaved in 1619 until the end of American chattel slavery as a result of the Civil War, they and their descendants sought to create communal and kinship networks within the context of slave traders and slaveholders deliberately separating families and exacerbating intraracial differences among enslaved populations. Viewed in this sense, the Black Church has been the Black community's foremost means to overcome the cumulative dehumanization of slavery, segregation, and social injustice.

FROM SLAVE RELIGION TO LIBERATING FAITH: THE MAKING OF BLACK CHRISTIANS

To understand the history of the Black Church in America, it is important to return to its origins. The Black Church arose from the deepest, darkest depths of the slave ship. As millions of enslaved Africans were forced to travel the Atlantic Ocean during the Middle Passage, aboard vessels ironically named King of Dahomey, Brotherhood, The Virgin Mary, and John the Baptist, their fervent prayers and pleas to the Almighty Creator marked the start of a radically different religious enterprise in the New World. As historian Charles Long asserts,

The Middle Passage ... was never forgotten by the Africans, neither during slavery nor in freedom. The watery passage of the Atlantic, that fearsome journey, that cataclysm of modernity, has served as a mnemonic structure, evoking a memory that forms the disjunctive and involuntary presence of these Africans in the Atlantic world.

From the bowels of those dreaded wooden ships, untold millions of African women, men, and children began to shed many of the social, ethnic, and psychological distinctions that had kept them divided in their native lands on the continent. In the hull of any given slave ship, en route to the most dehumanizing and devastating form of enslavement known to humankind, millions of Africa's children turned their souls to an unknown, unnamed God that might hold the answer to their present fate.

Early African American religion was an effort by enslaved Africans to safeguard themselves against the disruption of their religious worldview. Enslaved Africans gradually merged their composite African religiosity with western notions of Christianity through complex cultural processes of enculturation, adaptation, and assimilation. Whether enslaved or free, African American converts to Christianity of the colonial era subordinated European sacred rhetoric to their own hermeneutical interpretation of personal salvation, conviction of sin, charismatic praise and worship, the equality of all peoples, and the divine promise of heaven.

When slavery was introduced to the English colony of Jamestown in 1619, there was no official distinction of slave in English law. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, this changed with a series of influential legal measures approved by the Virginia House of Burgesses known as the Slave Codes. These laws profoundly defined race relations in North America more than a century before the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. By 1650, the Virginia legislators established the premise that Africans were considered enslaved for life as a de facto (by custom) issue. A noteworthy 1662 law emphasized that the child of an enslaved or indentured mother inherited the legal status of the mother; this was the first such law and clearly violated English common law and custom. Another 1662 law stated that "if any christian shall [commit] Fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe [sic] offending" would be doubly fined as opposed to those found guilty of a similar offense between two "Christians." By 1667, the House of Burgesses passed a law that Christian baptism no longer allowed for the liberation of enslaved peoples. In 1670, the Virginia legislature ratified a law that any nonChristian servants brought by ship "shall be slaves for their lives"; this indicated that slavery was durante vita (for life) and de jure (by law) by its legal definition. By 1705, legislation was passed stating that enslaved labor was to be considered chattel (private property).

Since enslaved Blacks were denied fellowship within institutional Christianity, they created what historian Albert Raboteau called "slave religion" through a process known as syncretism. Slave religion is important to the origins of the Black Christian experience in America for two distinct reasons. On one hand, the retention of African traditional religions in the western hemisphere had been evident in the persistence of such religious practices as spirit possession, river baptisms (total immersion), the ring shout, call-and-response, conjuring practices, and cross-cultural identification of African divine spirits with Roman Catholic saints in African-derived religious traditions such as Santería from Cuba and Vodoun from Haiti. On the other hand, it laid a religious foundation for the historic Black Church whereby the spiritual and cultural sensibilities of enslaved Africans found common ground with various icons, rituals, and traditions within Western Christianity, which otherwise might not have been recognized. In this fashion, slave religion soon became the means to galvanize people of African descent into a more cohesive community based on their religiosity as well as their race.

Race, Slavery, and the Great Awakenings

The major turning point in African American Christianity and the creation of the historic Black Church tradition came in conjunction with the pietism and religious revivalism known as the first Great Awakening. This extensive social movement of the mid- to late-eighteenth century stemmed from growing dissatisfaction among white Americans with a deterministic and increasingly formal style of Protestantism that seemed to deny most people a chance for salvation. During the early 1730s, famed Congregationalist preacher Jonathan Edwards began an emotional, participatory ministry aimed at bringing more people into the church. By the 1740s, George Whitefield had carried an equally evangelical style of Christianity to the British colonies in North America. In their "fire and brimstone" sermons, Edwards and Whitefield—while they did not advocate emancipation—preached to Black people as well as white people.

Some people of African descent had converted to Christianity before Whitefield's arrival in North America. But two factors prevented widespread Black conversion. First, most slave masters feared that enslaved Blacks who embraced Christianity would interpret their new religious status as a step toward freedom, justice, and equality. Second, many enslaved Blacks continued to derive spiritual satisfaction from their ancestral religions and were not attracted to Christianity of the European settlers.

With the first Great Awakening, however, a remarkable conversion began along cultural and spiritual lines. Enslaved Africans and eventually their African American counterparts not only became Christians but also, in turn, influenced white religiosity. This was because this religious movement unwittingly emphasized key points of convergence between Western Christianity and African traditional religions. For instance, the prevalent belief in a Supreme Being, ancestral veneration, and animism within African traditional religions resembled the Trinitarian belief in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost central to the mainstream Christian doctrine. Moreover, the pietistic style of preaching adopted by Whitefield and other evangelicals had some overt similarities to the forms of "spirit possession" that were commonplace in West African societies. Like their African and African American counterparts—both enslaved and free—the white evangelists and revivalists of the first Great Awakening emphasized singing, emotionalism, physical movement, and personal rebirth. The practice of total body immersion during baptism in lakes, rivers, and ponds that gave the Baptist church tradition its name paralleled West African water rituals.

Because it drew African Americans into an evangelical movement that helped shape American society, the first Great Awakening increased the infusion of Western Christianity into Black religious experience. Revivalists appealed to the poor of all races and emphasized spiritual equality. Evangelical Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians opened their fledgling churches to Black people during the colonial era. Members of these early interracial churches addressed each other as brother and sister regardless of race; Black members received communion with white members, served as church officers, and were subject to the same church discipline.

By the late 1700s, Black men such as Jupiter Hammon, David George, George Liele, and Andrew Bryan were being ordained as deacons, priests, and ministers—even though they were enslaved—and preached to white congregations. They thereby influenced white people's perception of how services should be conducted. Black worshipers also influenced white preachers. Regardless of race, the Baptists exhibited a worship style that was revival-minded and enthusiastic; this, however, had a particular impact on African Americans who resonated with a form of Christianity that was reminiscent of African traditional religions.

During the first Great Awakening, enslaved preacher George Liele, the first Black Baptist preacher and missionary in Georgia, often preached at the Silver Bluff Baptist Church in Silver Bluff, South Carolina, the first Black Baptist church organized in North America. This church was equally notable because the congregation included free and enslaved Blacks. Andrew Bryan, one of Liele's original followers, was ordained to the ministry, and his church certified, in 1788. Bryan enjoyed the support of several prominent white men of Savannah who cited the positive effect of religion on slave discipline. When his own master died, Andrew Bryan was able to purchase his freedom. In 1794, Bryan raised enough money to erect a church in Savannah, calling it the Bryan Street African Baptist Church—the first Baptist church for African Americans in Georgia, as well as the first Baptist church, either Black or white, in Savannah. By 1800, the church had grown to about seven hundred; they reorganized as the First African Baptist Church of Savannah, and two hundred fifty members were dismissed in order to establish a branch outside of Savannah. The pioneering ministerial work of such leaders as George Liele, David George, and Andrew Bryan, whether enslaved or free, boldly established the historic Afro-Protestant tradition within the African American religious experience.

Enslaved Blacks found significant reasons to embrace the Baptist tradition in the antebellum South. Most separate Black Baptist congregations such as the Silver Bluff community (1770s) were typically Southern and rural with notable exceptions like New York City's Abyssinian Baptist Church (1808). Even though there was a definite concept of the call to ministry for educated clergy and trained leadership within Baptist church doctrine, there was limited concern for educational qualifications regarding catechism and formal training. This was particularly advantageous for Black men and women who were forbidden access to any level of education by state law. Furthermore, the Baptists espoused belief in the equality of all believers and placed great emphasis on moral self-determination—what historian Nathan Hatch has called the "individualization of conscience"—as well as independence and democratic order. Due to the congregational polity of Baptist churches, the decentralized autonomy of local communities of the faithful was vitally important for a fellowship of Black Christians who were forced, because of the virulent web of racial and religious persecution, to remain invisible. This seeming invisibility was further enhanced by the minimal supervision/monitoring of their worship services by white authorities. The general Baptist belief in human potential to fulfill God's will spoke very intensely to an enslaved people who were continuously condemned as being subhuman by whites.

Another key development in the historic Black Church tradition was the emerging influence of Methodism among enslaved and free Blacks in North America. In a similar fashion, as a denomination based on connectional churches, the centralization of Methodist societies via regional meetings and conferences inherently led to a greater sense of church fellowship as well as a considerable pooling of resources. The accepted role of traveling or itinerant ministers proved less hierarchal than other denominations, and allowed Black men and women the opportunity to preach in various churches. Notable Methodist leaders such as John Wesley and Francis Asbury believed the gospel was meant for all people regardless of color; they argued that true Methodist societies must deny Christian fellowship to slaveholders. This level of anti-slavery advocacy was rare by any standard, and it had a definite allure for African Americans seeking a faith free of religious hypocrisy and moral contradiction.

By the end of the eighteenth century, along with the dawning of the American Republic in the wake of the Revolutionary War, independent Black churches quickly became the core of African American communities in their quest for freedom from domination from white ecclesiastical bodies and other expressions of white supremacy. The roots of the independent Black Church movement are traced most often to the establishment of the Free African Society, organized in Philadelphia in 1787, by Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and other African American members of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church. The incident that led to the formation of the Free African Society was the forced removal of Absalom Jones from St. George's by the white trustees while he and other Black members were kneeling at the altar in prayer. Because of differences in religious views, Allen left the Free African Society in 1789 and Jones became its leader. Under Jones's leadership, the Free African Society began holding worship services on New Year's Day, 1791, and the society soon gave way to the formation of a church. Over the next few years, Absalom Jones and the church's charter members petitioned the Episcopal Church to become an Episcopal parish, yet fervently insisted upon remaining free of white control. As a result, Jones and the members founded St. Thomas African Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, thus making it the first independent Black Church in Philadelphia. By 1805, Jones was ordained as the first African American Episcopalian priest in the nation.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Black Church Studiesby Nancy Lynne Westfield Copyright © 2007 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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