History
In the earliest decades of the Baptist Church in the American Southeast, it was stimulated by preachers from New England who generated the Great Awakening. As more churches were started, members came together in an association. With growth through the end of the American Revolutionary War, in 1781 the association of churches split into two parts: along state lines for Virginia and North Carolina. The twenty-one congregations in Virginia formed the Portsmouth Baptist Association, named after their first meeting place. Representatives worked together to form church policy. From 1810 to 1828 they began to work on Foreign Missions and Christian Education. Later they established Sabbath Schools. [3]
The history of First Baptist Church started with scattered black members in Prince George County, Virginia worshipping as New Lights in 1756 after the Great Awakening. Baptist preachers had traveled widely in the South where they appealed to both blacks and whites in evangelical outreach. In the early years, such preachers strongly supported an anti-slavery message, based on the equality of men made in God's image. Their democratic message and willingness to welcome blacks in active roles attracted many new members to the Baptists, including slaves. At a time when the Anglican Church was the established church in the colony, in some areas energetic young white men without many other opportunities were the ones to take up leadership roles as Baptist preachers, and they challenged the class system of the colony.
In 1774 some of the black New Light members united under the Rev. John Michaels. Calling themselves the First African Baptist Church, they met in Lunenburg in a building on the plantation of Colonel William Byrd III. After their meetinghouse at the Byrd plantation burned in a fire, in 1820 free members of the congregation moved to Petersburg, Virginia, where there was a growing free black community. (From about 300 free blacks in 1790, this community in Petersburg grew tenfold to 3,224 by 1860, when it was the largest free black population in the South. [4] On the eve of the Civil War, city residents also included about 6,000 enslaved African Americans and 9,000 whites.)
With the move into Petersburg, the congregation took the name of First Baptist Church. They built their first church on Harrison Avenue (near the location of the current church.) This was one of two early black Baptist churches in the colonies before the American Revolutionary War; this was the first Baptist church to be established in Petersburg. [1]
Emphasizing education, the First Baptist congregation also created one of the earliest local schools for black children in the nation. From its beginning, the congregation was led by black pastors. In the wake of Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, however, planters became so alarmed about the potential for religious messages to cause other revolts that they passed legislation in 1832 requiring that all black churches be led by white pastors. [2] The planters believed they could ensure control of the message that whites would deliver. During this time, Thomas G. Keen was one of the ministers at First Baptist. After the Civil War, blacks took back control of their church and left the Southern Baptist Convention. [2]
By 1865 First Baptist had 1700 members. Rev. Leonard A. Black was pastor from 1873 to 1883, during which time the congregation grew to 3,600 members. At about age 17, he had escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1837, joining three brothers in Boston, Massachusetts and settling that year in Portland, Maine. He later married and lived for years in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1847 he had published a memoir of his trials and journey, The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black, a Fugitive from Slavery, classified as a slave narrative. [5]
First Baptist soon joined a state convention of black Baptist churches, aided by the Consolidated American Baptist Convention, to escape the supervision of whites. Such black state conventions eventually founded the National Baptist Convention, USA. The First Baptist congregation continued to grow after the war as numerous freedmen moved to Petersburg from outlying areas. Its members helped the rural migrants adjust to urban life. [6]
The current church at 236 Harrison Avenue was built starting in 1870, after a fire burned the previous one. The congregation steadily added to the church, completing the steeple during Rev. Black's pastorate. [6] [7] In the late 1880s the pastor, Rev. Charles B. Gordon, also edited The Pilot (later known as The National Pilot), a paper that was said to be a mouthpiece for Baptists in Virginia. [8]
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), alternatively the Great Commission Baptists (GCB), is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. In 1845, the Southern Baptists separated from the Triennial Convention in order to support slavery, which the southern churches regarded as "an institution of heaven". During the 19th and most of the 20th century, it played a central role in Southern racial attitudes, supporting racial segregation and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy while opposing interracial marriage. In 1995, the organization apologized for its history. Since the 1940s, it has spread across the United States, having member churches across the country and 41 affiliated state conventions.
James William Charles Pennington was an American historian, abolitionist, orator, minister, writer, and social organizer. Pennington is the first known Black student to attend Yale University. He was ordained as a minister in the Congregational Church, later also serving in Presbyterian churches for congregations in Hartford, Connecticut, and New York. After the Civil War, he served congregations in Natchez, Mississippi, Portland, Maine, and Jacksonville, Florida.
The black church is the faith and body of Christian denominations and congregations in the United States that predominantly minister to, and are also led by African Americans, as well as these churches' collective traditions and members. The term "black church" may also refer to individual congregations, including in traditionally white-led denominations.
Lott Cary was an African-American Baptist minister and lay physician who was a missionary leader in the founding of the colony of Liberia on the west coast of Africa in the 1820s. He founded the first Baptist church in 1822, now known as Providence Baptist Church of Monrovia. He served as the colony's acting governor from August 1828 to his death in November that year.
Approximately 15.3% of Americans identify as Baptist, making Baptists the second-largest religious group in the United States, after Roman Catholics. Baptists adhere to a congregationalist structure, so local church congregations are generally self-regulating and autonomous, meaning that their broadly Christian religious beliefs can and do vary. Baptists make up a significant portion of evangelicals in the United States and approximately one third of all Protestants in the United States. Divisions among Baptists have resulted in numerous Baptist bodies, some with long histories and others more recently organized. There are also many Baptists operating independently or practicing their faith in entirely independent congregations.
First African Baptist Church, located in Savannah, Georgia, claims to be derived from the first black Baptist congregation in North America. While it was not officially organized until 1788, it grew from members who founded a congregation in 1773. Its claim of "first" is contested by the Silver Bluff Baptist Church, Aiken County, South Carolina (1773), and the First Baptist Church of Petersburg, Virginia, whose congregation officially organized in 1774.
Religion of black Americans refers to the religious and spiritual practices of African Americans. Historians generally agree that the religious life of black Americans "forms the foundation of their community life". Before 1775 there was scattered evidence of organized religion among black people in the Thirteen Colonies. The Methodist and Baptist churches became much more active in the 1780s. Their growth was quite rapid for the next 150 years, until their membership included the majority of black Americans.
Leonard Black was born a slave in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and was separated from his family by the age of six. He escaped after 20 years of slavery. In 1847 he wrote The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black: A Fugitive from Slavery. With encouragement and support, he became a Baptist minister, preaching in Boston, Providence, and Nantucket before becoming minister of First Baptist Church in Petersburg, Virginia.
David George was an African-American Baptist preacher and a Black Loyalist from the American South who escaped to British lines in Savannah, Georgia; later he accepted transport to Nova Scotia and land there. He eventually resettled in Freetown, Sierra Leone where he would eventually die. With other enslaved people, George founded the Silver Bluff Baptist Church in South Carolina in 1775, the first black congregation in the present-day United States. He was later affiliated with the First African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia. After migration, he founded Baptist congregations in Nova Scotia and Freetown, Sierra Leone. George wrote an account of his life, an important early slave narratives.
The Silver Bluff Baptist Church was founded between 1774-1775 in Beech Island, South Carolina, by several enslaved African Americans who organized under elder David George.
Gillfield Baptist Church is the second-oldest black Baptist congregation in Petersburg, Virginia and one of the oldest in the nation. It has the oldest handwritten record book of any black church. It was organized in 1797 as a separate, integrated congregation. In 1818 it built its first church at its current lot on Perry Street.
First African Baptist Church is a Baptist church at 264-272 E. Short Street in Lexington, Kentucky. The congregation was founded c. 1790 by Peter Durrett and his wife, slaves who came to Kentucky with their master, Rev. Joseph Craig, in 1781 with "The Travelling Church" of Baptists from Spotsylvania, Virginia.
The First African Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia is a Baptist Church. Founded in 1841, its members included both slaves and freedmen. It has since had a major influence on the local black community. At one point, it was one of the largest Protestant churches in the United States.
Leonard Andrew Grimes was an African-American abolitionist and pastor. He served as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, including his efforts to free fugitive slave Anthony Burns captured in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. After the Civil War began, Grimes petitioned for African-American enlistment. He then recruited soldiers for the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.
Caesar Blackwell (1769–1845) was an enslaved African-American preacher in Alabama, one of several black preachers in the Southern United States who preached to a mixed congregation. He was either bought or freed by the Alabama Baptist Association, and preached in the Antioch Baptist Church in Montgomery County, Alabama.
Morris Brown was one of the founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and its second presiding bishop. He founded Emanuel AME Church in his native Charleston, South Carolina. It was implicated in the slave uprising planned by Denmark Vesey, also of this church, and after that was suppressed, Brown was imprisoned for nearly a year. He was never convicted of a crime.
The Reverend William Troy was a Baptist minister and writer associated with the Underground Railroad.
The Twelfth Baptist Church is a historic church in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1840, it is the oldest direct descendant of the First Independent Baptist Church in Beacon Hill. Notable members have included abolitionists such as Lewis Hayden and Rev. Leonard Grimes, the historian George Washington Williams, the artist Edward Mitchell Bannister, abolitionist and entrepreneur Christiana Carteaux, pioneering educator Wilhelmina Crosson, and civil rights movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Reverend Richard R. Jones was a noted African-American Baptist minister, civil rights activist and orator in Roanoke, Virginia.
Rev. Peter Randolph was an African-American minister and abolitionist. Born into slavery in Virginia, he was freed in the will of his owner but this request took three years and legal proceedings to be honored. Randolph moved to Boston after being freed, where he became a pastor. He spent four years in Richmond, Virginia, after the end of the Civil War, before moving back to Boston. Randolph published an autobiographical account of his life that went through several editions.
