The History of African American Christianity traces the development of Christian faith and practice among African Americans from the colonial period through the modern era. Beginning in the era of slavery, Christianity was promoted to emphasize obedience but it was adapted by slaves to their own spiritual and communal needs. They blended African traditions with Christian beliefs, creating clandestine "invisible churches" as well as churches attached to the plantations. Biblical narratives of liberation, such as the Book of Exodus, became central to Black religious life, inspiring both spiritual endurance and acts of resistance, including slave rebellions led by preachers like Nat Turner.
African American churches during slavery were held in secret locations called hush harbors.
While some slaves arrived with prior exposure to Christianity - particularly Catholicism from the Congo[2] - or Islam,[3] almost all first encountered Protestant Christianity in North America. Over time, African American Christianity became a distinctive form of Christian practice that combined evangelical teachings with African religious traditions, creating spiritual and communal spaces under conditions of slavery.
Early efforts at conversion were often led by Anglican missionaries and groups like the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, with limited success.[4] The First Great Awakening in the 18th century and the rise of Methodists and Baptists in the South brought evangelical preaching to slave communities, appealing to them through messages of spiritual equality and deliverance and offering some leadership roles[5] although in some congreations black worshippers could face restrictions and segregation. Nevertheless, clandestine gatherings known as hush harbors and the formation of "invisible churches" allowed slaves to worship freely,[6] and adapt Christian teachings to their own experiences, and incorporate African rhythms and traditions into worship.
Christianity also played a complex role in the ideology of slavery: slaveholders used biblical passages to justify enslavement and enforce obedience, while slave preachers and communities drew upon biblical narratives like the Exodus for inspiration in seeking freedom and equality.[8]
Outside of a black church in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1935Church goers in Heard County, Georgia, 1941
After emancipation, Northern churches founded by free black people, as well as those of predominantly white denominations, sent missions to the South to minister to newly freed slaves, including to teach them to read and write. For instance, Bishop Daniel Payne of the AME Church returned to Charleston, South Carolina in April 1865 with nine missionaries. He organized committees, associations and teachers to reach freedmen throughout the countryside. In the first year after the war, the African Methodist Episcopal Church gained 50,000 congregants.[9]
By the end of Reconstruction, AME congregations existed from Florida to Texas. Their missioners and preachers had brought more than 250,000 new adherents into the church. While it had a northern base, the church was heavily influenced by this growth in the South and incorporation of many members who had different practices and traditions.[10] Similarly, within the first decade, the independent AME Zion church, founded in New York, also gained tens of thousands of Southern members. These two independent black denominations attracted the most new members in the South.[11]
In 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee, with support from white colleagues of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, more than 40 black Southern ministers, all freedmen and former slaves, met to establish the Southern-based Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (now Christian Methodist Episcopal Church), founded as an independent branch of Methodism. They took their mostly black congregations with them. They adopted the Methodist doctrine and elected their first two bishops, William H. Miles of Kentucky and Richard H. Vanderhorst of South Carolina.[11][12] Within three years, from a base of about 40,000, they had grown to 67,000 members, and more than ten times that many in 50 years.[13]
The Church of God, with its beginnings in 1881, held that "interracial worship was a sign of the true Church", with both white people and black people ministering regularly in Church of God congregations, which invited people of all races to worship there.[14] Those who were entirely sanctified testified that they were "saved, sanctified, and prejudice removed."[14] When Church of God ministers, such as Lena Shoffner, visited the camp meetings of other denominations, the rope in the congregation that separated white people and black people was untied "and worshipers of both races approached the altar to pray".[14] Though outsiders would sometimes attack Church of God services and camp meetings for their stand for racial equality, Church of God members were "undeterred even by violence" and "maintained their strong interracial position as the core of their message of the unity of all believers".[14]
At the same time, Black Baptist churches, well-established before the American Civil War, continued to grow and add new congregations. With the rapid growth of black Baptist churches in the South, in 1895 church officials organized a new Baptist association, the National Baptist Convention. This was the unification of three national African American conventions, organized in 1880 and the 1890s. It brought together the areas of mission, education and overall cooperation. Despite founding of new black conventions in the early and later 20th century, this is still one of the largest black religious organizations in the United States.[15] These churches blended elements from underground churches with elements from freely established black churches.[16]
The postwar years were marked by a separatist impulse as black people exercised the right to move and gather beyond white supervision or control. They developed black churches, benevolent societies, fraternal orders and fire companies.[17] In some areas they moved from farms into towns, as in middle Tennessee, or to cities that needed rebuilding, such as Atlanta. Black churches were the focal points of black communities, and their members quickly seceding from white churches demonstrated their desire to manage their own affairs independently of white supervision. It also showed the prior strength of the "invisible church" hidden from white eyes.[18]
Black preachers provided leadership, encouraged education and economic growth, and were often the primary link between the African American and white communities.[citation needed] The black church established and/or maintained the first black schools and encouraged community members to fund these schools and other public services.[16] For most black leaders, the churches always were connected to political goals of advancing the race. There grew to be a tension between black leaders from the North and people in the South who wanted to run their churches and worship in their own way.[19]
Since the male hierarchy denied them opportunities for ordination, middle-class women in the black church asserted themselves in other ways: they organized missionary societies to address social issues. These societies provided job training and reading education, worked for better living conditions, raised money for African missions, wrote religious periodicals, and promoted Victorian ideals of womanhood, respectability, and racial uplift.[15]
After the assassination of Dr. King in 1968, by James Earl Ray, African American Catholics began organizing en masse, beginning with the clergy that April. A Black Catholic revolution soon broke out, fostering the integration of the traditions of the larger (Protestant) Black Church into Black Catholic parishes. Soon there were organizations formed for Black religious sisters (1968), permanent deacons, seminarians, and a brand-new National Black Catholic Congress organization in 1987, reviving the late 19th-century iteration of the same. This era saw a massive increase in Black priests, and the first crop of Black bishops and archbishops.
↑ Anne H. Pinn, Fortress Introduction to Black Church History, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Fortress, 2002, p. 56
1 2 3 4 Alexander, Estrelda Y. (3 May 2011). Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism. InterVarsity Press. p.82. ISBN978-0-8308-2586-8.
——— (2008). The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford Series in History and Culture. Bedford/ St. Martin's. ISBN978-0-312-45225-4.
Lambert, Frank (Winter 2002). "'I Saw the Book Talk': Slave Readings of the First Great Awakening". The Journal of African American History. 87 (1): 12–25. doi:10.1086/JAAHv87n1p12. JSTOR1562488. S2CID142221704.
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