African American Religion

By: Milton C. Sernett

Source:

 The Oxford Companion to United States History

African American Religion

The religious odyssey of peoples of African descent in British North America began as a complex interplay of forced acculturation, voluntary adaptation, and assimilation to the dominant European Protestant Christian culture. After the Revolutionary War, African American Christians in the newly founded United States increased in number as the result of the evangelical revivalism of the era. Slaves voiced their longing for freedom in the preached word and spirituals, and met secretly for worship in what has been called “the invisible institution.” Independent black churches, mostly Baptist, began in the South in the mid–eighteenth century, though few survived the restrictions on freedom of assembly imposed following the Denmark Vesey insurrection in 1822 and Nat Turner's uprising in 1831. Approximately one in seven of the nearly four million African Americans held in slavery as the Civil War began belonged to the predominantly white and Protestant denominations. Celebrating emancipation as divine providence, African Americans established their own churches in the post–Civil War South.

Independent black denominations began in the North with the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816 under the leadership of Richard Allen of Philadelphia. In New York City another group of black Christians in 1822 organized what became the African American Episcopal Zion Church. The third of the three major black Methodist traditions, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, formerly the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, was founded in 1870 at Jackson, Tennessee, by ex-slaves. The earliest independent black Baptist congregations in the North, appeared in Boston and New York in the early 1800s. The National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., became the first truly national organization in 1895, but a major schism in 1915 produced the rival National Baptist Convention of America. Pentecostal and Holiness churches appeared among African Americans in significant numbers around World War I and multiplied as their members became urbanized and migrated northward. Charles Harrison Mason built up the Church of God in Christ, which emphasized glossalalia (speaking in tongues), while Charles Price Jones led the Church of Christ (Holiness), U.S.A., which stressed the doctrine of personal sanctification. African American religious diversity increased in the interwar period with the appearance of black Jewish and black Muslim groups.

Small-town and rural churches, mostly southern, were typical of African Americans in the nineteenth century. Migration to northern industrial centers during and after World War I transplanted the folk religious legacy of the ex-slaves to the city. Ecstatic worship services and new musical styles, notably gospel, flourished alongside the more sedate services of the seminary-trained northern preachers. Women found greater opportunities for religious leadership in the storefront churches and prayer groups that proliferated in northern cities in the wake of the Great Migration. By the late twentieth century, women occupied the pulpit in growing numbers of African American churches, though some conservative black denominations still restricted the ordained ministry to men. Women have been the mainstays of African American church-based missionary, educational, and service societies and outnumber men when congregations gather for worship and religious education.

Serving multiple functions in black communities, African American churches have been places of protest and praise, forums for political discussion, and revival meetings focused on personal salvation. Black churches have assisted with housing, employment, education, recreation, and health care. Black churchgoers marched, sang, and prayed in support of the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr., himself a Baptist preacher and member of the Progressive National Convention of America, organized in 1961. In the 1960s theologians debated the meaning of the Black Power movement and some fashioned a Black Theology emphasizing social and economic issues and the distinctive aspects of African American ritual traditions.

By strict interpretation, there is no single “black church” or uniform expression of “black religion.” A rich and varied tapestry of religious expression and religious institutions has flourished among African Americans in the United States. While most religiously affiliated African Americans belong to one of the black Protestant denominations mentioned above, predominantly white denominational traditions, such as the Methodists, Baptists, and Roman Catholics, claim significant numbers of African American Christians as well. Black churches cooperate in local and national ecumenical organizations and remain important centers for religious growth and community assistance. That African American religious institutions continue to thrive and expand bears witness to the multicultural texture of the American experience.See also Black Nationalism; Emancipation Proclamation; Gospel Music, African American; Islam; Methodism; Nation of Islam; Pentecostalism; Religion; Roman Catholicism; Slave Uprisings and Resistance; Slavery: Slave Families, Communities, and Culture.

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