"... INTRODUCTION -A

The study of African American religious history needs no special warrant. The story is self-authenticating, bearing its own witness to the travail and triumph of the human spirit. Carter G. Woodson wrote in 1939: "A definitive history of the Negro Church ... would leave practically no phase of the history of the Negro in America untouched."! No one has yet attempted a synoptic, not to mention definitive, history of African American religion. Woodson's pioneer­ ing History of the Negro Church, published in 1921, is a celebration of firsts on the order of a family scrapbook.2 At the beginning of his own mammoth rendition, Sydney Ahlstrom acknowledged that historical surveys of Ameri­ can religion have "virtually closed out" the black religious experience. Ahl­ strom predicted that serious consideration of the religious history of Ameri­ cans of African descent would become "the basic paradigm for a renovation of church history:'3 In the 1960s historians began to concern themselves with the factors of race and ethnicity in the makeup of religious America.4 Merely splicing references to black religion into a main strand that told someone else's story, however, produced only a rope of sand.5 From time to time, scholars from outside the field of church history suggested alternative perspectives and methodologies for dealing with the "invisibility" in the standard surveys of the religious reality of non-Europeans, though none has gone further than gen­ eral diagnosis of the malady. 6

1 Carter G. Woodson, "The Negro Church, an All-Comprehending Institution;' Negro His­ tory Bulletin 3, no. 1 (October 1939): 7. 2 Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church (Washington, D.C.: Associated Pub­ lishers,1921). 3 Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 12-13. 4 See, for example, Martin E. Marty, "Ethnicity: The Skeleton of Religion in America," Church History 41, no. 1 (March 1972): 5-21; and Robert T. Handy, "Negro Christianity and American Church Historiography," in Reinterpretations in American Church History, ed. Jerald c. Brauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 91-112. 5 Roger D. Hatch, "Integrating the Issue of Race into the History of Christianity in America: An Essay-Review of Sydney E. Ahlstrom," in A Religious History of the American People; Martin E. Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (New York: Dial Press, 1970); Robert T. Handy, "A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Real­ ities," Journal of the American Academy ofReligion 46, no. 4 (1978): 545-69. 6 See two contributions by Charles H. Long: "Perspectives for a Study of Afro-American

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This anthology is offered as one effort to dispel the myth that the "invis­ ibility" question is primarily one of an inadequacy of resources. Though the search for primary sources necessitates persistence and a modicum ofbiblio­ graphical talent, these sources do exist. Thanks to such indispensable tools as The Howard University Bibliography of African and Afro-American Religious Studies,? students of African American religious history occupy the proverbial catbird seat in comparison to those of a generation ago. The research and archival skills of a thousand Carter G. Woodsons will be necessary before any "definitive" history of African American religion can be written, for without adequate histories of local churches, regional jurisdictions, and national de­ nominations, no general synthesis and interpretation are possible. We await, for example, something on the order of Albert J. Raboteau's Slave Religion for other periods and issues. 8 It is something of a scholarly embarrassment that detailed studies exist on minor traditions popularly known as the Black Jews and Black Muslims, but no contemporary historian has published a com­ prehensive history of the National Baptist Convention, Inc., with its millions of members. The academic study of African American religious history has only recently taken on recognizable definition and content within the fields of history and religious studies. In that fiery crucible of emotions, politics, and academics, out of which programs and departments of African American studies origi­ nated, there was a rather puzzling lack of concern for courses on religious culture. In 1970 James H. Cone attended the first annual convention of the Con­ gress of African People in Atlanta. At the invitation of Imamu Amiri Baraka, Cone presided over a religion workshop. He encountered, he recalls, a barrage of "insulting and uninformed denunciations of black Christianity" by the nationalist participants, mostly young college students. Cone had a year ear­ lier published Black Theology and Black Power, in which he sought to link the black power and nationalist perspectives to the black religious experience. Cone had been raised in an African Methodist Episcopal congregation in

Religion in the United States," History of Religions 2, no. 1 (August 1971): 54-66; and "Civil Rights-Civil Religion: Visible People and Invisible Religion," in American Civil Religion, ed. Russell E. Richer and Donald G. Jones (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 211-21. 7 Ethel L. Williams and Clifton F. Brown, comps., The Howard University Bibliography of African and Afro-American Religious Studies with Locations in American Libraries (Wilming­ ton, Del.: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1977). 8 Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

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Arkansas and had entered the ministry when sixteen. "Therefore," he wrote, "when these young Blacks, who appeared to know very little about the past and present reality of the black church, began to denounce the God of my parents and grandparents, I wanted to challenge the authenticity of their arrogant denunciations."9 Alienation from the black church on ideological grounds, the generally secular spirit of the black power movement, and, per­ haps, the rather common tendency for the young and radical to question the faith of their parents and grandparents contributed to the lack of interest in religion and church history as black studies programs took shape. A peculiar irony persisted here, for, as Cone noted, "the same religion which these young Blacks were denouncing has been the source of black people's hope that trouble won't last always."10 Religious belonging is an elemental bond of group identity. Communities define themselves around a set of religious beliefs, symbols, and rituals. Except for those comparatively few who rejected Christianity for an Islamic or Jewish identity, most African Americans have adopted and adapted Christian, chiefly Protestant, traditions to mark their place on the pluralistic American land­ scape. Exact statistics are difficult to gather, but perhaps as many as seventeen million members belong to the seven largest U.S. black denominations, rep­ resenting the Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal-Holiness connections.ll Thousands more are associated with the predominantly white denomina­ tions. No demographer is willing even to estimate the number who may be marginal members of local churches, who belong to the countless house and storefront churches that have no organization beyond the local community, or who comprise the many small black sects and cults. But whatever the total adherence figure, the institutional church clearly is still a significant part of African American life and culture. At the beginning of this century, W. E. B. DuBois wrote, "The Negro church of today is the social center of Negro life in the United States, and the most characteristic expression of African character:'12 In 1909 Booker T. Washington echoed: "The Negro Church represents the masses of the Negro people. It was the first institution to develope out of the life of the Negro

9 James H. Cone, "Black Theology and the Black College Student;' Journal ofAfro-American Issues 4, nos. 3 and 4 (summer/falI1976): 421. 10 Ibid. 11 Cited in "Jesse Takes Up the Collection," Time, February 6,1984, p. 57. 12 W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; reprint, New York: Fawcett World Library, 1961), p. 142.

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masses and it still retains the strongest hold upon them."l3 Both statements reflected primarily on the religious culture of rural southern blacks. There the comprehensive nature or multifunctional role of the black church was most apparent. In Born to Rebel, Benjamin Elijah Mays sketched a portrait of the church of his youth in rural South Carolina:

Old Mount Zion was an important institution in my community. Negroes had nowhere to go but to church. They went there to worship, to hear the choir sing, to listen to the preacher, and to hear and see the people shout. The young people went to Mount Zion to socialize, or simply to stand around and talk. It was a place of worship and a social center as well. There was no other place to gO.l4

These social conditions placed a special burden on black churches; they had to be social centers, political forums, schoolhouses, mutual aid societies, refuges from racism and violence, and places of worship. But as blacks moved to the cities and as other institutions, such as fraternal groups, civil rights organiza­ tions, and social clubs, developed within the black community, the black church and the black preacher had to adjust to a less pivotal role. Though the church became less of a central institution, it continued to influence African American culture. Those scholars who took black music and literature seriously-from the gospel songs of Mahalia Jackson to James Bald­ win's portrayal of black Pentecostalism in Go Tell It on the Mountain-could not escape the cultural carryover. What might appear to be a secular form, such as the evolution of the blues and jazz, turned out to have intimate connections with the folk traditions of black religion. Watching fellow blues singers at their craft, B. B. King once testified, "I feel like I'm in church and even want to shout."l5 With a wide-angle lens, therefore, a view of the re­ ligious experience of African Americans encompasses more than the story of ecclesiastical institutions, preachers, and the people in the pews. The folk traditions of the street corner and the cotton fields, of those who belonged to no church, existed in dynamic tension with the institutional expressions of

13 Booker T. Washington, The Story of the Negro (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1909), 1:278. 14 Benjamin E. Mays, Born to Rebel-An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), p. 13· 15 Quoted in Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 236.

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black religion. This anthology of primary sources witnesses to the more for­ mal and institutional tradition. A collection of documents such as this does not constitute a history of African American religion. Apart from the problem of selectivity, the editor is frustrated by the inability of the documents to speak for themselves. The best that can be hoped is that by arranging the documents within a historical framework, choosing a variety of sources, and briefly introducing them, the editor has enabled readers to think about African American religious history. The passive reader who skips lightly from one document to another, ignoring the historical context in which they were created, or who reads them as mere flat words on paper, will not be instructed by them. Only in the interaction between original author and contemporary reader can there by any historical witnessing to the development and meaning of African American religion. The editor, semaphore-like, can only signal attention to important issues and themes. I shall suggest six. Preston Williams has noted that "Americans have at every point attempted to create one image, one picture, one mirror in which all black men might be

seen!' 16 This points to the problem of the one and the many. Generalizations about black religion, whether made out of ignorance or ideological blindness, frequently fail upon close attention to particular examples. The diversity re­ vealed in even this anthology suggests that monolithic constructs such as "the Black Church" are suspect. When measured against sociological realities, they must give way. The contours of ethnoreligious identity of any group appear more homogeneous when compared with another group, but aggregate pat­ terns break up when individual stories are accounted for. Contextual factors such as economic status, educational level, rural or urban lifestyle, family history, and personal experience make generalizations difficult. "One of the continuing paradoxes of the Black Church as the custodian of a great portion of Black culture and religion;' Gayraud S. Wilmore reminds us, "is that it is at once the most reactionary and the most radical of Black institutions, the most imbued with the mythology and values of white America, and yet the most proud, the most independent and indigenous collectivity in the Black

community!' 17

16 Preston Williams, "The Black Experience and Black Religion," Theology Today 26 (October 1969): 246. 17 Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Garden City, N.Y.: Double­ day/Anchor Books, 1973), p. xiii.

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The problem of the one and the many suggests a second interpretative issue. Simply put, it is the question, "How black is black religion?" Despite the diversity, or perhaps because of it, cases have been made for an "authentic black religion" or an "authentic black worship;' usually during times of heightened race consciousness. To the cultural nationalists, "authentic" means closest to their understanding of traditional Africa. To them the protracted academic debate over African religious survivals has been no idle pastime. Proponents of the tenacity of African cultures in the New World have found Africanisms in everything from the slaves' predilection for baptism by immer­ sion to grave decorations. Opponents have stressed the loss of African cultural forms over time, except in isolated areas such as the Carolina Sea Islands. This debate was renewed in the 1960s during a revival of cultural nationalism, leading to sometimes dubious claims about parallels between contemporary African American religious practices and those of traditional Africa. Today scholars generally recognize that in comparison to certain Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Brazilian societies, where evidence of Africanisms is much stronger, some explanation must be given for the "death of the gods" in North America. One looks to differing cultural contexts, slave systems, population demogra­

phies, and contrasts between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. IS To acknowledge that the African traditions weakened with each succeeding gen­ eration is not to imply that African Americans merely copied European cul­ ture. African Americans, even in slavery, created new cultures, making bricks from whatever figurative clay and straw there was. To hold to Christianity while receiving blows from its professed practi­ tioners, to avoid wishing evil upon those who prayed with them on Sunday but beat them on Monday, tried the souls of black Christians. Black slaves knew full well the meaning of the spiritual that says, "Old Satan's church is here below; Up to God's free church I hope to go." Black Christians found hope in the good news that God had delivered the children of Israel from bondage and would do the same for them. One day slave and master would stand before the throne of divine justice where God would balance the scales. The clandestine religious meetings in the slave quarters and "hush harbors" were staging grounds for black freedom. They put the lie to the slaveholding ethic by discovering in Christianity a message of hope and victory that es-

18 A useful summary of the debate concerning African religious retentions can be found in Raboteau, Slave Religion, pp. 44-92.

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caped even the most pious slaveholders. As Donald Mathews has written, "By becoming more Christian than whites, blacks were confirmed in the knowl­ edge of their own moral superiority and further strengthened in their claim to ultimate vindication."19 Frederick Douglass felt uneasy about the emergence of independent black denominations in the early nineteenth century. An ardent abolitionist and integrationist, Douglass viewed the northern black religious connections, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church led by Richard Allen, as

"negro pews on a higher and larger scale. "20 Though the African Methodists retained the doctrines and disciplines of the Wesleyan tradition and defended themselves against charges of separatism, they have been described as coming "as close to a black nation within the United States as any black organization in the country's history."21 These contrasting viewpoints suggest the third interpretative concern, namely, the dynamic tension between assimilation and nationalism. Readers will doubtless have varying definitions of both ideolo­ gies and differing views as to the merits of each. The historian can only caution against letting the search for a usable past, that is, a reading of history in terms of the demands of the present, override careful consideration of the documents on their own terms and in their own contexts. Broadening the concept of "black nationalism" to include Marcus Garvey's "back to Africa" movement and Richard Allen's African Methodists sacrifices the distinctive­ ness of each. Perhaps the assimilationist or integrationist goal should not be seen as the opposite of black cultural pride or ethnic consciousness. Preston N. Williams argues that assimilation is not the goal or the opposite of ethnicity, but is rather the very process by which ethnicity lives in America. What is being questioned when one examines ethnicity is not the process of assimilation but the nature of the new communities that will result from assimilation and their continuity with previous communities of their own kind.22 This suggests that

19 Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 226. 20 Quoted in Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p.212. 21 Alain Rogers, "The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A Study of Black Nationalism," Black Church 1, no. 1 (1972): 17. 22 Preston N. Williams, "Religion and the Making of Community in America," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44, no. 4 (1976): 603.

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the very struggle for integration, the end result of assimilation, produces a consciousness of ethnicity. Ethnicity emerges as a form of assimilation. In this context, the emergence of the independent black churches and the debates about cultural assimilation and nationalism become clearer, less distorted by inclinations to force the religious history of African Americans into artificial categories. Such an operational perspective also might lessen the need for heroic history in which one selectively chooses the story that best fits a pre­ determined ideological need. The relation of black religiosity to black political activism or militancy, our fourth issue, cannot be approached simplistically. In the 1960s the names of Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, and David Walker were celebrated. Their mili­ tant use of religion served to inspire; their radicalism squared with the mood of the times and helped to correct the notion that the black churches had been altogether passive in the face of oppression. Some, however, failed the heroic criteria. The post-Civil War black churches, especially those of the South, were said to be too infected with "Uncle Tomism;' too concerned with provid­ ing an emotional safety valve in ecstatic worship, and too preoccupied with chicken suppers and debates over who the next bishop might be.23 Interpreting all African American religion as political radicalism is as much a distortion of the whole as is dismissing the black churches as universally escapist, otherworldly, and politically dysfunctional. "Very few peoples;' Mar­ tin E. Marty reminds us, "have used their spiritual sustenance only in order to organize themselves for eventual revolution. They use religion to situate themselves in a universe which demands interpretation, where they must be as

Sartre called them, 'stalkers of meaning.' "24 Why is it so surprising that con­ verted slaves were "struck dead" by the Spirit of the Lord and raised up to a new sense of self and an ability to "keep on keeping on" in the face of de­ humanizing forces? The testimonies of thousands of ex-slaves reveal that few heard the call to arms when they went to the mountaintop, but many came down with "attitudes which enabled the weak and powerless to make the oppressor and his instruments psychologically irrelevant."25 Those who dis-

23 See James H. Cone's portrayal of the apostasy of the post-Civil War black church in Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Seabury Press, 1969), pp. 91-115. 24 Martin E. Marty, foreword to Milton C. Semett, Black Religion and American Evangelical­ ism: White Protestants, Plantation Missions, and the Independent Negro Church, 1787-1865 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975), p. xv. 25 Mathews, Religion in the Old South, p. 229.

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missed Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience as an ineffective "turn the other cheek" tactic had not reckoned with the moral force within the black church worldview. As black protest became more intense in the 1960s and cries of "black power" were heard in the streets of many cities, a number of theologians turned to crafting a distinctively black theology. The fifth issue presented by the documents concerns the origin, definition, and impact of "black theol­ ogy:' both in its contemporary form and as it relates to previous eras in African American religious history. The leadership of the largest black de­ nomination feared that a radical black theology would circumscribe the Christian gospel, be counterproductive to the civil rights struggle, and lead to further racial polarization.26 Others were less critical, but considerable ambiv­ alence existed about simply baptizing the secular nationalism that came out of the urban riots. This ambivalence, as Rosemary Radford Reuther observed in 1972, reflected "a sense that the character of black ideologies at the present time goes against the grain of the deep commitment of the black church to a black liberation in the context of full human liberation."27 Proponents of black theology emphasized its roots in the historical black church and in the religious history of the slaves. The story of the long strug­ gle for black freedom turns to those who have worn the shoe, fought the battle, and hoped. If nothing else, the documentary witness that follows com­ pels us to rethink American religious history. It is not satisfactory simply to doctor up the standard texts by adding a paragraph or two about slave reli­ gion, Richard Allen, or Father Divine. The problem is more than one of inclusion as opposed to exclusion. If the African American religious experi­ ence is allowed to stand on its own merit, not as a footnote to someone else's story, then we will discover a great deal about American culture that is opaque unless seen from the vantage point of those who, according to a nineteenth­ century black spiritual, have "been in the storm so long." This sixth and final issue translates into a historical moral lesson. Lawrence N. Jones stated it well during his inaugural address on the occasion of becoming the first professor of African American church history at Union Theological Seminary, New York City:

26 J[ oseph 1H. Jackson, "An Appraisal of 'A Black Theology of Liberation' in the Light of the Basic Theological Position of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc:' in Appendix A of Peter J. Paris, Black Leaders in Conflict (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1978), pp. 227-31. 27 Rosemary Radford Reuther, Liberation Theology (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1972), p. 127.

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By its very existence, Black church history is a vigorous assertion that that with which we have to deal in America is a vital plural­ ism, a national culture to which all races and creeds have contrib­ uted. In this sense it introduces a reality principle into the self­ concept of the Christian Community and of the nation.28

28 Lawrence N. Jones, "They Sought a City: The Black Church and Churchmen in the Nineteenth Century:' Union Seminary Quarterly Review 26, no. 3 (spring 1971): 265.

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