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The Study of African American Religious History Needs No Special Warrant

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The Study of African American Religious History Needs No Special Warrant "... 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 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/660348/9780822396031-001.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Introduction 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). -2- Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/660348/9780822396031-001.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Introduction 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. -3- Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/660348/9780822396031-001.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Introduction 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.
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