DOCSLIB.ORG

The African Methodist Episcopal Church and What It Means to Be Children of God and Children of Ham

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The African Methodist Episcopal Church and What It Means to Be Children of God and Children of Ham Notes Introduction 1. Francis Herman Gow of South Africa was consecrated as the 74th bishop of the church in 1956, and Harold Ben Senatle, also of South Africa, was consecrated as the 102nd bishop in 1984. 2. Stephen Ward Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African- American Religion in the South (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2000), 142. 3. Ibid., 147. 1 Rhetoric of Identity: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and What It Means to be Children of God and Children of Ham 1. Molefi Kete Asante, The Afrocentric Idea (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998), 28. 2. Ibid., 28. 3. Ibid., 27–28. 4. For an informed discussion of England’s entry into the transatlantic trade in human cargo, see Harry Kelsey’s Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth’s Slave Trader (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). Kelsey provides details of the initial compromises made between religious sensibilities and economic advancement with the former giving sway to the latter. See also, Nick Hazlewood’s The Queen’s Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). 5. Although heathen and pagan have been used interchangeably to refer to peoples or nations that worship myriad deities, I settle on the definition offered by Sylvester A. Johnson, who states that heathens are those who do not exclusively worship the Christian God. 158 Notes 6. Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 260–61. 7. Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 126. 8. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, 28. 9. Raboteau, Slave Religion, 126. 10. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 10. 11. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, 34–36. 12. Richard Allen, The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen (New York: Abingdon Press, 1960), 24. 13. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, 10. 14. Dexter B. Gordon, Black Identity: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Nineteenth- Century Black Nationalism (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 37. 15. Ibid., 12. 16. Mark A. Noll, American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 10. 17. Ibid., 12. 18. Kenneth J. Collins, The Evangelical Moment: The Promise of an American Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 41. Both Collins and Noll iterate that nineteenth-century evangelicalism adhered to no grand meta-narrative of what it meant to be evangelical, no paradigmatic evangelical statements. Yet, the centrality of the Bible, belief in Christ’s atoning work, conversion, and the need to go out and make disciples of all people, consistently held sway in the rhetoric of the times. 19. Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 31. 20. Wilbur Fisk, The Calvinistic Controversy (1837), quoted in Sourcebook of American Methodism, ed. Frederick A. Norwood (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1982). 21. Wilbur Fisk, “A Sermon on John 4:24,” Methodist Quarterly Review 7 (1824), 88–90. 22. Nehemiah Curnock, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., vol. 6 (London: Epworth Press, 1909–1916), 117. 23. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (London: Boyer 1755), Preface, ¶ 10. 24. Albert C. Outler, ed., The Works of John Wesley: The Sermons, vols. 1–4 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1984), 1:105. 25. Ben Witherington III, “Praeparatio Evangelii: The Theological Roots of Wesley’s View of Evangelism,” in Theology and Evangelism in the Wesleyan Heritage, ed. James C. Logan (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1994), 55. Notes 159 26. Regarding whether the earth orbits the sun, Wesley settled on a helio- centered perspective despite the earth-centered view of the Bible. In A Survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation: or a Compendium of Natural Philosophy, he claimed that “as for those scriptural expressions which seem to contradict the earth’s motion, this general answer may be made to them all, that the scriptures were never intended to instruct us in phi- losophy, or astronomy; and therefore, on those subjects, expressions are not always to be taken in the literal sense, but for the most part accommo- dated to the common apprehension of mankind.” At least on the limited subjects of astronomy and philosophy Wesley willingly conceded that the Bible cannot be interpreted in a literal, inerrant sense. It would be reason- able to conclude that if Wesley knew or became aware of other scientific discoveries that contradicted literal interpretations of the Bible he per- haps would have acquiesced to science. See Wesley Center Online, http: //wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/a-compendium-of-natural-philosophy. 27. Collins, The Evangelical Moment, 72. 28. J. Fletcher, Appeal to Matter of Fact and Common Sense; or, a Rational Demonstration of Man’s Corrupt and Lost Estate (New York: N. Bang and J. Emory, 1826), 164. 29. Nathan Bangs, “Letter from Nathan Bangs to Laban Clark, 18 Jan. 1808,” in Sourcebook of American Methodism, ed. Norwood, 302. 30. Collins, The Evangelical Moment, 47. 31. Fletcher, Appeal to Matter of Fact, 161. 32. James Morison, The Way of Salvation; or, the question, “What Must I do to be Saved?” Answered (London: Thompson Ward & Co., 1843), 4–5. 33. Fletcher, Appeal to Matter of Fact, 159. 34. Ibid., 159. 35. The Journal of John Smith, ed. Lawrence F. Sherwood, quoted in Sourcebook of American Methodism, ed. Norwood, 175. 36. Henry Boehm, Reminiscences, Historical and Biographical, of Sixty- Four Years in the Ministry, ed. Joseph B. Wakely (New York: Carlton & Porter, 1866), 206–7. 37. A. P. Mead, Manna in the Wilderness, quoted in Sourcebook of American Methodism, ed. Norwood, 193. 38. Ibid., 194. 39. John Deschner, Wesley’s Christology: An Interpretation (Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press, 1960), 72. 40. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 1, ed. Curnock, 470–71. 41. Umphrey Lee, John Wesley and Modern Religion (Nashville, TN: Cokesbury Press, 1936) Lee states that in a poignant statement to his brother Charles, Wesley expressed severe doubts about his salvation. In a letter he wrote in 1766, Wesley stated, “I do not love God. I never did. Therefore I never believed in the Christian sense of the word . I never had any other evidence of the eternal or invisible world than I have now; and that is none at all . I want all the world to come to him whom I know 160 Notes not,” 92–93. Despite these doubts, Wesley continued to preach Jesus and those who followed in his footsteps did the same. The nineteenth-century American Wesleyan did not focus on Wesley’s later doubts, but hearkened to his Aldersgate experience as a model for knowing Jesus. They built upon that religious experience to proselytize the world. 42. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 1, ed. Curnock, 475–76. 43. Collins, The Evangelical Moment, 47. 44. Morison, The Way of Salvation, 4–5, 16. 45. Fletcher, Appeal to Matter of Fact, 160. 46. James Craig Holte, The Conversion Experience in America: A Sourcebook on Religious Conversion Autobiography (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), x. 47. Ibid., xii. 48. Fletcher, Appeal to Matter of Fact, 167–68. 49. Wesley’s Standard Sermons, ed. Edward Sugden, vol. 1 (London: The Epworth Press, 1921) 301. 50. “The Memoirs of Charles Grandison Finney,” quoted in Holte, The Conversion Experience in America, 104. 51. “Children of the Forest,” American Tract Society, Tract 245. 52. “The Lost Nation,” 2nd Annual Report of The American Tract Society, 1827, 32. 53. Charles Grandison Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, 6th ed. (New York: Leavitt, Lord & Co, 1835), 190. 54. Mathews, Religion in the Old South, 44. 55. Fletcher, Appeal to Matter of Fact, 158, 156. 56. Mathews, Religion in the Old South, 67. 57. See generally, Raboteau, Slave Religion; Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks; Patrick Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Robert Hood, Begrimed and Black: Christian Traditions on Blacks and Blackness (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994). 58. Thomas Virgil Peterson, Ham and Japheth: The Mythic World of Whites in the Antebellum South (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1978). 59. David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race And Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 150. 60. Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 675–76. 61. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham, 158. 62. Ibid., 149. 63. Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 7. 64. Ibid., 13. 65. Steven Gero, “The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah,” Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980), 322. Notes 161 66. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, vol. 1, trans. Henrietta Szold (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), 80. 67. Jack P. Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood in Jewish and Christian Literaturee (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1968), 98. 68. Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (New York: Greenwich House, 1983), 121. 69. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 80. 70. Gomes Eanes de Azurara, Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, quoted in Werner Sollors, Neither Black nor White yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 93. 71. Josiah Priest, Slavery as It Relates to the Negro or African Race (1843; reprint, New York: Arno, 1977), quoted in Sollors, Neither Black nor White, 98–99. 72. Priest, Slavery as It Relates, 33. 73. Ibid. 74. Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • About Absalom Jones Priest 1818
    The Reverend Absalom Jones November 7, 1746 – February 13, 1818 The life and legacy of The Reverend Absalom Jones, first African American priest of The Episcopal Church is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, his faith, and his commitment to the causes of freedom, justice and self-determination. Jones was born into slavery in Sussex County, Delaware on November 6, 1746. During the 72 years of his life, he grew to become one of the foremost leaders among persons of African descent during the post-revolutionary period. In his younger years in Delaware, Absalom sought help to learn to read. When he was 16, his owner Benjamin Wynkoop brought him to Philadelphia where he served as a clerk and handyman in a retail store. He was able to work for himself in the evenings and keep his earnings. He also briefly attended a school run by the Quakers where he learned mathematics and handwriting. In 1770, he married Mary Thomas and purchased her freedom. It was until 1784 that he obtained his own freedom through manumission. He also owned several properties. During this period, he met Richard Allen, who became a life-long friend. In 1787, they organized the Free African Society as a social, political and humanitarian organization helping widows and orphans and assisting in sick relief and burial expenses. Jones and Allen were also lay preachers at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, PA where their evangelistic efforts met with great success and their congregation multiplied ten-fold. As a result, racial tensions flared and ultimately they led an historic walk out from St.
    [Show full text]
  • Freeborn Garrettson and African Methodism
    Methodist History, 37: 1 (October 1998) BLACK AND WHITE AND GRAY ALL OVER: FREEBORN GARRETTSON AND AFRICAN METHODISM IAN B. STRAKER Historians, in describing the separation of Africans from the Methodist Episcopal Church at the tum of the 19th century, have defined that separation by the possible reasons for its occurrence rather than the context within which it occurred.' Although all historians acknowledge, to some degree, that racial discrimination led to separate houses of worship for congregants of African descent, few have probed the ambivalence of that separation as a source of perspective on both its cause and degree; few have both blamed and credited the stolid ambiguity of Methodist racial interaction for that separation. Instead, some historians have emphasized African nationalism as a rea­ son for the departure of Africans from the Methodist Episcopal Church, cit­ ing the human dignity and self-respect Africans saw in the autonomy of sep­ arate denominations. Indeed, faced with segregated seating policies and with the denial of both conference voting rights and full ordination, Africans struck out on their own to prove that they were as capable as whites of fully con­ ducting their own religious lives. Other historians have placed the cause for the separation within the more benign realm of misunderstandings by the Africans about denominational polity, especially concerning the rights of local congregations to own and control church property. The accuracy of each point of view notwithstanding, black hnd white racial interaction in early Methodism is the defining context with which those points of view must be reconciled. Surely, a strident nationalism on the part of Africans would have required a renunciation, or even denunciation, of white Methodists and "their" church, which is simply not evident in the sources.
    [Show full text]
  • NOTES and DOCUMENTS the African Methodists of Philadelphia
    NOTES AND DOCUMENTS The African Methodists of Philadelphia, 1794-1802 The story of the exodus of the black Methodists from St. George's Church in Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century and the subse- quent founding of Bethel African Methodist Church was first told by Richard Allen in a memoir written late in his life.1 Allen's story, fa- mous as a symbol of black independence in the Revolutionary era, il- lustrates the extent to which interracial dynamics characterized social life and popular religion in post-Revolutionary Philadelphia. The birth of Allen's congregation in the city was not an accident: Philadelphia's free black population had grown rapidly with the migration of ex-slaves attracted by Pennsylvania's anti-slavery laws and jobs afforded by the city's expanding commercial economy. The founding of the church also highlights the malleable character of American religion at this time; the ways religious groups became rallying points for the disenfranchised, the poor, and the upwardly mobile; and the speed and confidence with which Americans created and re-created ecclesiastical structures and enterprises. Despite the significance of this early black church, historians have not known the identities of the many black Philadelphians who became Methodists in the late eighteenth century, either those joining Allen's *I want to thank Richard Dunn, Gary Nash, and Jean Soderlund for their thoughtful comments, and Brian McCloskey, St. George's United Methodist Church, Philadelphia 1 Richard Allen, The Life Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev Rtchard Allen (Reprint edition, Nashville, TN, 1960) My description of the black community in late eighteenth-century Philadelphia is based on Gary B Nash, "Forging Freedom The Eman- cipation Experience in the Northern Seaport Cities, 1775-1820" in Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds., Slavery and Freedom tn the Age of the American Revolution, Perspectives on the American Revolution (Charlottesville, VA, 1983), 3-48.
    [Show full text]
  • 7 PRIMARY ELECTI (Political Advertisement) !*S Î 2 *
    SCENES FROM THE FUNERAL RITES OF LATE DR. JOSEPH E. WALKER Dr. Wolker's widow, a nurse and other members of the family Dr. J. E. Walker's Remains Dr. and Mrs. Julian Kelso Mr. and Mrs. A. Maceo Walker and their son, Maceo/Jr. I. READ THE Dr. Walker Paid NEWS WHILE IT IS NEWS . FIRST Glowing Tribute IN YOUR ! A Mg I Ç A*S ¿~T~ANDATO MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Leaders from Johnetta W. Kelso, a son, A. Maceo MEMPHIS WORLD-. -r a score of states came here Friday Walker Sr.. 2 granddaughters, a and paid tribute to the late Dr. ■ grandson,’ nieces, nephews' and—J Joseph E. Walker at Mississippi cousins. VOLUME 28, NUMBER 13 MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1958 PRICE SIX CENTS Boulevard Christian Church. ______¡>_... ______ :... Both the main auditorium of the Representatives From church, and the adjoining education building were filled to capaci^ JjBLCit i es Attend MAN DOES NOT when final rites began at.l p.m. Candidates Make Last Bid To Among those present, were Charles Dr. Walket'? Funeral REPRESENT Green, of the Atlanta Life Insurance Among the out-of-town persons Company, and A. G. Gaston,- Bir­ MEMPHIS WORLD ana organizations representatives Muster Votes In Election mingham, Ala., business man. attending Dr. J. E. Walkers fun­ An unidentified man is soliciting Included in s’atements on behalf eral last Friday weie: dona 'Ims in the name of (he ; Candidates for the senatorial, lor and Clifford Allen was “a of Dr. Walker were three resolutions From Atlanta, Ga.: Charles E. .Memphis World, according to a i gubernatorial and other nato.rial wasted vote” in that “neither of drawn by firms and religious orders Greene, public relations director report to this paper by president | races ' will be making their last the two van win.” On the segre­ They were: of Atlanta Life Insurance Co.
    [Show full text]
  • Beginnings of a Black Theology and Its Social Impact Black Theology Was the Stream of African Theology That First Developed in America As a Layman Philosophy
    Beginnings of a Black Theology and its Social Impact Black Theology was the stream of African Theology that first developed in America as a layman philosophy. For African Americans, the Bible at that time was the main source of information on Africa. The Psalm 68:31 served as the basis for the construction of an entire ideology of “Ethiopia” with which they meant, Africa. Out of it, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen composed: "May he who hath arisen to plead our cause, and engaged you as volunteers in the service, add to your numbers until the princes shall come from Egypt and Ethiopia stretch out her hand unto God.”1 This entire complex of beliefs and attitudes towards Africa, missions and the Back-to Africa impetus was very much incarnated in the person and work of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834- 1915). In 1851, he joined the Methodist Church where he was later assigned deacon and elder and even, bishop. When Turner heard a speech of Crummell, this marked a turning point in his young life. But he first started a military and political career in the States until appointed chaplain by President Abraham Lincoln and later elected twice into the House of Representatives in Georgia. Here, he and other Blacks were prohibited from taking their seats.2 The ideas of African American missionary work in Africa and the return to this continent as the only way for Blacks to find justice; became Turner’s motivating force. He called for reparations for the years of slavery in order to finance the repatriation.
    [Show full text]
  • Henry Mcneal Turner
    Henry McNeal Turner Nationalist, Repatriationist, PanAfricanist, Minister, Author SECTION ONE SOURCE: https://blackpast.org/aah/turner-henry-mcneal-1834-1915 Black Nationalist, repatriationist, and minister, Henry M. Turner was 31 years old at the time of the Emancipation. Turner was born in 1834 in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina to free black parents Sarah Greer and Hardy Turner. The self-taught Turner by the age of fifteen worked as a janitor at a law firm in Abbeville, South Carolina. The firm’s lawyers noted his abilities and helped with his education. However, Turner was attracted to the church and after being converted during a Methodist religious revival, decided to become a minister. He joined the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and became a licensed minister in 1853 at the age of 19. Turner soon became an itinerant evangelist traveling as far as New Orleans, Louisiana. By 1856 he married Eliza Peacher, the daughter of a wealthy African American house builder in Columbia, South Carolina. The couple had fourteen children but only four of them survived into adulthood. In 1858 Turner entered Trinity College in Baltimore, Maryland where he studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew and theology. Two years later he became the pastor of the Union Bethel Church in Washington, D.C. Turner cultivated friendships with important Republican Congressional figures including Ohio Congressman Benjamin Wade, Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, and Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. Turner had already become a national figure when in 1863 at the age of 29 he was appointed by President Lincoln to the position of Chaplain in the Union Army.
    [Show full text]
  • On Absalom and Freedom February 17, 2019: the Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany the Rev. Emily Williams Guffey, Christ Church Detroit Luke 6:17-26
    On Absalom and Freedom February 17, 2019: The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany The Rev. Emily Williams Guffey, Christ Church Detroit Luke 6:17-26 Yesterday I was at the Cathedral along with several of you for the Feast of Blessed Absalom Jones, who was the first black person to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. Absalom Jones had been born into slavery; he was separated from his family at a very young age, when his master sold his mother and all of his siblings, and took only Absalom along with him to a new city--to Philadelphia--where Absalom worked in the master’s store as a slave. The master did allow Absalom to go to a night school there in Philadelphia for enslaved people, and there Absalom learned to read; he learned math; he learned how to save what he could along the way. He married a woman named Mary and, saving his resources, was able to purchase her freedom. He soon saved enough to purchase his own freedom as well, although his master did not permit it. It would be years until his master finally allowed Absalom to purchase his own freedom. And when he did, Absalom continued to work in the master’s store, receiving daily wages. It was also during this time that Absalom came to attend St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Since Methodism had grown as a form of Anglicanism back in England, this was a time before the Methodist Church had come into its own denomination distinct from the Episcopal Church.
    [Show full text]
  • The United Methodist Church Handbook
    Dear friends in Christ, Grace to you and abundant peace from God, our Creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ. The people of The United Methodist Church are part of a worldwide community with a rich Wesleyan heritage, a shared covenant and a common mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many (1 Corinthians 12:20). Our connection binds us together in faith and service beyond our individual congregations. We reach out locally and globally through more than 43,000 United Methodist congregations all over the world to help others and to share the good news of Christ’s saving grace. God in Christ loves us, and all of humanity, beyond measure. God’s grace is available to all. We have a shared calling to make that truth an everyday reality for all those who have yet to be invited to experience the healing balm and abundant life of God’s banquet table. We celebrate all that God is doing through The United Methodist Church. This handbook is filled with information about who we are, how we are structured and how we are living out our mission. I hope that as you read this book, it will be a helpful resource and you will see the strength that worldwide connectivity brings to the work of the church. Our prayer is that The United Methodist Church be a community where you find peace, meaning and a future with hope. In Christ’s extravagant grace, Bishop Bruce R.
    [Show full text]
  • United Methodist Bishops Page 17 Historical Statement Page 25 Methodism in Northern Europe & Eurasia Page 37
    THE NORTHERN EUROPE & EURASIA BOOK of DISCIPLINE OF THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH 2009 Copyright © 2009 The United Methodist Church in Northern Europe & Eurasia. All rights reserved. United Methodist churches and other official United Methodist bodies may reproduce up to 1,000 words from this publication, provided the following notice appears with the excerpted material: “From The Northern Europe & Eurasia Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church—2009. Copyright © 2009 by The United Method- ist Church in Northern Europe & Eurasia. Used by permission.” Requests for quotations that exceed 1,000 words should be addressed to the Bishop’s Office, Copenhagen. Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. Name of the original edition: “The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church 2008”. Copyright © 2008 by The United Methodist Publishing House Adapted by the 2009 Northern Europe & Eurasia Central Conference in Strandby, Denmark. An asterisc (*) indicates an adaption in the paragraph or subparagraph made by the central conference. ISBN 82-8100-005-8 2 PREFACE TO THE NORTHERN EUROPE & EURASIA EDITION There is an ongoing conversation in our church internationally about the bound- aries for the adaptations of the Book of Discipline, which a central conference can make (See ¶ 543.7), and what principles it has to follow when editing the Ameri- can text (See ¶ 543.16). The Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conference 2009 adopted the following principles. The examples show how they have been implemented in this edition.
    [Show full text]
  • “The Black Man's Burden”: African Americans, Imperialism, And
    International Review of Social History 44 (1999), Supplement, pp. 77-99 © 1999 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis "The Black Man's Burden": African Americans, Imperialism, and Notions of Racial Manhood 1890-1910" MICHELE MITCHELL Take up the White Man's Burden - Send forth the best ye breed - Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need [...] Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years, Cold-edged with dear-brought wisdom, The judgment of your peers! Rudyard Kipling, i8pp* Take up the Black Man's burden - "Send forth the best ye breed", To judge with righteous judgment The Black Man's work and need [...] Let the glory of your people Be the making of great men, The lifting of the lowly To noble thought and aim [...] /. Dallas Bowser, In 1899, about fifteen years after the Conference of Berlin accelerated Europe's partitioning of Africa, African-American preacher Henry Blanton Parks fervently believed the fate of Africa would be determined during the twentieth century. Parks struggled long and hard as a young man to secure an education in Georgia and rise in the ranks of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church; he earned a reputation for having an expansive outlook in the process. By the time he became Secretary of Home and Foreign Missions, Reverend Parks not only located Christian redemption of Africa within the promise of a new century, he authored a book to convince other African Americans that it was their duty to conquer the continent for God, for Africans, for themselves. In Africa: The Problem of the New Century, Parks contended that if the AME Church failed to secure a righteous "destiny [...] [for] the junior races of the world [...] [and] historic * The author would like to thank Nancy MacLean, Tessie Liu, Nancy Hunt, and Eileen Boris for their comments on earlier versions of this article.
    [Show full text]
  • Celebrates 25 Years. 25Th Anniversary Collector’S Edition Dear Students, Educators,And Friends
    South Carolina African American History Calendar Celebrates 25 Years. 25th Anniversary Collector’s Edition Dear Students, Educators,and Friends, One of the highlights of my year is the unveiling of the new African American History Calendar, for it is always a wonderful time of renewing friendships, connecting with new acquaintances, and honoring a remarkable group of South Carolinians. This year is even more exciting, for the 2014 calendar is our 25th Anniversary Edition! For a quarter of a century, the Calendar project has celebrated the lives, leadership, and experiences of gifted people who have shaped who we are as a State and as South Carolinians. Initially developed as a resource for teachers as they include African American history in their classroom curriculum, the Calendar has become a virtual Hall of Fame, combining recognition with education and drawing online visitors from around the globe. Thus far, 297 African Americans with South Carolina roots have been featured on the Calendar’s pages. They represent a wide array of endeavors, including government and military service, education, performing and fine arts, business, community activism, and athletics. They hail from every corner of the state, from rural communities to our largest cities. And each has made a difference for people and for their communities. The Calendar, with its supporting educational materials, has always been designed to help students understand that history is about people and their actions, not simply dates or places. While previous editions have focused on individuals, the 25th Anniversary Edition spotlights 12 milestone events in South Carolina’s African American History. Driven by men and women of courage and conviction, these events helped lay the foundation for who we are today as a State and who we can become.
    [Show full text]
  • Bishop Willia.M Taylor and Methodist Mission: a Study in Nineteenth Century Social History
    Methodist History, 27:4 (July 1989) BISHOP WILLIA.M TAYLOR AND METHODIST MISSION: A STUDY IN NINETEENTH CENTURY SOCIAL HISTORY DAVID BUNDY Part I: From Campmeeting Convert to International Evangelist The figure of William Taylor (1821-1902) is a recurring feature of the historiography of mission activity under the aegis of the Methodist Episcopal Church during the last half of the nineteenth century. Taylor was involved in missionary endeavors from 1849 when he was sent to California by Bishop Beverly Waugh until his retirement in 1896. He worked on six continents and was instrumental in the establishment of Methodist churches in Panama, Belize, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Zaire, and South India. He assisted the Wesleyan Methodists in Australia, South Africa and the Caribbean. During his missionary episcopacy, the struggling Methodist mission in Liberia was strengthened and expanded. Despite his frenetic and often quite successful efforts, relations with the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church were anything but cordial. Methodist periodicals and Taylor's own publications record the continuous struggles to define and control the methods and results of missionary endeavor. Taylor and the Missionary Society viewed the con­ flict as related to missiology. It will be argued here that the conflict be­ tween Bishop William Taylor and the Methodist Missionary Society was not only a function of mission method and ecclesiological control; it was also related to the socio-religious structures ofTaylor's life and to the socio­ religious transitions within Methodism during the second half ofthe nine­ teenthcentury. Sources and Method The diaries, notebooks and collected correspondence of Bishop Taylor have not, in so far as I have been able to ascertain, survived.l Such cor­ respondence as has been preserved is scattered throughout th<fUnited States.
    [Show full text]