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Religion of Black Americans

January 30, 2023

This article is about the religious practices of African Americans in the United States. For religious practices elsewhere in the Americas, see African diaspora religions.

Religion of black Americans refers to the religious and spiritual practices of African Americans. Historians generally agree that the religious life of black Americans "forms the foundation of their community life".[1] Before 1775 there was scattered evidence of organized religion among black people in the Thirteen Colonies. The Methodist and Baptist churches became much more active in the 1780s. Their growth was quite rapid for the next 150 years, until their membership included the majority of black Americans.[citation needed]

Women engaged in praise at a Pentecostal worship service in Chicago, Illinois, 1941
Woman at a Baptist church service in Alabama, July 1972

After Emancipation in 1863, Freedmen organized their own churches, chiefly Baptist, followed by Methodists. Other Protestant denominations, and the Catholic Church, played smaller roles. In the 19th century, the Wesleyan-Holiness movement, which emerged in Methodism, as well as Holiness Pentecostalism in the 20th century were important, and later the Jehovah's Witnesses. The Nation of Islam and el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (also known as Malcolm X) added a Muslim factor in the 20th century. Powerful pastors often played prominent roles in politics, often through their leadership in the American civil rights movement, as typified by Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.[2]

Religious demographics

Religious affiliation of African Americans[3]

  Black Protestant (59%)
  Evangelical Protestant (15%)
  Mainline Protestant (4%)
  Roman Catholic (5%)
  Jehovah's Witness (1%)
  Other Christian (1%)
  Muslim (1%)
  Other religion (1%)
  Unaffiliated (11%)
  Atheist or agnostic (2%)

The vast majority of Black Americans are Protestants, with descendants of American chattel slavery being largely Baptists or adhering to other forms of Evangelical Protestantism.[4] A 2007 Pew Research survey found that African-Americans were more religious than the U.S. population as a whole. 87% of African Americans were affiliated with a religion, compared with 83% of the wider population.[5] 79% of African Americans stated that "religion is very important in their life", compared to 56% of the wider US population.[6]

83% of Black Americans identified as Christian, including 45% who identified as baptist. Catholics accounted for 5% of the population. 1% of black Americans identified as Muslims. About 12% of African American people didn't identify with an established religion and identified as either unaffiliated, atheist or agnostic, slightly lower than the figure for the whole of the US.[7]

In 2019 there were approximately three million African American Catholics in the US, 24% of whom worshiped in the country's 798 predominantly African American parishes.[8][9]

History

Colonial era

Africans brought religion with them from Africa, including Islam,[10] Catholicism,[11] and traditional religions.

In the 1770s no more than 1% of black people in the United States had connections with organized churches. The numbers grew rapidly after 1789.[citation needed] The Anglican Church had made a systematic effort[when?] to proselytize, especially in Virginia, and to spread information about Christianity, and the ability to read the Bible, without making many converts.[12]

No organized African religious practices are known to have taken place in the Thirteen Colonies. In the mid-20th century scholars debated whether there were distinctive African elements embedded in black American religious practices, as in music and dancing. Scholars no longer look for such cultural transfers regarding religion.[why?][13][need quotation to verify]

Muslims practiced Islam surreptitiously or underground throughout the era of the enslavement of African people in North America.[10] The story of Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori, a Muslim prince from West Africa who spent 40 years enslaved in the United States from 1788 onwards before being freed, demonstrates the survival of Muslim belief and practice among enslaved Africans in America.

Prior to the American Revolution, masters and revivalists spread Christianity to slave communities, including Catholicism in Spanish Florida and California, and in French and Spanish Louisiana, and Protestantism in English colonies, supported by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

In the First Great Awakening (ca. 1730–1755) Baptists were drawing Virginians, especially poor-white farmers, into a new, much more democratic religion. Baptist gatherings made slaves welcome at their services, and a few Baptist congregations contained[when?] as many as 25% slaves.[citation needed] Baptists and Methodists from New England preached a message against slavery, encouraged masters to free their slaves, converted both slaves and free blacks, and gave them active roles in new congregations.[14] The first independent black congregations were started in the South before the Revolution, in South Carolina and Georgia. Believing that, "slavery was contrary to the ethics of Jesus", Christian congregations and church clergy, especially in the North, played a role in the Underground Railroad, especially Wesleyan Methodists, Quakers and Congregationalists.[15][16] White clergy within evangelical Protestantism actively promoted the idea that all Christians were equal in the sight of God, a message that provided hope and sustenance to oppressed slaves.[17][18][19]

Over the decades and with the growth of slavery throughout the South, some Baptist and Methodist ministers gradually changed their messages to accommodate the institution. After 1830, white Southerners argued for the compatibility of Christianity and slavery, with a multitude of both Old and New Testament citations.[20] They promoted Christianity as encouraging better treatment of slaves and argued for a paternalistic approach. In the 1840s and 1850s, the issue of accepting slavery split the nation's largest religious denominations (the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches) into separate Northern and Southern organizations; see Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Southern Baptist Convention, and Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America).[21] Schisms occurred, such as that between the Wesleyan Methodist Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church.[22]

Southern slaves generally attended their masters' white churches, where they often outnumbered the white congregants. They were usually permitted to sit only in the back or in the balcony. They listened to white preachers, who emphasized the obligation of slaves to keep in their place, and acknowledged the slave's identity as both person and property.[20] Preachers taught the master's responsibility and the concept of appropriate paternal treatment, using Christianity to improve conditions for slaves, and to treat them "justly and fairly" (Col. 4:1). This included masters having self-control, not disciplining under anger, not threatening, and ultimately fostering Christianity among their slaves by example.[20]

Slaves also created their own religious observances, meeting alone without the supervision of their white masters or ministers. The larger plantations with groups of slaves numbering 20, or more, tended to be centers of nighttime meetings of one or several plantation slave populations.[20] These congregations revolved around a singular preacher, often illiterate with limited knowledge of theology, who was marked by his personal piety and ability to foster a spiritual environment. African Americans developed a theology related to Biblical stories having the most meaning for them, including the hope for deliverance from slavery by their own Exodus. One lasting influence of these secret congregations is the African American spiritual.[23]

Black religious music is distinct from traditional European religious music; it uses dances and ring shouts, and emphasizes emotion and repetition more intensely.[24]

Formation of churches (18th century)

Scholars disagree about the extent of the native African content of black Christianity as it emerged in 18th-century America, but there is no dispute that the Christianity of the black population was grounded in evangelicalism.[25]

Central to the growth of community among black people was the black church, usually the first community institution to be established. Starting around 1800 with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and other churches, the black church grew to be the focal point of the black community. The black church was both an expression of community and unique African-American spirituality, and a reaction to discrimination.[26]

The church also served as neighborhood centers where free black people could celebrate their African heritage without intrusion by white detractors. The church also the center of education. Since the church was part of the community and wanted to provide education; they educated the freed and enslaved black community. Seeking autonomy, some black religious leaders like Richard Allen founded separate black denominations.[26]

The Second Great Awakening (1800–20s) has been called the "central and defining event in the development of Afro-Christianity".[27]

Free black religious leaders also established black churches in the South before 1860. After the Great Awakening, many black Christians joined the Baptist Church, which allowed for their participation, including roles as elders and preachers. For instance, First Baptist Church and Gillfield Baptist Church of Petersburg, Virginia, both had organized congregations by 1800 and were the first Baptist churches in the city.[28]

Preaching

Further information: Black sermonic tradition

Historian Bruce Arnold argues that successful black pastors historically undertook multiple roles.[29] These include:

  • The black pastor is the paterfamilias of his church, responsible for shepherding and holding the community together, passing on its history and traditions, and acting as spiritual leader, wise counselor, and prophetic guide.
  • The black pastor is a counselor and comforter stressing transforming, sustaining, and nurturing abilities of God to help the flock through times of discord, doubts, and counsels them to protect themselves against emotional deterioration.
  • The black pastor is a community organizer and intermediary.

Raboteau describes a common style of black preaching first developed in the early nineteenth century, and common throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries:

The preacher begins calmly, speaking in conversational, if oratorical and occasionally grandiloquent, prose; he then gradually begins to speak more rapidly, excitedly, and to chant his words and time to a regular beat; finally, he reaches an emotional peak in which the chanted speech becomes tonal and merges with the singing, clapping, and shouting of the congregation.[30]

Many Americans interpreted great events in religious terms. Historian Wilson Fallin contrasts the interpretation of the American Civil War and Reconstruction in white versus black Baptist sermons in Alabama. White Baptists expressed the view that:

God had chastised them and given them a special mission – to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety, and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor.

In sharp contrast, black Baptists interpreted the Civil War, Emancipation and Reconstruction as:

God's gift of freedom. They appreciated opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they could form their own churches, associations, and conventions. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed. As a result, black preachers continued to insist that God would protect and help him; God would be their rock in a stormy land.[31]

Black sociologist Benjamin Mays analyzed the content of sermons in the 1930s and concluded:

They are conducive to developing in the Negro a complacent, laissez-faire attitude toward life. They support the view that God in His good time and in His own way will bring about the conditions that will lead to the fulfillment of social needs. They encourage Negroes to feel that God will see to it that things work out all right; if not in this world, certainly in the world to come. They make God influential chiefly in the beyond, and preparing a home for the faithful – a home where His suffering servants will be free of the trials and tribulations which beset them on earth.[32]

After 1865

Further information: Civil rights movement (1865–1896) § Religion

Black Americans, once freed from slavery, were very active in forming their own churches, most of them Baptist or Methodist, and giving their ministers both moral and political leadership roles. In a process of self-segregation, practically all black Americans left white churches so that few racially integrated congregations remained (apart from some Catholic churches in Louisiana). Four main organizations competed with each other across the South to form new Methodist churches composed of freedmen. They were the African Methodist Episcopal Church; the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church; the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (founded 1870 and composed of the former black members of the white Methodist Episcopal Church, South) and the well-funded Methodist Episcopal Church (Northern white Methodists), which organized Mission Conferences.[33][34] By 1871 the Northern Methodists had 88,000 black members in the South, and had opened numerous schools for them.[35]

African-Americans during Reconstruction Era were politically the core element of the Republican Party and the minister played a powerful political role. Their ministers had powerful political roles that were distinctive since they did not primarily depend on white support, in contrast to teachers, politicians, businessmen, and tenant farmers.[36] Acting on the principle expounded by Charles H. Pearce, an AME minister in Florida: "A man in this State cannot do his whole duty as a minister except he looks out for the political interests of his people," over 100 black ministers were elected to state legislatures during Reconstruction. Several served in Congress and one, Hiram Revels, in the U.S. Senate.[37]

Urban churches

 
Black Americans outside a church in Georgia, 1900

The great majority of African-Americans lived in rural areas where services were held in small makeshift buildings. In the cities black churches were more visible. Besides their regular religious services, the urban churches had numerous other activities, such as scheduled prayer meetings, missionary societies, women's clubs, youth groups, public lectures, and musical concerts. Regularly scheduled revivals operated over a period of weeks reaching large and appreciative crowds.[38]

Charitable activities abounded concerning the care of the sick and needy. The larger churches had a systematic education program, besides the Sunday schools, and Bible study groups. They held literacy classes to enable older members to read the Bible. Private black colleges, such as Fisk in Nashville, often began in the basement of the churches. Church supported the struggling small business community.[38]

Most important was the political role. Churches hosted protest meetings, rallies, and Republican party conventions. Prominent laymen and ministers negotiated political deals, and often ran for office until disfranchisement took effect in the 1890s. In the 1880s, the prohibition of liquor was a major political concern that allowed for collaboration with like-minded white Protestants. In every case, the pastor was the dominant decision-maker. His salary ranged from $400 a year to upwards of $1500, plus housing – at a time when 50 cents a day was good pay for unskilled physical labor.[38]

Increasingly the Methodists reached out to college or seminary graduates for their ministers, but most of Baptists felt that education was a negative factor that undercut the intense religiosity and oratorical skills they demanded of their ministers.[38]

After 1910, as black people migrated to major cities in both the North and the South, there emerged the pattern of a few very large churches with thousands of members and a paid staff, headed by an influential preacher. At the same time there were many "storefront" churches with a few dozen members.[39]

Historically black Christian denominations

Main article: Black church

Methodism (inclusive of the holiness movement)

African Methodist Episcopal Church

Main article: African Methodist Episcopal Church
 
The 1918 A.M.E. Church, Cairo, Illinois

In 1787, Richard Allen and his colleagues in Philadelphia broke away from the Methodist Episcopal Church and in 1816 founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). It began with 8 clergy and 5 churches, and by 1846 had grown to 176 clergy, 296 churches, and 17,375 members. The 20,000 members in 1856 were located primarily in the North.[40][41] AME national membership (including probationers and preachers) jumped from 70,000 in 1866 to 207,000 in 1876[42]

AME put a high premium on education. In the 19th century, the AME Church of Ohio collaborated with the Methodist Episcopal Church, a predominantly white denomination, in sponsoring the second independent historically black college (HBCU), Wilberforce University in Ohio. By 1880, AME operated over 2,000 schools, chiefly in the South, with 155,000 students. For school houses they used church buildings; the ministers and their wives were the teachers; the congregations raised the money to keep schools operating at a time the segregated public schools were starved of funds.[43]

 
Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, AME leader in Georgia

After the Civil War Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915) was a major leader of the AME and played a role in Republican Party politics. In 1863 during the Civil War, Turner was appointed as the first black chaplain in the United States Colored Troops. Afterward, he was appointed to the Freedmen's Bureau in Georgia. He settled in Macon and was elected to the state legislature in 1868 during Reconstruction. He planted many AME churches in Georgia after the war.[44]

In 1880 he was elected as the first southern bishop of the AME Church after a fierce battle within the denomination. Angered by the Democrats' regaining power and instituting Jim Crow laws in the late nineteenth century South, Turner was the leader of black nationalism and proposed emigration of the black community to Africa.[44]

In terms of social status, the Methodist churches have typically attracted the black leadership and the middle class. Like all American denominations, there were numerous schisms and new groups were formed every year.[citation needed]

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

Main article: African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

The AMEZ denomination was officially formed in 1821 in New York City, but operated for a number of years before then. The total membership in 1866 was about 42,000.[45] The church-sponsored Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina was founded to train missionaries for Africa. Today the AME Zion Church is especially active in mission work in Africa and the Caribbean, especially in Nigeria, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Angola, Ivory Coast, Ghana, England, India, Jamaica, Virgin Islands, Trinidad, and Tobago.[46]

Wesleyan-Holiness movement

Main article: Wesleyan-Holiness movement

The Holiness Movement emerged within the Methodist Church in the late 19th century. It emphasized the Methodist belief of "Christian perfection"–the belief that it is possible to live free of voluntary sin, and particularly by the belief that this may be accomplished instantaneously through a second work of grace.[47] Although many within the holiness movement remained within the mainline Methodist Church, new denominations were established, such as the Free Methodist Church, Wesleyan Methodist Church, and Church of God.[48] The Wesleyan Methodist Church was founded to herald Methodist doctrine, in addition to promoting abolitionism.[49]

The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), with its beginnings in 1881, held that "interracial worship was a sign of the true Church", with both whites and blacks ministering regularly in Church of God congregations, which invited people of all races to worship there.[50] Those who were entirely sanctified testified that they were "saved, sanctified, and prejudice removed".[50] When Church of God ministers, such as Lena Shoffner, visited the camp meetings of other denominations, the rope in the congregation that separated whites and blacks was untied "and worshipers of both races approached the altar to pray".[50] 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".[50]

Other Methodist connexions

Baptists

Further information: National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. and Progressive National Baptist Convention

After the Civil War, black Baptists desiring to practice Christianity away from racial discrimination, rapidly set up separate churches and separate state Baptist conventions. In 1866, black Baptists of the South and West combined to form the Consolidated American Baptist Convention. This Convention eventually collapsed but three national conventions formed in response. In 1895 the three conventions merged to create the National Baptist Convention. It is now the largest African-American religious organization in the United States.[51]

Since the late 19th century to the present, a large majority of black Christians belong to Baptist churches.

Baptist churches are locally controlled by the congregation, and select their own ministers. They choose local men – often quite young – with a reputation for religiosity, preaching skill, and ability to touch the deepest emotions of the congregations. Few were well-educated until the mid-twentieth century, when Bible Colleges became common. Until the late twentieth century, few of them were paid; most were farmers or had other employment. They became spokesman for their communities, and were among the few black people in the South allowed to vote in Jim Crow days before 1965.[52]

National Baptist Convention

Main article: National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.

The National Baptist Convention was first organized in 1880 as the Foreign Mission Baptist Convention in Montgomery, Alabama. Its founders, including Elias Camp Morris, stressed the preaching of the gospel as an answer to the shortcomings of a segregated church. In 1895, Morris moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and founded the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., as a merger of the Foreign Mission Convention, the American National Baptist Convention, and the Baptist National Education Convention.[53] The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., is the largest African-American religious organization.[54]

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was highly controversial in many black churches, where the minister preached spiritual salvation rather than political activism. The National Baptist Convention became deeply split. Its autocratic leader, Rev. Joseph H. Jackson had supported the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956, but by 1960 he told his denomination they should not become involved in civil rights activism.[55]

Jackson was based in Chicago and was a close ally of Mayor Richard J. Daley and the Chicago Democratic machine against the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. and his aide the young Jesse Jackson Jr. (no relation to Joseph Jackson). In the end, King led his activists out of the National Baptist Convention into their own rival group, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, which supported the extensive activism of the King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.[55]

Other Baptist denominations

Pentecostalism

Giggie finds that black Methodists and Baptists sought middle class respectability. In sharp contrast the new Holiness Pentecostalism, in addition to the Holiness Methodist belief in entire sanctification, which was based on a sudden religious experience that could empower people to avoid sin, also taught a belief in a third work of grace accompanied by glossolalia.[56][57] These groups stressed the role of the direct witness of the Holy Spirit, and emphasized the traditional emotionalism of black worship.[58]

William J. Seymour, a black preacher, traveled to Los Angeles where his preaching sparked the three-year-long Azusa Street Revival in 1906. Worship at the racially integrated Azusa Mission featured an absence of any order of service. People preached and testified as moved by the Spirit, spoke and sung in tongues, and fell in the Spirit. The revival attracted both religious and secular media attention, and thousands of visitors flocked to the mission, carrying the "fire" back to their home churches.[59]

The crowds of black people and white people worshiping together at Seymour's Azusa Street Mission set the tone for much of the early Pentecostal movement. Pentecostals defied social, cultural and political norms of the time that called for racial segregation and Jim Crow. Holiness Pentecostal denominations (the Church of God in Christ, the Church of God, the Pentecostal Holiness Church),[57] and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (a Oneness Finished Work Pentecostal denomination) were all interracial denominations before the 1920s. These groups, especially in the Jim Crow South were under great pressure to conform to segregation.[60]

Ultimately, North American Pentecostalism would divide into white and African-American branches. Though it never entirely disappeared, interracial worship within Pentecostalism would not reemerge as a widespread practice until after the Civil Rights Movement.[60] The Church of God in Christ (COGIC), an African American Pentecostal denomination founded in 1896, has become the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States today.[61]

Other Pentecostal denominations

 
Worshippers at Holy Angel Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, 1973

Non-Christian religions

African religions

Main article: African American religions

The syncretist religion Louisiana Voodoo has traditionally been practiced by Creoles of color and African-Americans in Louisiana, while Hoodoo is a system of beliefs and rituals historically associated with Gullah and Black Seminoles. Hoodoo and Voudou are still active religions in African-American communities in the United States, and there is a reclamation of these traditions by African-American youth.[62][63]

Islam

Main article: African-American Muslims

Historically, between 15% and 30% of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims, but most of these Africans were forced into Christianity during the era of American slavery. Islam had taken hold in Africa through Arab Muslim expansionism that began following Muhammad's death, and its presence solidified through trade, occupation, of the enduring 1300 year Middle Eastern slave trade of Africans that lasted well into until the 1900s.[citation needed] During the twentieth century, many African Americans who were seeking to reconnect with their African heritage converted to Islam, mainly through the influence of black nationalist groups with distinctive beliefs and practices. These included the Moorish Science Temple of America, and the largest organization, the Nation of Islam, founded in the 1930s, which had at least 20,000 members by 1963.[citation needed],

Prominent members of the Nation of Islam included the human rights activist Malcolm X and the boxer Muhammad Ali. Malcolm X is considered[by whom?] the first person to have started the conversion of African Americans to mainstream Sunni Islam, after he left the Nation and made the pilgrimage to Mecca and changed his name to el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. In 1975, Warith Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad, took control of the Nation after his father's death and converted the majority of its members to orthodox Sunni Islam[citation needed].

African-American Muslims constitute 20% of the total U.S. Muslim population. The majority of black Muslims are Sunni or orthodox Muslims[citation needed]. A 2014 Pew survey showed that 23% of American Muslims were converts to Islam, including 8% who converted to Islam from historically black Protestant traditions[citation needed]. Other religions claim to be Islamic, including the Moorish Science Temple of America and offshoots of it, such as the Nation of Islam and the Five Percenters.[citation needed]

Judaism

Main article: African-American Jews
Further information: African American–Jewish relations

The American Jewish community includes Jews with African-American backgrounds. African-American Jews belong to each of the major American Jewish denominations—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform—as well as minor religious movements within Judaism. Like Jews with other racial backgrounds, there are also African-American Jewish secularists and Jews who may rarely or never participate in religious practices.[64] Estimates of the number of black Jews in the United States range from 20,000[65] to 200,000.[66] Most black Jews have mixed ethnic backgrounds, or they are Jewish by either birth or conversion.[citation needed]

Black Hebrew Israelites

Main article: Black Hebrew Israelites

Black Hebrew Israelites (also called black Hebrews, African Hebrew Israelites, and Hebrew Israelites) are groups of African Americans who believe that they are the descendants of the ancient Israelites. To varying degrees, Black Hebrews adhere to the religious beliefs and practices of both Christianity and Judaism. They are not recognized as Jews by the greater Jewish community. Many of them choose to call themselves Hebrew Israelites or black Hebrews rather than Jews in order to indicate their claimed historic connections.[67][68][69][70]

Others

There are African-Americans, mostly converts, who adhere to other faiths, namely the Baháʼí Faith,[71] Buddhism,[72] Hinduism, Jainism, Scientology, and Rastafari.

A 2019 report examined a sect of African-American women who venerated the African deity Oshun in a form of Modern Paganism.[73]

Some African Americans practice Louisiana Voodoo, especially African Americans in Louisiana. Louisiana Voodoo was brought to Louisiana by African slaves from Benin during the French colonial era.[citation needed]

See also

History:

Notes

  1. ^ Mark Nickens, "Review" Church History (2008) 77#3 p. 784
  2. ^ Gates, Henry Louis (9 March 2021). "How the Black Church saved Black America". The Harvard Gazette. Harvard University. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
  3. ^ "A Religious Portrait of African-Americans". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 2009-01-30. Retrieved 2019-11-02.
  4. ^ Masci, David (2018-04-23). "Black Americans more likely than overall public to be Christian, Protestant". Pewresearch.org.
  5. ^ "Black Religion Statistics". BlackDemographics.com. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  6. ^ "Black Religion Statistics". BlackDemographics.com. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  7. ^ "Black Religion Statistics". BlackDemographics.com. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  8. ^ Pratt, Tia (2020). "Authentically Black, Truly Catholic". Commonweal. 147 (4): 40–41.
  9. ^ "Demographics | USCCB". www.usccb.org. Retrieved 2021-07-07.
  10. ^ a b Gomez, Michael A. (1994). "Muslims in Early America". The Journal of Southern History. 60 (4): 671–710. doi:10.2307/2211064. ISSN 0022-4642 – via JSTOR.
  11. ^ Costello, Damian (2020-09-01). "Pray with Our Lady of Stono to heal the wounds of slavery". U.S. Catholic magazine - Faith in Real Life. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  12. ^ Antonio T. Bly, "In Pursuit of Letters: A History of the Bray Schools for Enslaved Children in Colonial Virginia," History of Education Quarterly (2011) 51#4 pp. 429–59.
  13. ^ Sylvia R. Frey, "The Visible Church: Historiography of African American Religion since Raboteau," Slavery & Abolition (2008) 29#1 pp. 83–110
  14. ^ Frost, J. William (1998). "Christianity and Culture in America". In Kee, Howard Clark (ed.). Christianity: A Social and Cultural History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. p. 446. ISBN 978-0135780718.
  15. ^ Smedley, R. C. (2005). History of the Underground Railroad: In Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania. Stackpole Books. p. xvi. ISBN 978-0811731898.
  16. ^ History of Salem Township, Washtenaw County, Michigan. Salem Area Historical Society. 1976. p. 56.
  17. ^ "George Bourne, 1780-1845. A Condensed Anti-Slavery Bible Argument; By a Citizen of Virginia". docsouth.unc.edu. Retrieved 2020-07-06.
  18. ^ "How the Methodist Church split in the 1840s". From the Archives. 2013-01-30. Retrieved 2020-07-06.
  19. ^ "Methodist history mixed on abolitionism". United Methodist News Service. Retrieved 2020-07-06.
  20. ^ a b c d Frost, J. William (1998). "Christianity and Culture in America". In Kee, Howard Clark (ed.). Christianity: A Social and Cultural History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. p. 447. ISBN 978-0135780718.
  21. ^ Ahlstrom 1972, pp. 648–649.
  22. ^ "Abolition and the Splintering of the Church". PBS. 2003. Retrieved 11 May 2021.
  23. ^ Frost (1998), Christianity, 448.
  24. ^ Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion (1978) pp. 68–87
  25. ^ Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (1998).
  26. ^ a b Albert J. Raboteau, Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans (2001)
  27. ^ James H. Hutson, Religion and the founding of the American Republic (1998) p. 106
  28. ^ Albert J. Raboteau,Slave religion: the "invisible institution" in the antebellum South (1978) online
  29. ^ Bruce Makato Arnold, Arnold, "Shepherding a Flock of Different Fleece: A Historical and Social Analysis of the Unique Attributes of the African American Pastoral Caregiver." Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling 66.2 (2012): 1–14. online; [1] download
  30. ^ Albert Raboteau, A Fire in the Bones, Reflections on African-American Religious History (1995), pp. 143–44
  31. ^ Wilson Fallin Jr., Uplifting the People: Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama (2007) pp. 52–53
  32. ^ B.E. Mays, The Negro's God (1938) p. 245 cited in Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (1944) p. 873
  33. ^ Daniel W. Stowell (1998). Rebuilding Zion : The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863–1877. Oxford UP. pp. 83–84. ISBN 9780198026211.
  34. ^ Clarence Earl Walker, A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction (1982)
  35. ^ William W. Sweet, "The Methodist Episcopal Church and Reconstruction," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1914) 7#3 pp. 147–65 in JSTOR
  36. ^ Donald Lee Grant (1993). The Way it was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia. U. of Georgia Press. p. 264. ISBN 9780820323299.
  37. ^ Foner, Reconstruction, (1988) p. 93
  38. ^ a b c d Howard N. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South: 1865–1890 (1978), pp. 208–13
  39. ^ Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (1944) pp. 858–78
  40. ^ James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (1995)
  41. ^ A. Nevell Owens, Formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Nineteenth Century: Rhetoric of Identification (2014)
  42. ^ The Annual Cyclopedia: 1866," (1867) p. 492; The Annual Cyclopedia: 1876 (1877) p. 532
  43. ^ William E. Montgomery, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 1865–1900 (1993) pp. 148–52.
  44. ^ a b Stephen Ward Angell, Henry McNeal Turner and African-American Religion in the South, (1992)
  45. ^ The Annual Cyclopedia: 1866," (1867) p. 492
  46. ^ Canter Brown, and Larry E. Rivers, For a Great and Grand Purpose: The Beginnings of the AMEZ Church in Florida, 1864–1905 (2004)
  47. ^ Cheryl J. Sanders, Saints in exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal experience in African American religion and culture (1999)
  48. ^ Winn, Christian T. Collins (2007). From the Margins: A Celebration of the Theological Work of Donald W. Dayton. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 115. ISBN 9781630878320. In addition to these separate denominational groupings, one needs to give attention to the large pockets of the Holiness movement that have remained within the United Methodist Church. The most influential of these would be the circles dominated by Asbury College and Asbury Theological Seminary (both in Wilmore, KY), but one could speak of other colleges, innumerable local campmeetings, the vestiges of various local Holiness associations, independent Holiness oriented missionary societies and the like that have had great impact within United Methodism. A similar pattern would exist in England with the role of Cliff College within Methodism in that context.
  49. ^ Hinks, Peter P. (2007). Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 469. ISBN 978-0-313-33144-2.
  50. ^ a b c d Alexander, Estrelda Y. (3 May 2011). Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism. InterVarsity Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-8308-2586-8.
  51. ^ Leroy Fitts, A History of Black Baptists (1985)
  52. ^ Leroy Fitts, A History of Black Baptists (Broadman Press, 1985)
  53. ^ . Archived from the original on 2007-01-06. Retrieved 2007-05-29.
  54. ^ "African American Religion, Pt. II: From the Civil War to the Great Migration, 1865-1920". Retrieved 2007-05-29.
  55. ^ a b Peter J. Paris, Black Leaders in Conflict: Joseph H. Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1978); Nick Salvatore, Singing in a strange land: C.L. Franklin, the black church, and the transformation of America (2007)
  56. ^ The West Tennessee Historical Society Papers – Issue 56. West Tennessee Historical Society. 2002. p. 41. Seymour's holiness background suggests that Pentecostalism had roots in the holiness movement of the late nineteenth century. The holiness movement embraced the Wesleyan doctrine of "sanctification" or the second work of grace, subsequent to conversion. Pentecostalism added a third work of grace, called the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which is often accompanied by glossolalia.
  57. ^ a b Anderson, Allan (13 May 2004). An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity. Cambridge University Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-521-53280-8. Those who resisted Durham's teaching and remained in the 'three-stage' camp were Seymour, Crawford and Parham, and Bishops Charles H. Mason, A.J. Tomlinson and J.H. King, respectively leaders of the Church of God in Christ, the Church of God (Cleveland) and the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Tomlinson and King each issued tirades against the 'finished work' doctrine in their periodicals, but by 1914 some 60 percent of all North American Pentecostals had embraced Durham's position. ... The 'Finished Work' controversy was only the first of many subsequent divisions in North American Pentecostalism. Not only did Pentecostal churches split over the question of sanctification as a distinct experience, but a more fundamental and acrimonious split erupted in 1916 over the doctrine of the Trinity. ... The 'New Issue' was a schism in the ranks of the 'Finished Work' Pentecostals that began as a teaching that the correct formula for baptism is 'in the name of Jesus' and developed into a dispute about the Trinity. It confirmed for Holiness Pentecostals that they should have no further fellowship with the 'Finished Work' Pentecostals, who were in 'heresy'.
  58. ^ John M. Giggie, After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875–1915 (2008) pp. 165–93
  59. ^ Vinson Synan, The Holiness–Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (1997) pp. 98–100
  60. ^ a b Synan, The Holiness–Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (1997) pp. 167–186.
  61. ^ Anthea D. Butler, Women in the Church of God in Christ: making a sanctified world (2007).
  62. ^ Nittle, Nadra. "We're reclaiming these traditions': Black women embrace the spiritual realm There's a revived fascination with witchcraft and the occult. For Black women, mysticism's appeal is about empowerment and taking up space in a world that often marginalizes them". NBC News. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
  63. ^ Harvard Staff. "Black Magic Matters: Hoodoo as Ancestral Religion". Harvard Divinity School. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
  64. ^ Wolfson, Bernard J. (1999). "African American Jews". In Chireau, Yvonne; Deutsch, Nathaniel (eds.). Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 33–34. ISBN 978-0-19-511257-3.
  65. ^ David Whelan (May 8, 2003). "A Fledgling Grant Maker Nurtures Young Jewish 'Social Entrepreneurs'". The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
  66. ^ Michael Gelbwasser (April 10, 1998). "Organization for black Jews claims 200,000 in U.S." J. The Jewish News of Northern California.
  67. ^ Ben-Jochannan, p. 306.
  68. ^ Ben Levy, Sholomo. "The Black Jewish or Hebrew Israelite Community". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved December 15, 2007.
  69. ^ Johannes P. Schade, ed. (2006). "Black Hebrews". Encyclopedia of World Religions. Franklin Park, N.J.: Foreign Media Group. ISBN 978-1-60136-000-7.
  70. ^ Bahrampour, Tara (June 26, 2000). "They're Jewish, With a Gospel Accent". The New York Times. Retrieved November 5, 2016.
  71. ^ "Baháʼí Faith Makes Gains Among Blacks". The Christian Century. Vol. 88, no. 12. March 24, 1971. p. 368. ISSN 0009-5281.
  72. ^ Pintak, Lawrence (September 1, 2001). "'Something Has to Change': Blacks in American Buddhism". Lion's Roar.
  73. ^ "Growing Number Of Black Women Leaving Churches For Witchcraft". 2019-02-18. Retrieved 2019-09-12.

Further reading

  • Arnold, Bruce Makoto. "Shepherding a Flock of a Different Fleece: A Historical and Social Analysis of the Unique Attributes of the African American Pastoral Caregiver." The Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling 66, no. 2 (June 2012).
  • Brooks, Walter H. "The Evolution of the Negro Baptist Church." Journal of Negro History (1922) 7#1 pp. 11–22. in JSTOR
  • Brunner, Edmund D. Church Life in the Rural South (1923) pp. 80–92, based on the survey in the early 1920s of 30 communities across the rural South
  • Calhoun-Brown, Allison. "The image of God: Black theology and racial empowerment in the African American community." Review of Religious Research (1999): 197–212. in JSTOR
  • Chapman, Mark L. Christianity on trial: African-American religious thought before and after Black power (2006)
  • Collier-Thomas, Bettye. Jesus, jobs, and justice: African American women and religion (2010)
  • Curtis, Edward E. "African-American Islamization Reconsidered: Black history Narratives and Muslim identity." Journal of the American Academy of Religion (2005) 73#3 pp. 659–84.
  • Davis, Cyprian. The History of Black Catholics in the United States (1990).
  • Fallin Jr., Wilson. Uplifting the People: Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama (2007)
  • Fitts, Leroy. A history of black Baptists (Broadman Press, 1985)
  • Frey, Sylvia R. and Betty Wood. Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (1998).
  • Garrow, David. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986).
  • Giggie, John Michael. After redemption: Jim Crow and the transformation of African American religion in the Delta, 1875–1915 (2007)
  • * Harper, Matthew. The End of Days: African American Religion and Politics in the Age of Emancipation (U of North Carolina Press, 2016) xii, 211 pp.
  • Harris, Fredrick C. Something within: Religion in African-American political activism (1999)
  • Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Woman’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (1993), highly influential study
  • Jackson, Joseph H. A Story of Christian Activism: The History of the National Baptist Convention, USA. Inc (Nashville: Townsend Press, 1980); official history
  • Johnson, Paul E., ed. African-American Christianity: Essays in History (1994).
  • Mays, Benjamin E., and Joseph W. Nicholson. The Negro Church New York: Institute of Social and Religious Research (1933), sociological survey of rural and urban black churches in 1930
  • Mays, Benjamin E. The Negro's God as reflected in his literature (1938), based on sermons
  • Montgomery, William E. Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 1865–1900 (1993)
  • Moody, Joycelyn. Sentimental Confessions: Spiritual Narratives of Nineteenth-century African American Women (2001)
  • Owens, A. Nevell. Formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Nineteenth Century: Rhetoric of Identification (2014)
  • Paris, Peter J. The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Fortress Press, 1985)
  • Raboteau, Albert. Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (1978)
  • Raboteau, Albert. African American-Religion (1999) 145pp online basic introduction
  • Raboteau, Albert J. Canaan land: A religious history of African Americans (2001).
  • Salvatore, Nick. Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America (2005) on the politics of the National Baptist Convention
  • Sensbach, Jon F. Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (2005)
  • Smith, R. Drew, ed. Long March ahead: African American churches and public policy in post-civil rights America (2004).
  • Sobel, M. Trabelin’ On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (1979)
  • Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History (1997)
  • Spencer, Jon Michael. Black hymnody: a hymnological history of the African-American church (1992)
  • Wills, David W. and Richard Newman, eds. Black Apostles at Home and Abroad: Afro-Americans and the Christian Mission from the Revolution to Reconstruction (1982)
  • Woodson, Carter. The History of the Negro Church (1921) online free, comprehensive history by leading black scholar
  • Yong, Amos, and Estrelda Y. Alexander. Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture (2012)

Historiography

  • Evans, Curtis J. The Burden of Black Religion (2008); traces ideas about Black religion from the antebellum period to 1950
  • Frey, Sylvia R. "The Visible Church: Historiography of African American Religion since Raboteau," Slavery & Abolition (2008) 29#1 pp. 83–110
  • Fulop, Timothy Earl, and Albert J. Raboteau, eds. African-American religion: interpretive essays in history and culture (1997)
  • Vaughn, Steve. "Making Jesus black: the historiographical debate on the roots of African-American Christianity." Journal of Negro History (1997): 25–41. in JSTOR

Primary sources

  • DuBois, W. E. B. The Negro Church: Report of a Social Study Made under the Direction of Atlanta University (1903) online
  • Sernett, Milton C., ed. Afro-American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (Duke University Press, 1985; 2nd ed. 1999)
  • West, Cornel, and Eddie S. Glaude, eds. African American religious thought: An anthology (2003).

January 30, 2023
religion, black, americans, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed, find, sources, news, newspapers, books, scholar, jstor,. This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Religion of Black Americans news newspapers books scholar JSTOR August 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message This article is about the religious practices of African Americans in the United States For religious practices elsewhere in the Americas see African diaspora religions Religion of black Americans refers to the religious and spiritual practices of African Americans Historians generally agree that the religious life of black Americans forms the foundation of their community life 1 Before 1775 there was scattered evidence of organized religion among black people in the Thirteen Colonies The Methodist and Baptist churches became much more active in the 1780s Their growth was quite rapid for the next 150 years until their membership included the majority of black Americans citation needed Women engaged in praise at a Pentecostal worship service in Chicago Illinois 1941 Woman at a Baptist church service in Alabama July 1972 After Emancipation in 1863 Freedmen organized their own churches chiefly Baptist followed by Methodists Other Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church played smaller roles In the 19th century the Wesleyan Holiness movement which emerged in Methodism as well as Holiness Pentecostalism in the 20th century were important and later the Jehovah s Witnesses The Nation of Islam and el Hajj Malik el Shabazz also known as Malcolm X added a Muslim factor in the 20th century Powerful pastors often played prominent roles in politics often through their leadership in the American civil rights movement as typified by Martin Luther King Jr Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton 2 Contents 1 Religious demographics 2 History 2 1 Colonial era 2 2 Formation of churches 18th century 2 3 Preaching 2 4 After 1865 2 5 Urban churches 3 Historically black Christian denominations 3 1 Methodism inclusive of the holiness movement 3 1 1 African Methodist Episcopal Church 3 1 2 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church 3 1 3 Wesleyan Holiness movement 3 1 4 Other Methodist connexions 3 2 Baptists 3 2 1 Other Baptist denominations 3 3 Pentecostalism 3 3 1 Other Pentecostal denominations 4 Non Christian religions 4 1 African religions 4 2 Islam 4 3 Judaism 4 4 Black Hebrew Israelites 4 5 Others 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Further reading 7 1 Historiography 7 2 Primary sourcesReligious demographics EditReligious affiliation of African Americans 3 Black Protestant 59 Evangelical Protestant 15 Mainline Protestant 4 Roman Catholic 5 Jehovah s Witness 1 Other Christian 1 Muslim 1 Other religion 1 Unaffiliated 11 Atheist or agnostic 2 The vast majority of Black Americans are Protestants with descendants of American chattel slavery being largely Baptists or adhering to other forms of Evangelical Protestantism 4 A 2007 Pew Research survey found that African Americans were more religious than the U S population as a whole 87 of African Americans were affiliated with a religion compared with 83 of the wider population 5 79 of African Americans stated that religion is very important in their life compared to 56 of the wider US population 6 83 of Black Americans identified as Christian including 45 who identified as baptist Catholics accounted for 5 of the population 1 of black Americans identified as Muslims About 12 of African American people didn t identify with an established religion and identified as either unaffiliated atheist or agnostic slightly lower than the figure for the whole of the US 7 In 2019 there were approximately three million African American Catholics in the US 24 of whom worshiped in the country s 798 predominantly African American parishes 8 9 History EditColonial era Edit Africans brought religion with them from Africa including Islam 10 Catholicism 11 and traditional religions In the 1770s no more than 1 of black people in the United States had connections with organized churches The numbers grew rapidly after 1789 citation needed The Anglican Church had made a systematic effort when to proselytize especially in Virginia and to spread information about Christianity and the ability to read the Bible without making many converts 12 No organized African religious practices are known to have taken place in the Thirteen Colonies In the mid 20th century scholars debated whether there were distinctive African elements embedded in black American religious practices as in music and dancing Scholars no longer look for such cultural transfers regarding religion why 13 need quotation to verify Muslims practiced Islam surreptitiously or underground throughout the era of the enslavement of African people in North America 10 The story of Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori a Muslim prince from West Africa who spent 40 years enslaved in the United States from 1788 onwards before being freed demonstrates the survival of Muslim belief and practice among enslaved Africans in America Prior to the American Revolution masters and revivalists spread Christianity to slave communities including Catholicism in Spanish Florida and California and in French and Spanish Louisiana and Protestantism in English colonies supported by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel In the First Great Awakening ca 1730 1755 Baptists were drawing Virginians especially poor white farmers into a new much more democratic religion Baptist gatherings made slaves welcome at their services and a few Baptist congregations contained when as many as 25 slaves citation needed Baptists and Methodists from New England preached a message against slavery encouraged masters to free their slaves converted both slaves and free blacks and gave them active roles in new congregations 14 The first independent black congregations were started in the South before the Revolution in South Carolina and Georgia Believing that slavery was contrary to the ethics of Jesus Christian congregations and church clergy especially in the North played a role in the Underground Railroad especially Wesleyan Methodists Quakers and Congregationalists 15 16 White clergy within evangelical Protestantism actively promoted the idea that all Christians were equal in the sight of God a message that provided hope and sustenance to oppressed slaves 17 18 19 Over the decades and with the growth of slavery throughout the South some Baptist and Methodist ministers gradually changed their messages to accommodate the institution After 1830 white Southerners argued for the compatibility of Christianity and slavery with a multitude of both Old and New Testament citations 20 They promoted Christianity as encouraging better treatment of slaves and argued for a paternalistic approach In the 1840s and 1850s the issue of accepting slavery split the nation s largest religious denominations the Methodist Baptist and Presbyterian churches into separate Northern and Southern organizations see Methodist Episcopal Church South Southern Baptist Convention and Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America 21 Schisms occurred such as that between the Wesleyan Methodist Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church 22 Southern slaves generally attended their masters white churches where they often outnumbered the white congregants They were usually permitted to sit only in the back or in the balcony They listened to white preachers who emphasized the obligation of slaves to keep in their place and acknowledged the slave s identity as both person and property 20 Preachers taught the master s responsibility and the concept of appropriate paternal treatment using Christianity to improve conditions for slaves and to treat them justly and fairly Col 4 1 This included masters having self control not disciplining under anger not threatening and ultimately fostering Christianity among their slaves by example 20 Slaves also created their own religious observances meeting alone without the supervision of their white masters or ministers The larger plantations with groups of slaves numbering 20 or more tended to be centers of nighttime meetings of one or several plantation slave populations 20 These congregations revolved around a singular preacher often illiterate with limited knowledge of theology who was marked by his personal piety and ability to foster a spiritual environment African Americans developed a theology related to Biblical stories having the most meaning for them including the hope for deliverance from slavery by their own Exodus One lasting influence of these secret congregations is the African American spiritual 23 Black religious music is distinct from traditional European religious music it uses dances and ring shouts and emphasizes emotion and repetition more intensely 24 Formation of churches 18th century Edit Scholars disagree about the extent of the native African content of black Christianity as it emerged in 18th century America but there is no dispute that the Christianity of the black population was grounded in evangelicalism 25 Central to the growth of community among black people was the black church usually the first community institution to be established Starting around 1800 with the African Methodist Episcopal Church African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and other churches the black church grew to be the focal point of the black community The black church was both an expression of community and unique African American spirituality and a reaction to discrimination 26 The church also served as neighborhood centers where free black people could celebrate their African heritage without intrusion by white detractors The church also the center of education Since the church was part of the community and wanted to provide education they educated the freed and enslaved black community Seeking autonomy some black religious leaders like Richard Allen founded separate black denominations 26 The Second Great Awakening 1800 20s has been called the central and defining event in the development of Afro Christianity 27 Free black religious leaders also established black churches in the South before 1860 After the Great Awakening many black Christians joined the Baptist Church which allowed for their participation including roles as elders and preachers For instance First Baptist Church and Gillfield Baptist Church of Petersburg Virginia both had organized congregations by 1800 and were the first Baptist churches in the city 28 Preaching Edit Further information Black sermonic tradition Historian Bruce Arnold argues that successful black pastors historically undertook multiple roles 29 These include The black pastor is the paterfamilias of his church responsible for shepherding and holding the community together passing on its history and traditions and acting as spiritual leader wise counselor and prophetic guide The black pastor is a counselor and comforter stressing transforming sustaining and nurturing abilities of God to help the flock through times of discord doubts and counsels them to protect themselves against emotional deterioration The black pastor is a community organizer and intermediary Raboteau describes a common style of black preaching first developed in the early nineteenth century and common throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries The preacher begins calmly speaking in conversational if oratorical and occasionally grandiloquent prose he then gradually begins to speak more rapidly excitedly and to chant his words and time to a regular beat finally he reaches an emotional peak in which the chanted speech becomes tonal and merges with the singing clapping and shouting of the congregation 30 Many Americans interpreted great events in religious terms Historian Wilson Fallin contrasts the interpretation of the American Civil War and Reconstruction in white versus black Baptist sermons in Alabama White Baptists expressed the view that God had chastised them and given them a special mission to maintain orthodoxy strict biblicism personal piety and traditional race relations Slavery they insisted had not been sinful Rather emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God s favor In sharp contrast black Baptists interpreted the Civil War Emancipation and Reconstruction as God s gift of freedom They appreciated opportunities to exercise their independence to worship in their own way to affirm their worth and dignity and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man Most of all they could form their own churches associations and conventions These institutions offered self help and racial uplift and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed As a result black preachers continued to insist that God would protect and help him God would be their rock in a stormy land 31 Black sociologist Benjamin Mays analyzed the content of sermons in the 1930s and concluded They are conducive to developing in the Negro a complacent laissez faire attitude toward life They support the view that God in His good time and in His own way will bring about the conditions that will lead to the fulfillment of social needs They encourage Negroes to feel that God will see to it that things work out all right if not in this world certainly in the world to come They make God influential chiefly in the beyond and preparing a home for the faithful a home where His suffering servants will be free of the trials and tribulations which beset them on earth 32 After 1865 Edit Further information Civil rights movement 1865 1896 Religion Black Americans once freed from slavery were very active in forming their own churches most of them Baptist or Methodist and giving their ministers both moral and political leadership roles In a process of self segregation practically all black Americans left white churches so that few racially integrated congregations remained apart from some Catholic churches in Louisiana Four main organizations competed with each other across the South to form new Methodist churches composed of freedmen They were the African Methodist Episcopal Church the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church founded 1870 and composed of the former black members of the white Methodist Episcopal Church South and the well funded Methodist Episcopal Church Northern white Methodists which organized Mission Conferences 33 34 By 1871 the Northern Methodists had 88 000 black members in the South and had opened numerous schools for them 35 African Americans during Reconstruction Era were politically the core element of the Republican Party and the minister played a powerful political role Their ministers had powerful political roles that were distinctive since they did not primarily depend on white support in contrast to teachers politicians businessmen and tenant farmers 36 Acting on the principle expounded by Charles H Pearce an AME minister in Florida A man in this State cannot do his whole duty as a minister except he looks out for the political interests of his people over 100 black ministers were elected to state legislatures during Reconstruction Several served in Congress and one Hiram Revels in the U S Senate 37 Urban churches Edit Black Americans outside a church in Georgia 1900 The great majority of African Americans lived in rural areas where services were held in small makeshift buildings In the cities black churches were more visible Besides their regular religious services the urban churches had numerous other activities such as scheduled prayer meetings missionary societies women s clubs youth groups public lectures and musical concerts Regularly scheduled revivals operated over a period of weeks reaching large and appreciative crowds 38 Charitable activities abounded concerning the care of the sick and needy The larger churches had a systematic education program besides the Sunday schools and Bible study groups They held literacy classes to enable older members to read the Bible Private black colleges such as Fisk in Nashville often began in the basement of the churches Church supported the struggling small business community 38 Most important was the political role Churches hosted protest meetings rallies and Republican party conventions Prominent laymen and ministers negotiated political deals and often ran for office until disfranchisement took effect in the 1890s In the 1880s the prohibition of liquor was a major political concern that allowed for collaboration with like minded white Protestants In every case the pastor was the dominant decision maker His salary ranged from 400 a year to upwards of 1500 plus housing at a time when 50 cents a day was good pay for unskilled physical labor 38 Increasingly the Methodists reached out to college or seminary graduates for their ministers but most of Baptists felt that education was a negative factor that undercut the intense religiosity and oratorical skills they demanded of their ministers 38 After 1910 as black people migrated to major cities in both the North and the South there emerged the pattern of a few very large churches with thousands of members and a paid staff headed by an influential preacher At the same time there were many storefront churches with a few dozen members 39 Historically black Christian denominations EditMain article Black church Methodism inclusive of the holiness movement Edit African Methodist Episcopal Church Edit Main article African Methodist Episcopal Church The 1918 A M E Church Cairo Illinois In 1787 Richard Allen and his colleagues in Philadelphia broke away from the Methodist Episcopal Church and in 1816 founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church AME It began with 8 clergy and 5 churches and by 1846 had grown to 176 clergy 296 churches and 17 375 members The 20 000 members in 1856 were located primarily in the North 40 41 AME national membership including probationers and preachers jumped from 70 000 in 1866 to 207 000 in 1876 42 AME put a high premium on education In the 19th century the AME Church of Ohio collaborated with the Methodist Episcopal Church a predominantly white denomination in sponsoring the second independent historically black college HBCU Wilberforce University in Ohio By 1880 AME operated over 2 000 schools chiefly in the South with 155 000 students For school houses they used church buildings the ministers and their wives were the teachers the congregations raised the money to keep schools operating at a time the segregated public schools were starved of funds 43 Bishop Henry McNeal Turner AME leader in Georgia After the Civil War Bishop Henry McNeal Turner 1834 1915 was a major leader of the AME and played a role in Republican Party politics In 1863 during the Civil War Turner was appointed as the first black chaplain in the United States Colored Troops Afterward he was appointed to the Freedmen s Bureau in Georgia He settled in Macon and was elected to the state legislature in 1868 during Reconstruction He planted many AME churches in Georgia after the war 44 In 1880 he was elected as the first southern bishop of the AME Church after a fierce battle within the denomination Angered by the Democrats regaining power and instituting Jim Crow laws in the late nineteenth century South Turner was the leader of black nationalism and proposed emigration of the black community to Africa 44 In terms of social status the Methodist churches have typically attracted the black leadership and the middle class Like all American denominations there were numerous schisms and new groups were formed every year citation needed African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Edit Main article African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church The AMEZ denomination was officially formed in 1821 in New York City but operated for a number of years before then The total membership in 1866 was about 42 000 45 The church sponsored Livingstone College in Salisbury North Carolina was founded to train missionaries for Africa Today the AME Zion Church is especially active in mission work in Africa and the Caribbean especially in Nigeria Liberia Malawi Mozambique Angola Ivory Coast Ghana England India Jamaica Virgin Islands Trinidad and Tobago 46 Wesleyan Holiness movement Edit Main article Wesleyan Holiness movement The Holiness Movement emerged within the Methodist Church in the late 19th century It emphasized the Methodist belief of Christian perfection the belief that it is possible to live free of voluntary sin and particularly by the belief that this may be accomplished instantaneously through a second work of grace 47 Although many within the holiness movement remained within the mainline Methodist Church new denominations were established such as the Free Methodist Church Wesleyan Methodist Church and Church of God 48 The Wesleyan Methodist Church was founded to herald Methodist doctrine in addition to promoting abolitionism 49 The Church of God Anderson Indiana with its beginnings in 1881 held that interracial worship was a sign of the true Church with both whites and blacks ministering regularly in Church of God congregations which invited people of all races to worship there 50 Those who were entirely sanctified testified that they were saved sanctified and prejudice removed 50 When Church of God ministers such as Lena Shoffner visited the camp meetings of other denominations the rope in the congregation that separated whites and blacks was untied and worshipers of both races approached the altar to pray 50 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 50 Other Methodist connexions Edit African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Christian Methodist Episcopal Church Church of Christ Holiness U S A Lumber River Conference of the Holiness Methodist ChurchBaptists Edit Further information National Baptist Convention USA Inc and Progressive National Baptist Convention After the Civil War black Baptists desiring to practice Christianity away from racial discrimination rapidly set up separate churches and separate state Baptist conventions In 1866 black Baptists of the South and West combined to form the Consolidated American Baptist Convention This Convention eventually collapsed but three national conventions formed in response In 1895 the three conventions merged to create the National Baptist Convention It is now the largest African American religious organization in the United States 51 Since the late 19th century to the present a large majority of black Christians belong to Baptist churches Baptist churches are locally controlled by the congregation and select their own ministers They choose local men often quite young with a reputation for religiosity preaching skill and ability to touch the deepest emotions of the congregations Few were well educated until the mid twentieth century when Bible Colleges became common Until the late twentieth century few of them were paid most were farmers or had other employment They became spokesman for their communities and were among the few black people in the South allowed to vote in Jim Crow days before 1965 52 National Baptist Convention Main article National Baptist Convention USA Inc The National Baptist Convention was first organized in 1880 as the Foreign Mission Baptist Convention in Montgomery Alabama Its founders including Elias Camp Morris stressed the preaching of the gospel as an answer to the shortcomings of a segregated church In 1895 Morris moved to Atlanta Georgia and founded the National Baptist Convention USA Inc as a merger of the Foreign Mission Convention the American National Baptist Convention and the Baptist National Education Convention 53 The National Baptist Convention USA Inc is the largest African American religious organization 54 The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was highly controversial in many black churches where the minister preached spiritual salvation rather than political activism The National Baptist Convention became deeply split Its autocratic leader Rev Joseph H Jackson had supported the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 but by 1960 he told his denomination they should not become involved in civil rights activism 55 Jackson was based in Chicago and was a close ally of Mayor Richard J Daley and the Chicago Democratic machine against the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr and his aide the young Jesse Jackson Jr no relation to Joseph Jackson In the end King led his activists out of the National Baptist Convention into their own rival group the Progressive National Baptist Convention which supported the extensive activism of the King s Southern Christian Leadership Conference 55 Other Baptist denominations Edit Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship National Baptist Convention of America Inc National Missionary Baptist Convention of America Progressive National Baptist ConventionPentecostalism Edit William Seymour leader of the Azusa Street Revival Giggie finds that black Methodists and Baptists sought middle class respectability In sharp contrast the new Holiness Pentecostalism in addition to the Holiness Methodist belief in entire sanctification which was based on a sudden religious experience that could empower people to avoid sin also taught a belief in a third work of grace accompanied by glossolalia 56 57 These groups stressed the role of the direct witness of the Holy Spirit and emphasized the traditional emotionalism of black worship 58 William J Seymour a black preacher traveled to Los Angeles where his preaching sparked the three year long Azusa Street Revival in 1906 Worship at the racially integrated Azusa Mission featured an absence of any order of service People preached and testified as moved by the Spirit spoke and sung in tongues and fell in the Spirit The revival attracted both religious and secular media attention and thousands of visitors flocked to the mission carrying the fire back to their home churches 59 The crowds of black people and white people worshiping together at Seymour s Azusa Street Mission set the tone for much of the early Pentecostal movement Pentecostals defied social cultural and political norms of the time that called for racial segregation and Jim Crow Holiness Pentecostal denominations the Church of God in Christ the Church of God the Pentecostal Holiness Church 57 and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World a Oneness Finished Work Pentecostal denomination were all interracial denominations before the 1920s These groups especially in the Jim Crow South were under great pressure to conform to segregation 60 Ultimately North American Pentecostalism would divide into white and African American branches Though it never entirely disappeared interracial worship within Pentecostalism would not reemerge as a widespread practice until after the Civil Rights Movement 60 The Church of God in Christ COGIC an African American Pentecostal denomination founded in 1896 has become the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States today 61 Other Pentecostal denominations Edit Worshippers at Holy Angel Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago Illinois 1973 Apostolic Faith Mission Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas Mount Sinai Holy Church of America Pentecostal Assemblies of the World United House of Prayer for All People United Pentecostal Council of the Assemblies of God IncorporatedNon Christian religions EditAfrican religions Edit This section needs expansion You can help by adding to it August 2021 Main article African American religions The syncretist religion Louisiana Voodoo has traditionally been practiced by Creoles of color and African Americans in Louisiana while Hoodoo is a system of beliefs and rituals historically associated with Gullah and Black Seminoles Hoodoo and Voudou are still active religions in African American communities in the United States and there is a reclamation of these traditions by African American youth 62 63 Islam Edit Main article African American Muslims Historically between 15 and 30 of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims but most of these Africans were forced into Christianity during the era of American slavery Islam had taken hold in Africa through Arab Muslim expansionism that began following Muhammad s death and its presence solidified through trade occupation of the enduring 1300 year Middle Eastern slave trade of Africans that lasted well into until the 1900s citation needed During the twentieth century many African Americans who were seeking to reconnect with their African heritage converted to Islam mainly through the influence of black nationalist groups with distinctive beliefs and practices These included the Moorish Science Temple of America and the largest organization the Nation of Islam founded in the 1930s which had at least 20 000 members by 1963 citation needed Prominent members of the Nation of Islam included the human rights activist Malcolm X and the boxer Muhammad Ali Malcolm X is considered by whom the first person to have started the conversion of African Americans to mainstream Sunni Islam after he left the Nation and made the pilgrimage to Mecca and changed his name to el Hajj Malik el Shabazz In 1975 Warith Deen Mohammed the son of Elijah Muhammad took control of the Nation after his father s death and converted the majority of its members to orthodox Sunni Islam citation needed African American Muslims constitute 20 of the total U S Muslim population The majority of black Muslims are Sunni or orthodox Muslims citation needed A 2014 Pew survey showed that 23 of American Muslims were converts to Islam including 8 who converted to Islam from historically black Protestant traditions citation needed Other religions claim to be Islamic including the Moorish Science Temple of America and offshoots of it such as the Nation of Islam and the Five Percenters citation needed Judaism Edit Main article African American Jews Further information African American Jewish relations The American Jewish community includes Jews with African American backgrounds African American Jews belong to each of the major American Jewish denominations Orthodox Conservative Reform as well as minor religious movements within Judaism Like Jews with other racial backgrounds there are also African American Jewish secularists and Jews who may rarely or never participate in religious practices 64 Estimates of the number of black Jews in the United States range from 20 000 65 to 200 000 66 Most black Jews have mixed ethnic backgrounds or they are Jewish by either birth or conversion citation needed Black Hebrew Israelites Edit Main article Black Hebrew Israelites Black Hebrew Israelites also called black Hebrews African Hebrew Israelites and Hebrew Israelites are groups of African Americans who believe that they are the descendants of the ancient Israelites To varying degrees Black Hebrews adhere to the religious beliefs and practices of both Christianity and Judaism They are not recognized as Jews by the greater Jewish community Many of them choose to call themselves Hebrew Israelites or black Hebrews rather than Jews in order to indicate their claimed historic connections 67 68 69 70 Others Edit This section needs expansion You can help by adding to it August 2021 There are African Americans mostly converts who adhere to other faiths namely the Bahaʼi Faith 71 Buddhism 72 Hinduism Jainism Scientology and Rastafari A 2019 report examined a sect of African American women who venerated the African deity Oshun in a form of Modern Paganism 73 Some African Americans practice Louisiana Voodoo especially African Americans in Louisiana Louisiana Voodoo was brought to Louisiana by African slaves from Benin during the French colonial era citation needed See also Edit Religion portal United States portalBlack theology National Black Catholic Congress Southern Christian Leadership Conference Louisiana black church fires African diaspora religions Black church Atheism in the African diaspora Islam in the African diaspora African American Jewish relations African American Jews Black Mormons Black people and Mormonism Black Catholicism T D Jakes Christian hip hop Black Gospel music Louisiana VoodooHistory Methodist Episcopal Church South Wesleyanism Colored Episcopal Mission Racial segregation of churches in the United States Religion in the United States History of religion in the United StatesNotes Edit Mark Nickens Review Church History 2008 77 3 p 784 Gates Henry Louis 9 March 2021 How the Black Church saved Black America The Harvard Gazette Harvard University Retrieved 27 July 2022 A Religious Portrait of African Americans Pew Research Center s Religion amp Public Life Project 2009 01 30 Retrieved 2019 11 02 Masci David 2018 04 23 Black Americans more likely than overall public to be Christian Protestant Pewresearch org Black Religion Statistics BlackDemographics com Retrieved 17 April 2016 Black Religion Statistics BlackDemographics com Retrieved 17 April 2016 Black Religion Statistics BlackDemographics com Retrieved 17 April 2016 Pratt Tia 2020 Authentically Black Truly Catholic Commonweal 147 4 40 41 Demographics USCCB www usccb org Retrieved 2021 07 07 a b Gomez Michael A 1994 Muslims in Early America The Journal of Southern History 60 4 671 710 doi 10 2307 2211064 ISSN 0022 4642 via JSTOR Costello Damian 2020 09 01 Pray with Our Lady of Stono to heal the wounds of slavery U S Catholic magazine Faith in Real Life Retrieved 2020 10 12 Antonio T Bly In Pursuit of Letters A History of the Bray Schools for Enslaved Children in Colonial Virginia History of Education Quarterly 2011 51 4 pp 429 59 Sylvia R Frey The Visible Church Historiography of African American Religion since Raboteau Slavery amp Abolition 2008 29 1 pp 83 110 Frost J William 1998 Christianity and Culture in America In Kee Howard Clark ed Christianity A Social and Cultural History Upper Saddle River NJ Prentice Hall p 446 ISBN 978 0135780718 Smedley R C 2005 History of the Underground Railroad In Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania Stackpole Books p xvi ISBN 978 0811731898 History of Salem Township Washtenaw County Michigan Salem Area Historical Society 1976 p 56 George Bourne 1780 1845 A Condensed Anti Slavery Bible Argument By a Citizen of Virginia docsouth unc edu Retrieved 2020 07 06 How the Methodist Church split in the 1840s From the Archives 2013 01 30 Retrieved 2020 07 06 Methodist history mixed on abolitionism United Methodist News Service Retrieved 2020 07 06 a b c d Frost J William 1998 Christianity and Culture in America In Kee Howard Clark ed Christianity A Social and Cultural History Upper Saddle River NJ Prentice Hall p 447 ISBN 978 0135780718 Ahlstrom 1972 pp 648 649 sfn error no target CITEREFAhlstrom1972 help Abolition and the Splintering of the Church PBS 2003 Retrieved 11 May 2021 Frost 1998 Christianity 448 Albert J Raboteau Slave Religion 1978 pp 68 87 Sylvia R Frey and Betty Wood Come Shouting to Zion African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 1998 a b Albert J Raboteau Canaan Land A Religious History of African Americans 2001 James H Hutson Religion and the founding of the American Republic 1998 p 106 Albert J Raboteau Slave religion the invisible institution in the antebellum South 1978 online Bruce Makato Arnold Arnold Shepherding a Flock of Different Fleece A Historical and Social Analysis of the Unique Attributes of the African American Pastoral Caregiver Journal of Pastoral Care amp Counseling 66 2 2012 1 14 online 1 download Albert Raboteau A Fire in the Bones Reflections on African American Religious History 1995 pp 143 44 Wilson Fallin Jr Uplifting the People Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama 2007 pp 52 53 B E Mays The Negro s God 1938 p 245 cited in Gunnar Myrdal An American Dilemma 1944 p 873 Daniel W Stowell 1998 Rebuilding Zion The Religious Reconstruction of the South 1863 1877 Oxford UP pp 83 84 ISBN 9780198026211 Clarence Earl Walker A Rock in a Weary Land The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction 1982 William W Sweet The Methodist Episcopal Church and Reconstruction Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 1914 7 3 pp 147 65 in JSTOR Donald Lee Grant 1993 The Way it was in the South The Black Experience in Georgia U of Georgia Press p 264 ISBN 9780820323299 Foner Reconstruction 1988 p 93 a b c d Howard N Rabinowitz Race Relations in the Urban South 1865 1890 1978 pp 208 13 Gunnar Myrdal An American Dilemma 1944 pp 858 78 James T Campbell Songs of Zion The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa 1995 A Nevell Owens Formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Nineteenth Century Rhetoric of Identification 2014 The Annual Cyclopedia 1866 1867 p 492 The Annual Cyclopedia 1876 1877 p 532 William E Montgomery Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree The African American Church in the South 1865 1900 1993 pp 148 52 a b Stephen Ward Angell Henry McNeal Turner and African American Religion in the South 1992 The Annual Cyclopedia 1866 1867 p 492 Canter Brown and Larry E Rivers For a Great and Grand Purpose The Beginnings of the AMEZ Church in Florida 1864 1905 2004 Cheryl J Sanders Saints in exile The Holiness Pentecostal experience in African American religion and culture 1999 Winn Christian T Collins 2007 From the Margins A Celebration of the Theological Work of Donald W Dayton Wipf and Stock Publishers p 115 ISBN 9781630878320 In addition to these separate denominational groupings one needs to give attention to the large pockets of the Holiness movement that have remained within the United Methodist Church The most influential of these would be the circles dominated by Asbury College and Asbury Theological Seminary both in Wilmore KY but one could speak of other colleges innumerable local campmeetings the vestiges of various local Holiness associations independent Holiness oriented missionary societies and the like that have had great impact within United Methodism A similar pattern would exist in England with the role of Cliff College within Methodism in that context Hinks Peter P 2007 Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition Greenwood Publishing Group p 469 ISBN 978 0 313 33144 2 a b c d Alexander Estrelda Y 3 May 2011 Black Fire One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism InterVarsity Press p 82 ISBN 978 0 8308 2586 8 Leroy Fitts A History of Black Baptists 1985 Leroy Fitts A History of Black Baptists Broadman Press 1985 History of the National Baptist Convention USA Inc Archived from the original on 2007 01 06 Retrieved 2007 05 29 African American Religion Pt II From the Civil War to the Great Migration 1865 1920 Retrieved 2007 05 29 a b Peter J Paris Black Leaders in Conflict Joseph H Jackson Martin Luther King Jr Malcolm X Adam Clayton Powell Jr 1978 Nick Salvatore Singing in a strange land C L Franklin the black church and the transformation of America 2007 The West Tennessee Historical Society Papers Issue 56 West Tennessee Historical Society 2002 p 41 Seymour s holiness background suggests that Pentecostalism had roots in the holiness movement of the late nineteenth century The holiness movement embraced the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification or the second work of grace subsequent to conversion Pentecostalism added a third work of grace called the baptism of the Holy Ghost which is often accompanied by glossolalia a b Anderson Allan 13 May 2004 An Introduction to Pentecostalism Global Charismatic Christianity Cambridge University Press p 47 ISBN 978 0 521 53280 8 Those who resisted Durham s teaching and remained in the three stage camp were Seymour Crawford and Parham and Bishops Charles H Mason A J Tomlinson and J H King respectively leaders of the Church of God in Christ the Church of God Cleveland and the Pentecostal Holiness Church Tomlinson and King each issued tirades against the finished work doctrine in their periodicals but by 1914 some 60 percent of all North American Pentecostals had embraced Durham s position The Finished Work controversy was only the first of many subsequent divisions in North American Pentecostalism Not only did Pentecostal churches split over the question of sanctification as a distinct experience but a more fundamental and acrimonious split erupted in 1916 over the doctrine of the Trinity The New Issue was a schism in the ranks of the Finished Work Pentecostals that began as a teaching that the correct formula for baptism is in the name of Jesus and developed into a dispute about the Trinity It confirmed for Holiness Pentecostals that they should have no further fellowship with the Finished Work Pentecostals who were in heresy John M Giggie After Redemption Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta 1875 1915 2008 pp 165 93 Vinson Synan The Holiness Pentecostal Tradition Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century 1997 pp 98 100 a b Synan The Holiness Pentecostal Tradition Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century 1997 pp 167 186 Anthea D Butler Women in the Church of God in Christ making a sanctified world 2007 Nittle Nadra We re reclaiming these traditions Black women embrace the spiritual realm There s a revived fascination with witchcraft and the occult For Black women mysticism s appeal is about empowerment and taking up space in a world that often marginalizes them NBC News Retrieved 31 January 2022 Harvard Staff Black Magic Matters Hoodoo as Ancestral Religion Harvard Divinity School Retrieved 31 January 2022 Wolfson Bernard J 1999 African American Jews In Chireau Yvonne Deutsch Nathaniel eds Black Zion African American Religious Encounters with Judaism New York Oxford University Press pp 33 34 ISBN 978 0 19 511257 3 David Whelan May 8 2003 A Fledgling Grant Maker Nurtures Young Jewish Social Entrepreneurs The Chronicle of Philanthropy Michael Gelbwasser April 10 1998 Organization for black Jews claims 200 000 in U S J The Jewish News of Northern California Ben Jochannan p 306 Ben Levy Sholomo The Black Jewish or Hebrew Israelite Community Jewish Virtual Library Retrieved December 15 2007 Johannes P Schade ed 2006 Black Hebrews Encyclopedia of World Religions Franklin Park N J Foreign Media Group ISBN 978 1 60136 000 7 Bahrampour Tara June 26 2000 They re Jewish With a Gospel Accent The New York Times Retrieved November 5 2016 Bahaʼi Faith Makes Gains Among Blacks The Christian Century Vol 88 no 12 March 24 1971 p 368 ISSN 0009 5281 Pintak Lawrence September 1 2001 Something Has to Change Blacks in American Buddhism Lion s Roar Growing Number Of Black Women Leaving Churches For Witchcraft 2019 02 18 Retrieved 2019 09 12 Further reading EditArnold Bruce Makoto Shepherding a Flock of a Different Fleece A Historical and Social Analysis of the Unique Attributes of the African American Pastoral Caregiver The Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling 66 no 2 June 2012 Brooks Walter H The Evolution of the Negro Baptist Church Journal of Negro History 1922 7 1 pp 11 22 in JSTOR Brunner Edmund D Church Life in the Rural South 1923 pp 80 92 based on the survey in the early 1920s of 30 communities across the rural South Calhoun Brown Allison The image of God Black theology and racial empowerment in the African American community Review of Religious Research 1999 197 212 in JSTOR Chapman Mark L Christianity on trial African American religious thought before and after Black power 2006 Collier Thomas Bettye Jesus jobs and justice African American women and religion 2010 Curtis Edward E African American Islamization Reconsidered Black history Narratives and Muslim identity Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2005 73 3 pp 659 84 Davis Cyprian The History of Black Catholics in the United States 1990 Fallin Jr Wilson Uplifting the People Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama 2007 Fitts Leroy A history of black Baptists Broadman Press 1985 Frey Sylvia R and Betty Wood Come Shouting to Zion African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 1998 Garrow David Bearing the Cross Martin Luther King Jr and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 1986 Giggie John Michael After redemption Jim Crow and the transformation of African American religion in the Delta 1875 1915 2007 Harper Matthew The End of Days African American Religion and Politics in the Age of Emancipation U of North Carolina Press 2016 xii 211 pp Harris Fredrick C Something within Religion in African American political activism 1999 Higginbotham Evelyn Brooks Righteous Discontent The Woman s Movement in the Black Baptist Church 1880 1920 1993 highly influential study Jackson Joseph H A Story of Christian Activism The History of the National Baptist Convention USA Inc Nashville Townsend Press 1980 official history Johnson Paul E ed African American Christianity Essays in History 1994 Mays Benjamin E and Joseph W Nicholson The Negro Church New York Institute of Social and Religious Research 1933 sociological survey of rural and urban black churches in 1930 Mays Benjamin E The Negro s God as reflected in his literature 1938 based on sermons Montgomery William E Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree The African American Church in the South 1865 1900 1993 Moody Joycelyn Sentimental Confessions Spiritual Narratives of Nineteenth century African American Women 2001 Owens A Nevell Formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Nineteenth Century Rhetoric of Identification 2014 Paris Peter J The Social Teaching of the Black Churches Fortress Press 1985 Raboteau Albert Slave Religion The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South 1978 Raboteau Albert African American Religion 1999 145pp online basic introduction Raboteau Albert J Canaan land A religious history of African Americans 2001 Salvatore Nick Singing in a Strange Land C L Franklin the Black Church and the Transformation of America 2005 on the politics of the National Baptist Convention Sensbach Jon F Rebecca s Revival Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World 2005 Smith R Drew ed Long March ahead African American churches and public policy in post civil rights America 2004 Sobel M Trabelin On The Slave Journey to an Afro Baptist Faith 1979 Southern Eileen The Music of Black Americans A History 1997 Spencer Jon Michael Black hymnody a hymnological history of the African American church 1992 Wills David W and Richard Newman eds Black Apostles at Home and Abroad Afro Americans and the Christian Mission from the Revolution to Reconstruction 1982 Woodson Carter The History of the Negro Church 1921 online free comprehensive history by leading black scholar Yong Amos and Estrelda Y Alexander Afro Pentecostalism Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture 2012 Historiography Edit Evans Curtis J The Burden of Black Religion 2008 traces ideas about Black religion from the antebellum period to 1950 Frey Sylvia R The Visible Church Historiography of African American Religion since Raboteau Slavery amp Abolition 2008 29 1 pp 83 110 Fulop Timothy Earl and Albert J Raboteau eds African American religion interpretive essays in history and culture 1997 Vaughn Steve Making Jesus black the historiographical debate on the roots of African American Christianity Journal of Negro History 1997 25 41 in JSTORPrimary sources Edit DuBois W E B The Negro Church Report of a Social Study Made under the Direction of Atlanta University 1903 online Sernett Milton C ed Afro American Religious History A Documentary Witness Duke University Press 1985 2nd ed 1999 West Cornel and Eddie S Glaude eds African American religious thought An anthology 2003 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Religion of Black Americans amp oldid 1133307998, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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