The religious life of African Americans "forms the foundation of their community life". Historians generally agree with this statement. This article explores the religious practices of African Americans in the United States.
African American religions constitute a diverse group of beliefs and practices that emerged from the African diaspora brought about by the Atlantic slave trade. Traditional religions that had informed the worldviews of Africans were transported to the shores of the Americas and transformed to make sense of new contexts and conditions.
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. 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.
Early Religious Influences
Many enslaved Africans brought religion with them from Africa, including Islam and African traditional religions. Until 1800, the majority of slaves in the United States had not embraced Christianity. Prior to the 1700s, the majority of slaves in the United States practiced traditional West African religions or Islam, with a smaller number converting to Protestantism. In the 1770s no more than 1% of black people in the United States had connections with organized churches.
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.
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Diagram of a slave ship, illustrating the conditions in which enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas.
The Great Awakening and Conversion to Christianity
The First Great Awakening led many enslaved people in the United States to convert to Christianity. 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 as many as 25% slaves.
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. The first independent black congregations were started in the South before the Revolution, in South Carolina and Georgia.
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. They promoted Christianity as encouraging better treatment of slaves and argued for a paternalistic approach.
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. 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).
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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. 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.
For those who yearned for freedom, the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, seemed to re-enact the Exodus story of the ancient Israelites: God had intervened in human history to liberate his chosen people. But the stroke of a presidential pen did not eliminate poverty and dislocation, chaos and uncertainty.
The Rise of Independent Black Churches
Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song - Henry Louis Gates
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. Central to the growth of community among black people was the black church, usually the first community institution to be established. 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.
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.
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.
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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. 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.
An African American church service in Atlanta, Georgia in 1903.
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. 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.
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. 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.
Key Denominations and Movements
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church
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. 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.
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. In 1880 he was elected as the first southern bishop of the AME Church after a fierce battle within the denomination. In terms of social status, the Methodist churches have typically attracted the black leadership and the middle class.
African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) 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. The church-sponsored Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina was founded to train missionaries for Africa.
Baptist Churches
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.
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.
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. 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.
Holiness and Pentecostal Movements
The Holiness Movement emerged within the Methodist Church in the late 19th century. 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 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), and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (a Oneness Finished Work Pentecostal denomination) were all interracial denominations before the 1920s. Ultimately, North American Pentecostalism would divide into white and African-American branches.
Other Religious Traditions
Louisiana Voodoo and Hoodoo
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. 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.
Black studies historian, John Blassingame, explained various West African nations were transported to Louisiana during the Atlantic slave trade and they brought their belief of the serpent god with them called Damballa. Over time these various West African groups in Louisiana developed one Voodoo culture that centers on snake reverence and ancestral veneration within the slave community and African-American communities.
Islam
Islam is a vital, growing religion in America. Little is known, however, about the religion except through the biased lens of media reports which brand African American Muslims as "Black Muslims" and portray their communities as places of social protest. African American Islam challenges these myths by contextualizing the experience and history of African American Islamic life.
Despite the explosion in work on African American and religious history, little is known about Black Muslims who came to America as slaves. Most assume that what Muslim faith any Africans did bring with them was quickly absorbed into the new Christian milieu. But, surprisingly, as Sylviane Diouf shows in this new, meticulously researched volume, Islam flourished during slavery on a large scale.
Malcolm X at the United Nations General Assembly session.
Servants of Allah presents a history of African Muslim slaves, following them from Africa to the Americas. It details how, even while enslaved many Black Muslims managed to follow most of the precepts of their religion. Literate, urban, and well traveled, Black Muslims drew on their organization and the strength of their beliefs to play a major part in the most well known slave uprisings.
Though Islam did not survive in the Americas in its orthodox form, its mark can be found in certain religions, traditions, and artistic creations of people of African descent. But for all their accomplishments and contributions to the cultures of the African Diaspora, the Muslim slaves have been largely ignored. Servants of Allah is the first book to examine the role of Islam in the lives of both individual practitioners and in the American slave community as a whole, while also shedding light on the legacy of Islam in today's American and Caribbean cultures.
The Nation of Islam reinforced Black Power philosophy by insisting that black Americans have control over their own businesses, schools, and community organizations. The Nation of Islam provided an essential foundation for the black power movement. The Nation emphasized black pride, economic independence, and the rejection of American popular music and entertainment. It insisted on individual discipline and self-defense against physical and psychological violence perpetrated by white society.
The Black Church and the Civil Rights Movement
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. African American churches provided spiritual and practical support for civil rights advocates. Professor James Hal Cone explored the historical role of black churches in supporting black liberation.
“Liberation is not an afterthought, but the very essence of divine activity,” asserted Rev. James Hal Cone in 1970. Cone, a professor at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, connected his daily experiences as a black man to his theology of black power. Cone's 1967 book, “Black Theology and Black Power,” was one of the first systematic presentations of black theology. In the preface of the first edition, Cone wrote, “This book was my initial attempt to identify liberation as the heart of the Christian gospel and blackness as the primary mode of God’s presence. *From “Black Theology & Black Power” by James H. Cone.
Political activists - including Malcolm X, of course, but especially the Black Panther Party in the latter half of the 1960s - have debated whether the role of the Black embrace of Christianity under slavery was a positive or negative force. There were those who argued that the Black Church was an example of Karl Marx’s famous indictment of religion as “the opium of the people” because it gave to the oppressed false comfort and hope, obscuring the causes of their oppression and reducing their urge to overturn that oppression.
Despite what Marx and the Black Panthers thought, the importance of the role of the Black Church at its best cannot be gainsaid in the history of the African American people. The “failure” of African Americans to overthrow their masters, as the enslaved men and women did on the island that became the Republic of Haiti, can’t be traced to the role of the church per se, as Nat Turner’s decision to act based on his interpretation of prophecy attests. Early on, the church and Christianity played a role both in Black rebellions and in the preparation of Black people for leadership roles.
Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at the Washington Civil Rights March in 1963.
Without the role of the Black Church, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, with King by his side at both, and future congressman John Lewis, himself an ordained Baptist minister, present in 1965 - would never have been enacted when they were. As Lewis once put it, “The civil rights movement was based on faith. One of the greatest achievements in the long history of civilization, as far as I am concerned, is the extraordinary resilience of the African American community under slavery, through the sheer will and determination of these men and women to live to see another day, to thrive.
Contemporary Trends
In the 21st century, many of the historically Black Protestant denominations that formed in the 1800s and 1900s have retained sizable followings. Megachurches, typically defined as churches with at least 2,000 weekly attendees, also are part of the 21st-century Black religious landscape.
Two-thirds of Black Americans are Protestant, like about four-in-ten Americans overall. Black Americans are more likely than U.S. adults overall to be religiously unaffiliated (21% vs. Black Americans are more likely than U.S. adults overall to say religion is very important to them (72% vs. They also appear to be more socially conservative.
The historic center of Black Christianity is in the Baptist and Methodist churches. Many leaders within these denominations actively promoted the idea that all Christians were equal in the sight of God, a message that provided hope and sustenance to enslaved women and men. Black nationalists and liberation theologians in the late 1960s both forcefully restated the UNIA’s “Afrocentric” sentiments.
Table: Key Statistics on Black Religious Affiliation
| Statistic | Black Americans | U.S. Adults Overall |
|---|---|---|
| Protestant | 66% | 40% |
| Religiously Unaffiliated | 21% | 32% |
| Religion Very Important | 72% | 59% |
