The term black church or African-American
church refers to Protestant churches that
currently or historically have ministered
to predominantly black congregations in the
United States. While some black churches belong
to predominantly African-American denominations,
such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church
(AME), many black churches are members of
predominantly white denominations, such as
the United Church of Christ (which developed
from the Congregational Church of New England).Most
of the first black congregations and churches
formed before 1800 were founded by free blacks
– for example, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
Springfield Baptist Church (Augusta, Georgia);
Petersburg, Virginia; and Savannah, Georgia.
The oldest black Baptist church in Kentucky,
and third oldest in the United States, was
founded about 1790 by the slave Peter Durrett.After
slavery was abolished, segregationist attitudes
in both the North and the South discouraged
and even prevented African Americans from
worshiping in the same churches as whites.
Freed blacks most often established congregations
and church facilities separate from their
white neighbors, who were often their former
masters. These new churches created communities
and worship practices that were culturally
distinct from other churches, including forms
of Christianity that derived from African
spiritual traditions.
African-American churches have long been the
centers of communities, serving as school
sites in the early years after the Civil War,
taking up social welfare functions, such as
providing for the indigent, and going on to
establish schools, orphanages and prison ministries.
As a result, black churches were particularly
important during the civil rights movement.
== History ==
=== 
Slavery ===
Evangelical Baptist and Methodist preachers
traveled throughout the South in the Great
Awakening of the late 18th century. They appealed
directly to slaves, and a few thousand slaves
converted. Blacks found opportunities to have
active roles in new congregations, especially
in the Baptist Church, where slaves were appointed
as leaders and preachers. (They were excluded
from such roles in the Anglican or Episcopal
Church.) As they listened to readings, slaves
developed their own interpretations of the
Scriptures and found inspiration in stories
of deliverance, such as the Exodus out of
Egypt. Nat Turner, a slave and Baptist preacher,
was inspired to armed rebellion, in an uprising
that killed about 50 white men, women, and
children in Virginia.Both free blacks and
the more numerous slaves participated in the
earliest black Baptist congregations founded
near Petersburg, Virginia, Savannah, Georgia
and Lexington, Kentucky, before 1800. The
slaves Peter Durrett and his wife founded
the First African Church (now known as First
African Baptist Church) in Lexington, Kentucky
about 1790. The church's trustees purchased
its first property in 1815. The congregation
numbered about 290 by the time of Durrett's
death in 1823.Following slave revolts in the
early 19th century, including Nat Turner's
Rebellion in 1831, Virginia passed a law requiring
black congregations to meet only in the presence
of a white minister. Other states similarly
restricted exclusively black churches, or
the assembly of blacks in large groups unsupervised
by whites. Nevertheless, the black Baptist
congregations in the cities grew rapidly and
their members numbered several hundred each
before the Civil War. (See next section.)
While mostly led by free blacks, most of their
members were slaves.
In plantation areas, slaves organized underground
churches and hidden religious meetings, the
"invisible church", where slaves were free
to mix evangelical Christianity with African
beliefs and African rhythms. With the time,
many incorporated Wesleyan Methodist hymns,
gospel songs, and spirituals. The underground
churches provided psychological refuge from
the white world. The spirituals gave the church
members a secret way to communicate and, in
some cases, to plan rebellion.
Slaves also learned about Christianity by
attending services led by a white preacher
or supervised by a white person. Slaveholders
often held prayer meetings at their plantations.
In the South until the Great Awakening, most
slaveholders were Anglican if they practiced
any Christianity. Although in the early years
of the first Great Awakening, Methodist and
Baptist preachers argued for manumission of
slaves and abolition, by the early decades
of the 19th century, they often had found
ways to support the institution. In settings
where whites supervised worship and prayer,
they used Bible stories that reinforced people's
keeping to their places in society, urging
slaves to be loyal and to obey their masters.
In the 19th century, Methodist and Baptist
chapels were founded among many of the smaller
communities and common planters. During the
early decades of the 19th century, they used
stories such as the Curse of Ham to justify
slavery to themselves. They promoted the idea
that loyal and hard-working slaves would be
rewarded in the afterlife. Sometimes slaves
established their own Sabbath schools to talk
about the Scriptures. Slaves who were literate
tried to teach others to read, as Frederick
Douglass did while still enslaved as a young
man in Maryland.
=== Free Blacks ===
Free Blacks in both northern and southern
cities formed their own congregations and
churches before the end of the 18th century.
They organized independent black congregations
and churches to practice religion apart from
white oversight. Along with white churches
opposed to slavery, free blacks in Philadelphia
provided aid and comfort to slaves who escaped
and helped all new arrivals adjust to city
life.In 1787 in Philadelphia, the black church
was born out of protest and revolutionary
reaction to racism. Resenting being relegated
to a segregated gallery at St. George's Methodist
Church, Methodist preachers Absalom Jones
and Richard Allen, and other black members,
left the church and formed the Free African
Society. It was at first non-denominational
and provided mutual aid to the free black
community. Over time, Jones began to lead
Episcopal services there. He led most of its
members to create the African Church, in the
Episcopal tradition. (Butler 2000, DuBois
1866).
In the fall of 1792, several black leaders
attending services at St. George's Methodist
Church and had recently helped to expand the
church. The black churchgoers were told to
sit upstairs in the new gallery. When they
mistakenly sat in an area not designated for
blacks, they were forcibly removed from the
seats they had helped build. According to
Allen, "...we all went out of the church in
one body, and they were no longer plagued
by us". While he and Jones led different denominations,
they continued to work closely together and
with the black community in Philadelphia....
It was accepted as a parish and on July 17,
1794 became the African Episcopal Church of
St. Thomas. In 1804 Jones was the first black
priest ordained in the Episcopal Church. (Butler
2000, DuBois 1866).
Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, wanted
to continue with the Methodist tradition.
He built a congregation and founded the Bethel
African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).
By July 29, 1794, they also had a building
ready for their worship. The church adopted
the slogan: "To Seek for Ourselves." In recognition
of his leadership and preaching, in 1799 Bishop
Francis Asbury ordained Allen as a Methodist
minister. Allen and the AME Church were active
in antislavery campaigns, fought racism in
the North, and promoted education, starting
schools for black children.
Finding that other black congregations in
the region were also seeking independence
from white control, in 1816 Allen organized
a new denomination, the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, the first fully independent
black denomination. He was elected its first
bishop in 1816. While he and Jones led different
denominations, they continued to work closely
together and with the black community in Philadelphia.
Soon thereafter, Allen. Jones, and others
began soliciting funds, again with the help
of Rush. Their appeals met with resistance
from white church leaders, many of whom had
been supportive of the black community, but
disapproved of a separate black church.
Petersburg, Virginia had two of the oldest
black congregations in the country, both organized
before 1800 as a result of the Great Awakening:
First Baptist Church (1774) and Gillfield
Baptist Church (1797). Each congregation moved
from rural areas into Petersburg into their
own buildings in the early 19th century. Their
two black Baptist congregations were the first
of that denomination in the city and they
grew rapidly.In Savannah, Georgia, a black
Baptist congregation was organized by 1777,
by George Liele. A former slave, he had been
converted by ordained Baptist minister Matthew
Moore. His early preaching was encouraged
by his master, Henry Sharp. Sharp, a Baptist
deacon and Loyalist, freed Liele before the
American Revolutionary War began. Liele had
been preaching to slaves on plantations, but
made his way to Savannah, where he organized
a congregation. After 1782, when Liele left
the city with the British, Andrew Bryan led
what became known as the First African Baptist
Church. By 1800 the church had 700 members,
and by 1830 it had grown to more than 2400
members. Soon it generated two new black congregations
in the city.Before 1850, First African Baptist
in Lexington, Kentucky grew to 1,820 members,
making it the largest congregation in that
state. This was under its second pastor, Rev.
London Ferrill, a free black, and occurred
as Lexington was expanding rapidly as a city.
First African Baptist was admitted to the
Elkhorn Baptist Association in 1824, where
it came somewhat under oversight of white
congregations. In 1841, Saint Augustine Catholic
Church was established by the Creole community
of New Orleans. This church is the oldest
black catholic parish in the United States.
In 1856 First African Baptist built a large
Italianate church, which was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
By 1861 the congregation numbered 2,223 members.
=== Reconstruction ===
After emancipation, Northern churches founded
by free blacks, as well as those of predominantly
white denominations, sent missions to the
South to minister to newly freed slaves, including
to teach them to read and write. For instance,
Bishop Daniel Payne of the AME Church returned
to Charleston, South Carolina in April 1865
with nine missionaries. He organized committees,
associations and teachers to reach freedmen
throughout the countryside. In the first year
after the war, the African Methodist Episcopal
(AME) Church gained 50,000 congregants.By
the end of Reconstruction, AME congregations
existed from Florida to Texas. Their missioners
and preachers had brought more than 250,000
new adherents into the church. While it had
a northern base, the church was heavily influenced
by this growth in the South and incorporation
of many members who had different practices
and traditions. Similarly, within the first
decade, the independent AME Zion church, founded
in New York, also gained tens of thousands
of Southern members. These two independent
black denominations attracted the most new
members in the South.In 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee,
with support from white colleagues of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, more than
40 black Southern ministers, all freedmen
and former slaves, met to establish the Southern-based
Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church (now
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church), founded
as an independent branch of Methodism. They
took their mostly black congregations with
them. They adopted the Methodist Doctrine
and elected their first two bishops, William
H. Miles of Kentucky and Richard H. Vanderhorst
of South Carolina. Within three years, from
a base of about 40,000, they had grown to
67,000 members, and more than te times that
many in 50 years.At the same time, black Baptist
churches, well-established before the Civil
War, continued to grow and add new congregations.
With the rapid growth of black Baptist churches
in the South, in 1895 church officials organized
a new Baptist association, the National Baptist
Convention. This was the unification of three
national black conventions, organized in 1880
and the 1890s. It brought together the areas
of mission, education and overall cooperation.
Despite founding of new black conventions
in the early and later 20th century, this
is still the largest black religious organization
in the United States. These churches blended
elements from underground churches with elements
from freely established black churches.The
postwar years were marked by a separatist
impulse as blacks exercised the right to move
and gather beyond white supervision or control.
They developed black churches, benevolent
societies, fraternal orders and fire companies.
In some areas they moved from farms into towns,
as in middle Tennessee, or to cities that
needed rebuilding, such as Atlanta. Black
churches were the focal points of black communities,
and their members' quickly seceding from white
churches demonstrated their desire to manage
their own affairs independently of white supervision.
It also showed the prior strength of the "invisible
church" hidden from white eyes.Black preachers
provided leadership, encouraged education
and economic growth, and were often the primary
link between the black and white communities.
The black church established and/or maintained
the first black schools and encouraged community
members to fund these schools and other public
services. For most black leaders, the churches
always were connected to political goals of
advancing the race. There grew to be a tension
between black leaders from the North and people
in the South who wanted to run their churches
and worship in their own way.Since the male
hierarchy denied them opportunities for ordination,
middle-class women in the black church asserted
themselves in other ways: they organized missionary
societies to address social issues. These
societies provided job training and reading
education, worked for better living conditions,
raised money for African missions, wrote religious
periodicals, and promoted Victorian ideals
of womanhood, respectability, and racial uplift.
=== Civil Rights Movement ===
Black churches held a leadership role in the
American Civil Rights Movement. Their history
as a centers of strength for the black community
made them natural leaders in this moral struggle.
In addition they had often served as links
between the black and white worlds. Notable
minister-activists of the 1950s and 1960s
included Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David
Abernathy, Bernard Lee, Fred Shuttlesworth,
Wyatt Tee Walker and C. T. Vivian.
== Politics and social issues ==
The black church continues to be a source
of support for members of the African-American
community. When compared to American churches
as a whole, black churches tend to focus more
on social issues such as poverty, gang violence,
drug use, prison ministries and racism. A
study found that black Christians were more
likely to have heard about health care reform
from their pastors than were white Christians.Most
surveys indicate that while blacks tend to
vote Democratic in elections, members of traditionally
African-American churches are generally more
socially conservative than white Protestants
as a whole. Same-sex marriage and other LGBT
issues have been among the leading causes
for activism in some black churches, though
a majority of black Protestants remain opposed
to this stance. Nevertheless, some denominations
have been discussing this issue. For example,
the African Methodist Episcopal Church prohibits
its ministers from officiating same-sex weddings,
but it does not have a clear policy on ordination.Some
members of the Black clergy have not accepted
the same-sex marital ideology. A group known
as the Coalition of African American Pastors
(CAAP), maintains their disdain for gay marriage.
The CAAP president, Reverend William Owens,
claims that the marriage equality act will
cause corruption within our country. The organization
insist that a real union is between a man
and a woman. They also believe that the law,
prohibiting gay marriage, should have been
upheld. The CAAP members agree that the Supreme
Court had no right to overturn the constitutional
ruling.
== Black theology ==
One formalization of theology based on themes
of black liberation is the Black theology
movement. Its origins can be traced to July
31, 1966, when an ad hoc group of 51 black
pastors, calling themselves the National Committee
of Negro Churchmen (NCNC), bought a full-page
ad in The New York Times to publish their
"Black Power Statement", which proposed a
more aggressive approach to combating racism
using the Bible for inspiration.Black liberation
theology was first systematized by James Cone
and Dwight Hopkins. They are considered the
leading theologians of this system of belief,
although now there are many scholars who have
contributed a great deal to the field. In
1969, Cone published the seminal work that
laid the basis for black liberation theology,
Black Theology and Black Power. In the book,
Cone asserted that not only was black power
not alien to the Gospel, it was, in fact,
the Gospel message for all of 20th century
America.In 2008, approximately one quarter
of African-American churches followed a liberation
theology. The theology was thrust into the
national spotlight after a controversy arose
related to preaching by Rev. Jeremiah Wright,
former pastor to then-Senator Barack Obama
at Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago.
Wright had built Trinity into a successful
megachurch following the theology developed
by Cone, who has said that he would "point
to [Trinity] first" as an example of a church's
embodying his message.
== As neighborhood institutions ==
Although black urban neighborhoods in cities
that have deindustrialized may have suffered
from civic disinvestment, with lower quality
schools, less effective policing and fire
protection, there are institutions that help
to improve the physical and social capital
of black neighborhoods. In black neighborhoods
the churches may be important sources of social
cohesion. For some African Americans the kind
of spirituality learned through these churches
works as a protective factor against the corrosive
forces of poverty and racism.Churches may
also do work to improve the physical infrastructure
of the neighborhood. Churches in Harlem have
undertaken real estate ventures and renovated
burnt-out and abandoned brownstones to create
new housing for residents. Churches have fought
for the right to operate their own schools
in place of the often inadequate public schools
found in many black neighborhoods.
== Traditions ==
Like many Christians, African-American Christians
sometimes participate in or attend a Christmas
play. Black Nativity by Langston Hughes is
a re-telling of the classic Nativity story
with gospel music. Productions can be found
at black theaters and churches all over the
country. The Three Wise Men are typically
played by prominent members of the black community.
== Historically black denominations ==
Throughout U.S. history, religious preferences
and racial segregation have fostered development
of separate black church denominations, as
well as black churches within white denominations.
=== African Methodist Episcopal Church ===
The first of these churches was the African
Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). In the late
18th century, former slave Richard Allen,
a Methodist preacher, was an influential deacon
and elder at the integrated and affluent St.
George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia.
The charismatic Allen had attracted numerous
new black members to St. George's. White members
had become so uncomfortable that they relegated
black worshipers to a segregated gallery.
After white members of St. George's started
to treat his people as second-class citizens,
in 1787 Allen, Absalom Jones, also a preacher;
and other black members left St. George's.
They first established the non-denominational
Free African Society, which acted as a mutual
aid society. Religious differences caused
Jones to take numerous followers to create
an Episcopal congregation. They established
the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas,
which opened its doors in 1794. Absalom Jones
was later ordained by the bishop of the Philadelphia
diocese as the first African-American priest
in the Episcopal Church.
Allen continued for some years within the
Methodist denomination but organized a black
congregation. By 1794 he and his followers
opened the doors of the all-black Mother Bethel
AME Church.
Over time, Allen and others sought more independence
from white supervision within the Methodist
Church. In 1816 Allen gathered four other
black congregations together in the mid-Atlantic
region to establish the African Methodist
Episcopal (AME) Church as an independent denomination,
the first fully independent black denomination.
The ministers consecrated Allen as their first
bishop.
=== African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
===
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion or AME
Zion Church, like the AME Church, is an offshoot
of the ME Church. Black members of the John
Street Methodist Church of New York City left
to form their own church after several acts
of overt discrimination by white members.
In 1796, black Methodists asked the permission
of the bishop of the ME Church to meet independently,
though still to be part of the ME Church and
led by white preachers. This AME Church group
built Zion chapel in 1800 and became incorporated
in 1801, still subordinate to the ME Church.In
1820, AME Zion Church members began further
separation from the ME Church. By seeking
to install black preachers and elders, they
created a debate over whether blacks could
be ministers. This debate ended in 1822 with
the ordination of Abraham Thompson, Leven
Smith, and James Varick, the first superintendent
(bishop) of the AME Zion church. After the
Civil War, the denomination sent missionaries
to the South and attracted thousands of new
members, who shaped the church.
=== National Baptist Convention ===
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.
=== Church of God in Christ ===
In 1907, Charles Harrison Mason formed the
Church of God in Christ (COGIC) after his
Baptist church expelled him. Mason was a member
of the Holiness movement of the late 19th
century. In 1906, he attended the Azusa Street
Revival in Los Angeles. Upon his return to
Tennessee, he began teaching the Pentecostal
Holiness message. However, Charles Price Jones
and J. A. Jeter of the Holiness movement disagreed
with Mason's teachings on the Baptism of the
Holy Spirit.
Jones changed the name of his COGIC church
to the Church of Christ (Holiness) USA in
1915.
At a conference in Memphis, Tennessee, Mason
reorganized the Church of God in Christ as
a Holiness Pentecostal body. The headquarters
of COGIC is Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee.
It is the site of Martin Luther King's final
sermon, "I've Been to the Mountaintop", delivered
the day before he was assassinated. The Church
of God in Christ is the nation's largest predominantly
African American denomination.
=== Other denominations ===
United Holy Church of America
African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant
Church and Connection
Apostolic Faith Mission
Apostolic Faith Mission Church of God
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A.
Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic
Faith
Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the
Americas
Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship
Mount Sinai Holy Church of America
National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.
National Missionary Baptist Convention of
America
Pentecostal Assemblies of the World
Progressive National Baptist Convention
United House of Prayer for All People
United Pentecostal Council of the Assemblies
of God, Incorporated
Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic
Faith
== See also ==
Traditional black gospel
Black sermonic tradition
Black theologyGeneral:
Religion in Black America
