1. Albanese Ch 6
Black Center: African American
Religion and Nationhood

2. Introduction
• Black population significant:
• Maryland had more than 50%
slave population in most
counties in 1750.
• 427,000 transported by 1780
• 4 million by 1865
• 12 million total to New World

3. The scholarly problem of
African religion in America
• Similar problems to Native American
studies
• Lack of sources
• Sources available mostly hostile

4. European views of African
religion
• Christianity most advanced religion
• African religion:
– Superstitious
– Primitive
• Africans considered primitive because they
were not literate like Europeans, few
advanced technologies

5. West African Religions
• Communitarian Societies
• Shamanistic
• Ancestors
• One high God (distant)
• Other Gods (active)
– Tricksters (Breer Rabbit)
• No tribal religions survived
intact, but vestiges:
– Some burial ceremonies
– Healing rituals
– Courtship rituals
– Divination
– Jewelry styles

6. The African Spiritual
Holocaust
• How much of African religion was retained
when Africans were enslaved?
• Two theories:
– Melville Herksovitz—African religious “survivals”
made African American religion possible
– E. Franklin Frazier—African traditions and
practices did not take root in the United States

7. African America Diaspora
Candomble (Brazil)
Voudoun (Haiti)
Santeria (Cuba)
Voodoo (Louisiana)
• Ritual
(Drumming/Dancing)
• Sacrifice (Animal)
• Divination
• Possession
• Calling the spirits from
Africa
• Guiding the ancestors
home (to Africa)

8. New Land, New Religion
• Conjure
• Root doctor
• Root work
• Hoodoo/voodoo
• Christian
combinationism
– Minister as conjure man
– Bible as conjure book
– Speaking in toungeus as
“conjuring”
– Catholic saints as gods
of West Africa

9. The African Spiritual
Holocaust
• Death of African religious systems (17th-
18th centuries)
• Retentions of individual practices
• Reemergence of religious practice when
slave families started

10. Black Christianity
• Sacramental nature of Catholicism
appealing to Blacks in Maryland and
Louisiana
• Officially sanctioned Christianity of white
masters
• Black Christianity - appropriated and
changed to develop inner autonomy
and identity as separate people

11. 2. Early Contact with Christianity
• Slave-owners did not want to baptize
or teach slaves.
• Language barriers, long work days,
remote locations all made
missionizing difficult.
• 1727: Bishop of London says that
Christianization of slaves will not
change their status as slaves. This
consoles some slave owners.
• Francis Le Jau, missionary with SPG,
required slaves undergoing baptism
to pledge: “in the presence of God
and before this Congregation that you
do not ask for holy baptism out of any
design to free yourself from the Duty
and Obedience that you owe to your
Master while you live.”

12. More Missionizing
• Quakers still encouraged
slaves to resist authority.
• Revivalism provided rough
analogies to trance, spirit
possession, singing, dancing,
drumming, and healing rituals.
• Spirituals: songs, often call
and response, oral tradition,
images of nature, labor,
relations with slave-owners,
and Biblical themes.
• Heaven is cast as freedom
from slavery.

13. The Invisible Institution
• Nat Turner (1800-1831):
Baptist preacher and
visionary.
• “It was plain to me that the
Savior was about to lay
down the yoke he had borne
for the sins of man, and the
great day of judgment was at
hand.” - Confessions.
• Nat Turner Revolt (1831) -
hundreds die - both black
and white.
• White slave owners become
increasingly paranoid.
Christianity among Blacks is
actively discouraged and
feared.
• Secret meetings held by
slaves at night
• Hush Harbors

14. Blending Religions
• Spirituals - communal songs,
call and response
• Ring shout - communal
dance
• Bondage in Egypt
• Jumping over broomstick
(marriage)
• Visions and prophecy =
freedom of mind.

15. Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
Christianity of Christ vs.
Christianity of the (White
Man’s) land
Christianity & Freedom
“There has not been any
war between the religion
and the slavery of the
south. The church and
the slave prison stand
next to each other.”

16. African American
Denominations
• 1787-1794 Bethel Church meets at
Blacksmith shop in Philly. By 1803 has
over 400 members.
• Absolom Jones ordained first Episcopal
priest in 1794 leaves Methodism all
together.
• 1816: meeting of many Black churches
that had broken away from White
churches; 5 ordained ministers
consecrete Richard Allen as bishop of
the AME Church.

17. • 1772 Moses, Benjamin, and Thomas
Gardiner ordained African American
Baptist congregation in Lunenberg,
Virginia.
• 1788: First African Baptist Church
Savannah, Andrew Bryan -> Sunbury
Baptist Association -> by 1860’s is the
Zion Baptist Association.
• 1805: Joy Street Church in New York was
first black Baptist congregation outside of
the South.
• James Varick (1750-1827) becomes first
bishop of American Methodist Episcopal
Zion Church (AMEZC) in 1821

18. Political and Religious
Churches
• Black Societies formed for many social goals.
• Christian Recorder founded - oldest Black Religious Newspaper.
• Black leaders criticized in (White) newspapers.
• “Black Laws” passed in Ohio and other states, 1804, 1807. (proof
of freedom, bonds posted, slave patrols, etc.)
• Riots in Cincinnati, Philadelphia (1829), and other cities when
these laws were indiscriminately and harshly enforced. Black
churches are burned.
• 1830: Black leaders meet at Bethel Church Convention in
Philadelphia - all black churches included. Forum against slavery,
discrimination, poverty, and racial tensions in general. More
conventions followed
• “Let your motto be resistance, resistance, RESISTANCE!”

19. Black Missionary Efforts
• Lott Carey, ex-slave, organizes the Richmond African
Baptist Missionary Society in 1815. 1821 he sailed to
Liberia.
• American Colonization Society, 1816, repatriated
slaves to Africa and compensated ex-slave owners.
• Over 10,000 blacks sent back to Africa
• First Baptist Church of Monrovia, 1821
• But it was not until the 1870’s after the Civil War that
Black churches sent more missionaries to Africa.

20. Growth of Black Churches
• 1860: 11% of blacks members of Black churches.
• 1916: 43% of blacks are members of Black churches.
• Over 90% were Methodist or Baptist.
• It was the only institution that is exclusively their own.
• Provided opportunity for self-expression, recognition,
leadership.
• Self help
• AME Church had 20,000 members in 1864, 400,000 in
1884!!
• AMEZ church 6,000 to 300,000!!!

21. Great Migration
• Reconstruction ends in
1877
• Jim Crow laws
supported by Federal
Courts
• Segregation
• White Supremacists
• Crop failures
• Thousands go north…

22. Black Religion in the
Twentieth Century
• 1900: 75% blacks live in rural
south
• 1975: 50% live in North
• Great Migration to the North
• Spirituals -> Gospel Music
• New Religious Movements
– Father Divine (d. 1965) and his
Peace Mission Movement
– Vodou
– Santaria

23. Black Pentecostal and
Holiness Christianity
• Asuza Street Revival in
Los Angeles - William J.
Seymour
• Charles Harrison Mason
- Church of God in
Christ, Lexington, Tenn.
1897, largest
pentecostal church by
1991 (5.5 million)

24. Other Black
Organizations
• 1891, Charles Randolph Uncles
first Black Catholic Priest.
• Prince Hall Freemasonry
• National Urban League, 1910
• National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People,
1909.

25. The Religion of Blackness
(Albanese)
• Marcus Garvey (1887-1940)
Universal Negro Improvement
Association; African Orthodox
Church
• Ethiopianism ->
Rastafarianism
• Black Jews
• Islam -> Moorish Science
Temple of America and
Wallace D. Fard (Farrad
Mohammad)

26. Moorish Science Temple

27. Noble Drew Ali (Timothy Drew)
• Canaanite Temple founded in 1912-3 in
Newark, NJ; possible membership of 30,000
by 1920
• Renamed Moorish Science Temple
• Context of the Great Migration, religious
and political movements; NAACP founded
in 1909; Garvey arrives in 1915
• Shift to Chicago in 1925, Moorish Temple
of Science declared in 1926, in 1928 the
Moorish Science Temple of America
• Internal Conflict and then his death in 1929

28. Life of Noble Drew Ali
• born as Timothy Drew in non-
existent Simpsonbuck county in
North Carolina on January 8, 1886
• possible meeting of the Drew
family with Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
(d. 1897) in Newark, NJ
• Egypt connection: induction into
the secrets of High Magic;
appointment by Saudi ruler of
Mecca, fact or allegory?
• Wallace D. Fard (Farrad
Mohammad) (B. 1893)
leads an influential faction

29. R. Jones Bey (current leader of MSTA)
• Assistant Grand Sheikess Dunbar Bey

30. Wallace D. Fard
• Unique Theology:
• Whites as “blue-eyed devils”
• Doctor Yakob
• claimed to be reincarnation of
Timothy Drew
• Message to the Black Man in
America (1965)
• Named Elijah Poole (1897-1975) as his
Minister of Islam
• Renamed Elijah Muhammad by Fard
• Fard disappears mysteriously in 1934
• Elijah Muhammad becomes leader of
Nation of Islam

31. Malcolm X (1925-1965)
• Born Malcolm Little
• Rejected Muhammad’s radical blackness
(separatism)
• After pilgrimage to Mecca, broke with NOI to form
Muslim Mosque, Inc. then Organization of Afro-
American Unity
• Shot by NOI gunmen in 1965
• Wallace D. Muhammad (son of Elijah) continues to
take NOI in the direction of Malcolm X, toward
orthodox Islam.
• NOI dissolved in 1987by Wallace (now Warith)
• Resuscitated by Louis Farrakhan and continues
– 1995 Million Man March on Washington

32. Liberal Protestantism meets Black
Christianity
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929-1968)
– PhD from Boston University
– 1955 First bus boycott
– Civil Rights Acts: 1957, 1960,
1964, and 1965 (Voting
Rights Act)
• James H. Cone (b. 1938) -
liberation theology
– Black Theology and Black
Power (1969)
– A Black Theology of
Liberation (1970)

33. Summary
• National Baptist Convention, USA - 5 million
members by 2001, 4th largest denomination.
• From slavery, discrimination, holocaust
African Americans combined and recombined
religious practices and ideas to form a unique
identity
• Like native Americans, they find strength and
identity in their unique past
• Pull toward protestant religious culture (2004
elections), tension with separatist “religion of
blackness”