black church

Most of the first Black congregations and churches which were formed before 1800 were founded by freedmen—for example, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Springfield Baptist Church (Augusta, Georgia); Petersburg, Virginia; and Savannah, Georgia.[http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/vbha/gillmin.html "Gillfield Baptist Church, Petersburg, Virginia"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081019021534/http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/vbha/gillmin.html |date=2008-10-19 }}, Virginia Commonwealth University Library, 2008, accessed 22 Dec 2008 The oldest black Baptist church in Kentucky, and third oldest Black Baptist church in the United States, the First African Baptist Church, was founded about 1790 by the slave Peter Durrett.[http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/ky.fayette.fbc.black.lex.html H. E. Nutter, A Brief History of the First Baptist Church (black) Lexington, Kentucky], 1940, accessed 22 Aug 2010 The oldest Black Catholic church, St. Augustine in New Orleans, was founded by freedmen in 1841. However, Black religious orders such as the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore have existed since the 1820s.

After the American Civil War, many white Protestant ministers moved to the South to establish churches where both Black and white congregants could worship together.{{Cite book |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195121285.001.0001 |title=Religion and the American Civil War |date=1998-11-05 |publisher=Oxford University PressNew York, NY |doi=10.1093/oso/9780195121285.001.0001 |isbn=978-0-19-512128-5 |editor-last=Miller |editor-first=Randall M |editor-last2=Stout |editor-first2=Harry S |editor-last3=Wilson |editor-first3=Charles Reagan}}{{Cite journal |date=2012 |title=A Lasting Legacy: James Edward O'Hara's Post-Reconstruction Struggle for Racial Equality |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9798400617263.0028 |journal=Before Obama |pages=ii41–62 |doi=10.5040/9798400617263.0028|isbn=979-8-4006-1726-3 }} However, these efforts were often met with resistance, particularly from white Southerners who opposed racial integration. Despite these initial efforts toward inclusive worship, most integrated churches did not survive long due to racial tensions, societal segregation, and differing cultural and religious practices.{{Cite journal |last=Ellis |first=Isaiah |date=2023 |title=Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America by Randall Balmer (review) |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/soh.2023.a909871 |journal=Journal of Southern History |volume=89 |issue=4 |pages=750–751 |doi=10.1353/soh.2023.a909871 |issn=2325-6893}} Over time, the Black church emerged as a vital and independent institution for African Americans, offering not only spiritual sustenance but also a space for community organization and social activism, distinct from the predominantly white congregations.

In Wesleyan-Holiness denominations such as the Church of God, the belief that "interracial worship was a sign of the true Church" was taught, with both whites and blacks ministering regularly in Church of God congregations, which invited people of all races to worship there.{{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Estrelda Y. |title=Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism |date=3 May 2011 |publisher=InterVarsity Press |isbn=978-0-8308-2586-8 |page=82 }} In some parts of the country, such as New Orleans, Black and white Catholics had worshiped together for almost 150 years before the American Civil War—albeit without full equality and primarily under French and Spanish rule.

{{See also|Slavery in the United States}}

During the era of slavery in the United States, many slave owners strategically used Black churches and Black preachers to propagate messages of obedience, submission, and compliance among enslaved people. This was part of a larger system of control that sought to use religion as a tool to maintain the institution of slavery.{{Cite journal |last=Gravely |first=William B. |date=September 1981 |title=Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South. By Albert J. Raboteau. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. xi + 382 pp. $14.95. |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3167344 |journal=Church History |volume=50 |issue=3 |pages=349–350 |doi=10.2307/3167344 |jstor=3167344 |issn=0009-6407}}{{Cite journal |date=October 1973 |title=John W. Blassingame. <italic>The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South</italic>. New York: Oxford University Press. 1972. Pp. xv, 262. $7.95 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/ahr/78.4.1132-a |journal=The American Historical Review |doi=10.1086/ahr/78.4.1132-a |issn=1937-5239}}{{Cite journal |last=Maddex |first=Jack |date=April 1976 |title=Book Review: Roll, Jordan, Roll: the World the Slaves Made |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/089692057600600310 |journal=Insurgent Sociologist |volume=6 |issue=3 |pages=61–63 |doi=10.1177/089692057600600310 |issn=0047-0384}}

Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the use of the Negro Slaves, sometimes referred to as the Slave Bible,{{Cite web |title=The Slave Bible: Let the Story Be Told |url=https://www.museumofthebible.org/exhibits/slave-bible |access-date=2024-09-07 |website=Museum of the Bible }} was created in the British West Indies and is an abbreviated version of the Bible specifically made for teaching a pro-slavery version of Christianity to enslaved people.{{Cite web |date=2023-08-24 |title=Why Bibles Given to Slaves Omitted Most of the Old Testament |url=https://www.history.com/news/slave-bible-redacted-old-testament |access-date=2024-09-07 |website=HISTORY }} Slave owners often introduced Christianity to enslaved Africans, selectively emphasizing biblical teachings that they believed justified slavery and encouraged submission to masters. Scriptures such as Eph 6:5 ("Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear...") and Col 3:22 were frequently cited to reinforce the idea that slavery was divinely sanctioned.{{Cite journal |last=Gravely |first=William B. |date=September 1981 |title=Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South. By Albert J. Raboteau. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. xi + 382 pp. $14.95. |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3167344 |journal=Church History |volume=50 |issue=3 |pages=349–350 |doi=10.2307/3167344 |jstor=3167344 |issn=0009-6407}}{{Cite journal |date=October 1973 |title=John W. Blassingame. <italic>The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South</italic>. New York: Oxford University Press. 1972. Pp. xv, 262. $7.95 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/ahr/78.4.1132-a |journal=The American Historical Review |doi=10.1086/ahr/78.4.1132-a |issn=1937-5239}} Some slaves were already Christian before colonization, however, and some were Muslim.{{Cite web |last=Gecewicz |first=Besheer Mohamed, Kiana Cox, Jeff Diamant and Claire |date=2021-02-16 |title=10. A brief overview of Black religious history in the U.S. |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/02/16/a-brief-overview-of-black-religious-history-in-the-u-s/ |access-date=2024-11-24 |website=Pew Research Center |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |last=DMin |first=H. C. Felder |date=2023-06-20 |title=Many Slaves Came to America as Christians |url=https://www.centerforbiblicalunity.com/post/many-slaves-came-to-america-as-christians |access-date=2024-11-24 |website=CFBU |language=en}} Slaves from the Congo coming to America were Catholics.

During this era, there is evidence of Christian practice and "specific dedicated places for worship[pers]" called praise houses from before the first organized African American Christian denominations.{{Cite book |last=Salamone |first=Frank A. |title=Encyclopedia of Religious Rites, Rituals, and Festivals |publisher=Routledge |year=2004 |isbn=0-415-94180-6 |editor-last=Levinson |editor-first=David |location=New York |pages=13}}

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. Black individuals 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 churches.{{Cite journal |last=Amt |first=Emilie |date=2017 |title=Down From the Balcony: African Americans and Episcopal Congregations in Washington County, Maryland, 1800-1864 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26335896#:~:text=Episcopal%20congregations%20accepted%20slaves%20and,as%20having%20no%20leadership%20capacity.&text=LU%20L11U%20OUUlll. |journal=Anglican and Episcopal History |volume=86 |issue=1 |pages=1–42 |issn=0896-8039 |quote=Episcopal congregations accepted slaves and free African-Americans as subordinate members, kept African-Americans segregated, and saw their black members as suitable objects for mission work but as having no leadership capacity.}} 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, an enslaved Baptist preacher, was inspired to armed rebellion against slavery, in an uprising that killed about 50 white people in Virginia.{{cite web |url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/intro.html |title=The Church in the Southern Black Community |last=Maffly-Kipp |first=Laurie F.|author1-link=Laurie Maffly-Kipp|date=May 2001 |access-date=2007-05-21}}

Both free African Americans 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.[https://archive.org/details/anoutlinehistor00bishgoog Robert Hamilton Bishop's An Outline of the history of the church in the state of Kentucky, during a period of forty years (containing the memoir of Rev. David Rice)], T. T. Skillman, 1824, pp. 230–33. The church's trustees purchased its first property in 1815. The congregation numbered about 290 by the time of Durrett's death in 1823.

The First African Baptist Church had its beginnings in 1817 when John Mason Peck and the former enslaved John Berry Meachum began holding church services for African Americans in St. Louis.{{Cite news |last=Wilbon |first=Roderick |date=April 28, 2017 |title=First Baptist Church of St. Louis, oldest African-American church west of the Mississippi River, celebrates its 200th anniversary |url=http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/first-baptist-church-of-st-louis-oldest-african-american-church-west-of-the-mississippi-river/article_52102f1c-2c1a-11e7-9379-c7067d5e7f4b.html |access-date=2022-02-14}} Meachum founded the First African Baptist Church in 1827. It was the first African American church west of the Mississippi River. Although there were ordinances preventing African Americans from assembling, the congregation grew from 14 people at its founding to 220 people by 1829. Two hundred of the parishioners were slaves, who could only travel to the church and attend services with the permission of their owners.{{Cite web |date=1974 |title=First African Baptist Church History (S0006) |url=https://files.shsmo.org/manuscripts/saint-louis/S0006.pdf |website=State Historical Society of Missouri}}

Following slave revolts in the early 19th century, including Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, Virginia passed a law requiring African American congregations to meet only in the presence of a white minister. Other states similarly restricted exclusively African American churches or the assembly of black Americans 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 American Civil War. While mostly led by freedmen, most of their members were slaves.

File:A Negro camp meeting in the South LCCN99614209.tifs.{{cite book |last1=Wortham |first1=Robert |title=W. E. B. Du Bois and the Sociology of the Black Church and Religion, 1897–1914 |date=2017 |publisher=Lexington Books |page=153 |isbn=9781498530361 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=opY-DwAAQBAJ&q=voodooism}}]]

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.Rosemary Skinner Keller (2006), "Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America: Women and religion: methods of study and reflection", Indiana University Press, p. 997 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 a rebellion.

Slaves also learned about Western 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 Christian slaveholders were Anglican. 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.Anne H. Pinn, Fortress Introduction to Black Church History, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Fortress, 2002, p. 2.

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. Slaves who were literate tried to teach others to read, as Frederick Douglass did while still enslaved as a young man in Maryland.

File:River baptism in New Bern.jpg, North Carolina, around 1900.]]

Free black Americans in both Northern and Southern U.S. cities formed their own congregations and churches before the end of the 18th century. They organized independent African American congregations and churches to practice religion apart from white oversight.{{cite book |url=http://eblackstudies.org/intro/chapter10.htm |title=Religion and the Black Church |series=Introduction to Afro-American Studies |publisher=Twenty-first Century Books and Publications |location=Chicago |edition=6th |author=Abdul Alkalimat and Associates |access-date=2007-05-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070408020237/http://eblackstudies.org/intro/chapter10.htm |archive-date=2007-04-08 |url-status=dead }} 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.{{cite web |url=http://www.iusb.edu/~journal/1998/Paper11.html |title=The Underground Railroad in Indiana |last=Rimsa |first=Kelly |access-date=2007-05-21 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070413053302/http://www.iusb.edu/~journal/1998/Paper11.html |archive-date = 2007-04-13}}

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.{{Cite web |title=The Free African Society {{!}} Historical Society of Pennsylvania |url=https://hsp.org/history-online/exhibits/richard-allen-apostle-of-freedom/the-free-african-society |access-date=2024-11-24 |website=hsp.org}}File:Mother Bethel AME Church Historical Marker 6th and Lombard Sts Philadelphia PA (DSC 3511).jpg Philadelphia PA]]

Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, wanted to continue with the Methodist tradition. He built a congregation and founded the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. 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.{{Cite web |date=2021-06-09 |title=Richard Allen and the Origins of the AME Church |url=https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2021/06/09/richard-allen/ |access-date=2024-11-24 |website=Rediscovering Black History |language=en-US}}

Petersburg, Virginia had two of the oldest black American 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.[http://www.boston.com/travel/articles/2005/03/09/civil_war_history_lesson/?page=2 "Civil War history lesson: Petersburg, Virginia, embraces and expands its past"], Boston.com, 9 March 2005, accessed 22 Dec 2008[http://www.aaheritageva.org/search/sites.php?site_id=48 "First Baptist Church, Petersburg"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120214040516/http://www.aaheritageva.org/search/sites.php?site_id=48 |date=2012-02-14 }}, African American Heritage, accessed 22 Dec 2008

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.[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2p49.html "George Liele"], Africans in America, PBS, accessed 14 Jan 2009 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.{{cite book|last=Raboteau|first=Albert J.|title=Slave Religion: The 'Invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2004|pages=139, 141|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C3AQUK-6A2cC&q=Gillfield+Baptist+Church,+Petersburg,+VA&pg=PA188|isbn=9780195174137|access-date=2008-12-27}}

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.{{NRISref|2009a}} By 1861, the congregation numbered 2,223 members.[https://books.google.com/books?id=DXzZAAAAMAAJ&q=J.H.+Spencer,+%27%27A+History+of+Kentucky+Baptists, John H. Spencer, A History of Kentucky Baptists: From 1769–1885, Vol. II], Cincinnati, OH: J.R. Baumes private printing, 1886, p. 657, accessed 23 Aug 2010

Free Black communities in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York helped freedom seekers escape from slavery. Black Churches were stops on the Underground Railroad, and Black communities in the North hid freedom seekers in their churches and homes. Historian Cheryl Janifer Laroche explained in her book, Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad The Geography of Resistance that: "Blacks, enslaved and free, operated as the main actors in the central drama that was the Underground Railroad."{{cite book |last1=Laroche |first1=Cheryl J. |title=Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad The Geography of Resistance |date=2013 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252095894 |pages=1–3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d7gPBAAAQBAJ&q=free+blacks+underground+railroad}}

{{See also|Reconstruction era}}

File:Sunday in Little Rock, Ark., 1935. (3109755087).jpg

File:During the church service at a Negro church in Heard County,... (3110583408).jpg, 1941.]]

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 Church gained 50,000 congregants.[https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/daniel_payne.html "Daniel Payne"], This Far by Faith, PBS, 2003, 13 January 2009.

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.[https://archive.org/details/songsofzionafric0000camp_f3n0/page/215 James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion], New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 53–54, accessed 13 Jan 2009 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.[http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/intro.html "The Church in the Southern Black Community"], Documenting the South, University of North Carolina, 2004, accessed 15 Jan 2009

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 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.[http://www.c-m-e.org/core/roots.htm "Roots of Christian Methodist Episcopal Church"], Christian Methodist Episcopal Church Official website, accessed 15 Jan 2009 Within three years, from a base of about 40,000, they had grown to 67,000 members, and more than ten times that many in 50 years.Anne H. Pinn, Fortress Introduction to Black Church History, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Fortress, 2002, p. 56

The Church of God, 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. Those who were entirely sanctified testified that they were "saved, sanctified, and prejudice removed." 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". 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".

At the same time, Black Baptist churches, well-established before the American 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 African American 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 one of the largest black religious organizations 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.[https://archive.org/details/songsofzionafric0000camp_f3n0/page/215 James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Church in the United States and South Africa], New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 54. 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.Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619–1877, New York: Hill and Wang, 1994, p. 222.

Black preachers provided leadership, encouraged education and economic growth, and were often the primary link between the African American and white communities.{{Citation needed|date=May 2008}} 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.[https://archive.org/details/songsofzionafric0000camp_f3n0/page/215 James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion], New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, accessed 13 Jan 2009

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.

File:Ralph Abernathy.jpg was a Baptist minister involved in the American Civil Rights Movement.]]

{{See also|Civil rights movement}}

Black churches held a leadership role in the American civil rights movement. Their history as 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, C. T. Vivian,{{cite web |url=http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/players.htm |title=We Shall Overcome: The Players |access-date=2007-05-29 |archive-date=2007-06-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070607180155/http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/players.htm |url-status=dead }}[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3narr3.html "The Black Church", Brotherly Love, Part 3: 1791–1831] and Fr. Ted Hesburgh, who would later be recruited by President Johnson to help craft the legislation that would later become the 1964 Civil Rights Act. During this movement, many African American Baptists split over using black churches as political centers alongside spiritual centers; this led to the formation of the Progressive National Baptist Convention.{{Cite web |last=Anderson |first=Meg |date=2009-03-29 |title=Progressive National Baptist Convention (1961- ) |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/progressive-national-baptist-convention-inc-1961/ |access-date=2020-09-11 |website=BlackPast |language=en-US}}

{{Main|Black Power movement|Black Catholic Movement}}

After the assassination of Dr. King in 1968, by James Earl Ray, African American Catholics began organizing en masse, beginning with the clergy that April. A Black Catholic revolution soon broke out, fostering the integration of the traditions of the larger (Protestant) Black Church into Black Catholic parishes. Soon there were organizations formed for Black religious sisters (1968), permanent deacons, seminarians, and a brand-new National Black Catholic Congress organization in 1987, reviving the late 19th-century iteration of the same. This era saw a massive increase in Black priests, and the first crop of Black bishops and archbishops.

{{Main|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.[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88552254&ft=1&f=1001 Barbara Bradley Hagerty, "A Closer Look at Black Liberation Theology"], National Public Radio.

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.[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120585801828545495?mod=fpa_mostpop Obama and His 'White Grandmother'] from 'The Wall Street Journal'Cornel West and Eddie S. Glaude, eds, African American Religious Thought: An Anthology, 2003 {{ISBN|0-664-22459-8}}, p. 850.

In 2008, approximately one quarter of African-American churches followed a liberation theology.Powell, Michael. "[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/weekinreview/04powell.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 A Fiery Theology Under Fire]", The New York Times, May 4, 2008. 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.[http://www.tucc.org/talking_points.htm TUCC Talking points] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080325005805/http://www.tucc.org/talking_points.htm|date=2008-03-25}}; see also [www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/31079.html Margaret Talev, "Obama's church pushes controversial doctrines"], McClatchy Newspapers, March 20, 2008.

Scholars have seen parallels between the Black church and the 21st Century Black Girl Magic movement, with social media interactions involving the Black Girl Magic hashtag seen as a modern extension of "[t]he Black church traditions of testimony, exhortation, improvisation, call and response, and song," which Black women can use to form a "cyber congregation."{{cite journal |last1=Jackson |first1=Carla Jean-McNeil |date=Spring 2020 |title=Hashtags and Hallelujahs: The Roles of #BlackGirlMagic Performance and Social Media in Spiritual #Formation |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5323/48581555 |journal=Fire |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=98–131 |jstor=10.5323/48581555 |access-date=23 August 2021}}

{{Main|Womanist theology}}

From the Black theology movement also came a more feminine form, in reaction to both the male-dominated nature of the field and the White-dominated nature of Feminist theology. Major figures in this reaction included Afro-Latino thinkers as well as Black women. Black Catholic womanists also played a major role, including Sr Jamie Phelps, OP, M. Shawn Copeland, and Diana L. Hayes.{{citation needed|date=November 2021}}

The black church continues to be a source of support for members of the African American community, like encouragement to obtain immunizations.{{Cite web |title=National Black Church Initiative |url=https://www.naltblackchurch.com |access-date=2024-09-10 |website=www.naltblackchurch.com}} When compared to American churches as a whole, predominantly African American churches tend to focus more on social issues such as poverty, gang violence, drug use, prison ministries and racism. A study in 1996 found that African American Christians were more likely to have heard about health care reform from their pastors than were white Christians.{{cite web |url=http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=126 |title=The Diminishing Divide ... American Churches, American Politics |date=June 25, 1996 |access-date=2007-05-16}} As of 2024, the National Black Church initiative had 27.7 million members in the United States.

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.{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17057-2004Nov1.html |title=Gay Blacks Feeling Strained Church Ties |last=Fears |first=Darryl |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=2004-11-02 |access-date=2007-05-16}} Same-sex marriage and other LGBT issues have been among the leading causes for activism in some black churches;Jeffrey S. Siker, Homosexuality and Religion: An Encyclopedia, 2007, p. 49. though a majority of black Protestants remained opposed to same-sex marriage as of 2015,{{cite web|url = http://www.pewforum.org/2014/09/24/graphics-slideshow-changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/|access-date = 4 November 2015|title = Changing Attitudes on Gay Marriage|date = 29 July 2015}} support grew to a majority of both black Protestant and black Catholic respondents in later surveys.{{Cite news |date=June 26, 2017 |title=Support for Same-Sex Marriage Grows, Even Among Groups That Had Been Skeptical |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2017/06/26/support-for-same-sex-marriage-grows-even-among-groups-that-had-been-skeptical/ |access-date=June 17, 2024 |work=Pew Research Center}}{{Cite news |last=Avery |first=Dan |date=October 21, 2020 |title=Support for gay marriage reaches all-time high, survey finds |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/support-gay-marriage-reaches-all-time-high-survey-finds-n1244143 |access-date=June 17, 2024 |work=NBC News}}{{Cite news |last=Shine |first=Robert |date=March 18, 2022 |title=New Report: Majorities of Black Catholics Affirm Gay People and Same-Gender Marriages |url=https://www.newwaysministry.org/2022/03/18/new-report-majorities-of-black-catholics-affirm-gay-people-and-same-gender-marriages/ |access-date=June 17, 2024 |work=New Ways Ministry}} 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.{{cite web|last1=Hahn|first1=Heather|title=Gay pastor's removal brings sadness, defiance|url=http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/gay-pastors-removal-brings-sadness-defiance|website=www.umc.org|publisher=United Methodist Church|access-date=November 26, 2015|archive-date=April 24, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180424231616/http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/gay-pastors-removal-brings-sadness-defiance|url-status=dead}}

Some African American clergy have not accepted same-sex marriage. A group known as the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP), maintains their opposition to gay marriage. The CAAP president, Reverend William Owens Sr., asserts that the marriage equality act will cause corruption within the United States. The organization insists that a real union is between a man and a woman. They also believe that the law prohibiting gay marriage should have been upheld. Other African American religious leaders that echoed Owens' position were Bishop Janice Hollis, presiding prelate for Covenant International Fellowship of Churches in Philadelphia; Bishop Charles G. Nauden of Holyway Church of God in Christ of Southern California; and the Reverend Dean Nelson, vice chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation.{{Cite web |last1=Gryboski |first1=Michael |last2=Editor |first2=Mainline Church |date=2012-08-01 |title=Black Pastor: Gay Marriage Issue Will Increase in Importance in November Election |url=https://www.christianpost.com/news/black-pastor-gay-marriage-issue-will-increase-in-importance-in-november-election.html |access-date=2024-09-12 |website=www.christianpost.com |language=en}} The CAAP members agree that the Supreme Court had no right to overturn the constitutional ruling.{{cite web|last1=Baptiste|first1=Nathalie|title=What Some Black Church Leaders Have Wrong About Gay Marriage – and Civil Rights|url=http://prospect.org/article/what-some-black-church-leaders-have-wrong-about-gay-marriage-and-civil-rights/|website=The American Prospect|date=3 July 2015|publisher=Prospect|access-date=14 March 2017}}

Although black urban neighborhoods in cities that have deindustrialized may have suffered from civic disinvestment,[https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fjurban%2F78.1.72 Root shock: The consequences of African American dispossession], Journal of Urban Health. New York: Springer. Volume 78, Number 1 / March 2001. with lower quality schools, less effective policingDouglas A. Smith, "The Neighborhood Context of Police Behavior", Crime and Justice, Vol. 8, Communities and Crime (1986), pp. 313–41. 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.Mary Pattillo-McCoy, "Church Culture as a Strategy of Action in the Black Community", American Sociological Review, Vol. 63, No. 6 (December 1998), pp. 767–84. 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.{{cite journal |last1=Arnold |first1=Bruce Makoto |title=Shepherding a Flock of Different Fleece: A Historical and Social Analysis of the Unique Attributes of the African American Pastoral Caregiver |journal=Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling |date=June 2012 |volume=66 |issue=2 |page=2 |doi=10.1177/154230501206600202 |pmid=23045903 |s2cid=31892039 |url=https://www.academia.edu/1432041}}Wendy L. Haight, "'Gathering the Spirit' at First Baptist Church: Spirituality as a Protective Factor in the Lives of African American Children", Social Work, Vol. 43, 1998.

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.{{cite web|url=http://www.adcorp.org/|title=Abyssinian Development Corporation}} Churches have fought for the right to operate their own schools in place of the often inadequate public schools found in many black neighborhoods.[http://www.observer.com/2007/charter-lawsuit Azi Paybarah, "A Harlem Church Sues to Operate Charter School] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080121131156/http://www.observer.com/2007/charter-lawsuit |date=January 21, 2008 }}", October 25, 2007.

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.[http://www.intiman.org/2007season/nativity.html Black Nativity] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080109055932/http://www.intiman.org/2007season/nativity.html |date=2008-01-09 }}[http://www.ncaaa.org/nativity.html Black Nativity] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071009075118/http://www.ncaaa.org/nativity.html |date=2007-10-09 }} The Three Wise Men are typically played by prominent members of the black community.

The watchnight service held on New Year's Eve in many Christian denominations, especially those of the Methodist and Moravian traditions, is widely attended by African American Christians.{{cite web |last1=Harrell |first1=Joan R. |title=Watch Night Service In The Black Church In America: 150 Years After The Emancipation Proclamation |url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/watch-night-service-in-the-black-church-in-america-150-years-_b_2389965 |work=The Huffington Post |access-date=2 January 2021 |date=31 December 2012}}

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 Americans were drawn to Methodism due to the father of Methodism, John Wesley's "opposition to the whole system of slavery, his commitment to Jesus Christ, and the evangelical appeal to the suffering and the oppressed."{{cite book |last1=Costen |first1=Melva Wilson |title=In Spirit and in Truth: The Music of African American Worship |date=1 January 2004 |publisher=Westminster John Knox Press |isbn=978-0-664-22864-4 |page=57 }}

{{Main|African Methodist Episcopal Church}}

File:Richard Allen.JPG

The first of these churches was the African Methodist Episcopal Church. 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.{{Cite web |title=Absalom Jones and the Insufficiently Progressive {{!}} Notes and News |url=https://stbarts.org/notes-and-news/absalom-jones-and-the-insufficiently-progressive/ |access-date=2022-09-03 |website=St. Bart'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.{{Cite web |title=The Story of The Rev. Absalom Jones |url=https://utsnyc.edu/event/the-story-of-the-rev-absalom-jones/ |access-date=2022-09-03 |website=Union Theological Seminary }}

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 Mother Bethel AME Church.{{Cite web |date=2010-12-23 |title=Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church [Philadelphia] (1794- ) |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mother-bethel-african-methodist-episcopal-ame-church-1794/ |access-date=2022-09-03 |website=BlackPast }}

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 Church as an independent denomination, the first fully independent black denomination. The ministers consecrated Allen as their first bishop.{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3narr3.html |title=Africans in America: The Black Church |website=PBS |access-date=2007-05-21}}

{{Main|African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church}}

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion or AME Zion Church, like the AME Church, is an offshoot of the Methodist Episcopal 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 Methodist Episcopal Church to meet independently, though still to be part of that church and led by white preachers. This AME Church group built Zion chapel in 1800 and became incorporated in 1801, still subordinate to the Methodist Episcopal Church.{{cite book |title=History of the A.M.E. Zion Church in America. Founded 1796, In the City of New York |last=Moore |first=John Jamison, D.D |location=York, Pa |year=1884 |publisher=Teachers' Journal Office |url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/moorej/moore.html}}

In 1820, AME Zion Church members began further separation from the Methodist Episcopal 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 American Civil War, the denomination sent missionaries to the South and attracted thousands of new members, who shaped the church.

• African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection
• Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
• Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A.
• Lumber River Conference of the Holiness Methodist Church

{{Main|National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.}}

The National Baptist Convention of the United States of America 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.{{cite web |url=http://www.nationalbaptist.com/Index.cfm?FuseAction=Page&PageID=1000082 |title=History of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. |access-date=2007-05-29 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070106010417/http://www.nationalbaptist.com/Index.cfm?FuseAction=Page&PageID=1000082 |archive-date = 2007-01-06}}

• Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship
• National Baptist Convention of America International, Inc.
• National Missionary Baptist Convention of America
• Progressive National Baptist Convention

{{Main|Church of God in Christ}}

In 1907, Charles Harrison Mason formed the Church of God in Christ after his Baptist church and the Mississippi Convention of the NBC USA 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 Holiness Pentecostal message. However, Charles Price Jones and J. A. Jeter of the Wesleyan 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.{{cite web |url=http://www.cogic.org/history.htm|title=The Story of Our Church |access-date=2007-05-22 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070513023650/http://www.cogic.org/history.htm |archive-date = 2007-05-13}} 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.{{cite web |url=http://www.thekingcenter.org/mlk/chronology.html |title=Chronology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr |access-date=2007-05-22 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070502175618/http://www.thekingcenter.org/mlk/chronology.html |archive-date = 2007-05-02}}

File:WORSHIPPERS AT HOLY ANGEL CATHOLIC CHURCH ON CHICAGO'S SOUTH SIDE. IT IS THE CITY'S LARGEST BLACK CATHOLIC CHURCH.... - NARA - 556238.jpg, 1973.]]

• United Holy Church of America
• Apostolic Faith Mission
• Apostolic Faith Mission Church of God
• 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, Incorporated

{{Main|Black Catholicism}}

Birthed from pre-U.S. communities in New Orleans, Baltimore, and Florida, among others, the presence of African American Catholics in the United States territories constitute some of the earliest Black communities on the entire continent. Beginning in the early 19th century, Black Catholic religious sisters began forming congregations to serve their communities, beginning with Mary Elizabeth Lange and Henriette DeLille, who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence and Sisters of the Holy Family, respectively. They were soon followed by the emergence of openly Black priests, the first being Fr Augustus Tolton in 1886.{{citation needed|date=November 2021}}

The Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (aka the Josephites), a group of priests tasked with serving African-Americans specifically, were formed in 1893 and began ordaining Black men immediately—though in small numbers. They staffed and formed Black parishes throughout the country, and today continue to serve in the same way (as do the two aforementioned sisterhoods, as well as the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary).{{citation needed|date=November 2021}}

After the Civil Rights Movement, various new Black Catholic organizations were founded for Black priests, sisters, deacons, and seminarians, and the National Black Catholic Congress arrived in 1987. African-American Catholic priests greatly increased in number and African-American bishops began being appointed, including archbishops.{{citation needed|date=November 2021}}

Wilton Gregory, the first African American cardinal was named in 2020.{{cite web | url=https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/27/world/archbishop-wilton-gregory-cardinal/index.html | title=This archbishop has become the first African American cardinal in Catholic history | website=CNN | date=27 November 2020 }}

{{Portal|United States|Christianity|Religion}}

• African diaspora religions
• Atheism in the African diaspora
• Black sermonic tradition
• Black theology
• Louisiana Black church fires
• Our Lady of Ferguson
• Our Mother of Africa Chapel
• Traditional Black gospel

General:

• Racial segregation of churches in the United States
• Religion in Black America{{cite web|last1=Baptiste|first1=Nathalie|title=What Some Black Church Leaders Have Wrong About Gay Marriage – and Civil Rights|url=http://prospect.org/article/what-some-black-church-leaders-have-wrong-about-gay-marriage-and-civil-rights//|website=The American Prospect|date=3 July 2015|access-date=14 March 2017}}
• Religious discrimination in the United States

{{Reflist|30em}}

{{main|Religion in Black America#Further reading}}

• Gilton, Donna.(1993). "This far by faith: Resources of the African-American Church. The Alert Collector Column. RQ 32: No. 4 (Summer): pp. 468–484.
• {{cite thesis|last=Travis|first=Jamal Chanse|title=The Political Power Of The Black Church|type=PhD dissertation|publisher=University of Mississippi|date=August 2015 |url=https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/788}}

• [https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/aarsecretmeetings.htm/ On The Secret Religious Meetings of Enslaved Persons]
• [http://www.blackpast.org/special-features/historic-african-american-churches/ Black Past: Historic African American Churches]
• [https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/02/16/faith-among-black-americans/ Faith Among Black Americans]
• [https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/01/30/a-religious-portrait-of-african-americans/ A Religious Portrait of African-Americans]

{{Black church}}

{{Afro-American Religions}}

{{African American topics}}

{{Evangelical Protestantism in the United States}}

{{Authority control}}

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