The Black Church in the African American Experience

The particular cultural and historical context of the United States has created a unique experience for African-American Christians, resulting in certain dialectical tensions that prevent a simplified analysis of such a diverse body of believers. From the climate of several centuries of slavery, the period of Jim Crow segregation, and the Civil Rights movement, an indigenous African American culture emerged joining elements from Africa, Europe, and the United States to express a multi-dimensional witness to the nation and world (p. 200). The impetus for black spiritual and ecclesiastical independence was not initially grounded in religious doctrine or polity, but rather in the reaction to segregation in the churches and inconsistencies between the teaching and expression of the Christian faith (p. 47). Many black slaves became Christians as a result of the Second Great Awakening, which began in the frontier states, and then spread to southern plantations through circuit riders and clerical itinerants (p. 228). Other than the family, the Black Church existed at this time as one of the main social institutions for African Americans, and thus assumed significant roles and burdens that distinguished it from other American churches (p. 201). The rural church not only provided "the womb" for many of the distinctive features of the "black folk" religious experience (styles of preaching, shouting and falling out, spirituals and gospel music, and enthusiastic antiphonal audience responses), but also helped blacks survive the dehumanization of slavery by providing an economic and educational uplift after the Civil War, and by serving as major political centers for slave rebellions, civil rights protests, and the mobilization of the black vote (p. 111). Such a holistic view of ministry stands out as a major historical strand that traces back to the communalism of the African heritage and to the attempts of slaves to help each other survive the plantation system (pp. 161, 242). Black churches played a dominant role in establishing the black self-help tradition and eventually assumed the task of helping black people internalize the ethic of economic rationality that would lead to economic mobility (p. 244). Despite the Black Church's legacy of mutual aid and support, the process of urbanization accelerated the late nineteenth and early twentieth century phenomenon of a gradual separation of the Black Church from its traditional spheres of influence in politics, education, economics, and culture, and during the six decades from 1920 to 1980 close to one-third of the black population emerged as a viable middle class, internalizing major American middle-class values of individualism, privatism, pragmatism, conspicuous consumption, and upward mobility (pp. 122-123, 165). While urbanization introduced a greater differentiation of social class and pluralism into the African American community, a collective double-consciousness emerged for a subculture desiring to b

This is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the history and sociology of the black church. It is written from an academic perspective, but -- refreshingly -- is free of academic jargon, and is accessible to the journalist, church member or student. It was written in 1990, so its research is now a bit dated. Nevertheless, it is a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the the major black denominations: the National Baptists, African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, Christian Methodist Episcopal, Church of God in Christ, etc. It includes such useful information as a denomination's policies on women, politics and church hierarchy. I would eagerly await a new, updated edition.

outstanding work