EMANCIPATION AND THE BLACK CHURCH For those who yearned for freedom, the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, seemed to re-enact the Exodus story of the ancient Israelites: God had intervened in human history to liberate his chosen people. But the stroke of a presidential pen did not eliminate poverty and dislocation, chaos and uncertainty. In the North, black churches organized missions to the South to help newly freed persons find the skills and develop the talents that would allow them to lead independent lives. Education was paramount. African American missionaries, including AME Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, established schools and educational institutions. White denominations, including Presbyterian, Congregational and Episcopal congregations, also sent missionaries to teach reading and math skills to a population previously denied the opportunity for education. Over time, these missionary efforts gave rise to the establishment of independent black institutions of higher education, including Morehouse College and Spelman College in Atlanta. But there were tensions. Some Northerners, including Payne, did not approve of the emotional worship style of their Southern counterparts; he stressed that true Christian worship meant proper decorum and attention to reading the Bible. Many Southerners were disinterested in Paynes admonitions. They liked their emotive form of worship and saw no reason to cast it aside. Nevertheless, most black Southerners ended up joining independent black churches that had been formed in the North before the Civil War. These included the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ). In 1870, Southerners formed the Colored (now Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1894, black Baptists formed the National Baptist Convention. In all these denominations, the black preacher stood as the central figure. W.E.B. Du Bois immortalized these men in his famous essay, Of the Faith of the Fathers, that appeared in his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois described the preacher as the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil, a man who found his function as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong, and the one who rudely but picturesquely expressed the longing, disappointment, and resentment of a stolen and oppressed people. Men commanded the pulpits of the black church; they also dominated church power and politics. Denied the chance to preach, growing numbers of women, mostly middle class, found ways to participate in religious life. They organized social services, missionary societies, temperance associations and reading groups. They fought for suffrage and demanded social reform. They wrote for religious periodicals, promoting Victorian ideals of respectability and womanhood. Like the crusading newspaper reporter Ida B. Wells, they protested racial injustice, lynching and violence. Among the most influential women was Nannie Burroughs, who served as corresponding secretary of the Womans Convention of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A. In a major address to the NBC delivered in 1920, Burroughs chastised black ministers: We might as well be frank and face the truth. While we have hundreds of superior men in the pulpits, North and South, East and West, the majority of our religious leaders have preached too much Heaven and too little practical Christian living. In many, the spirit of greed, like the horse-leach, is ever crying, Give me, give me, give me. Does the absorbing task of supplying their personal needs bind leaders to the moral, social and spiritual needs of our people? Men, she argued, must welcome women into the affairs of government. Women must organize and educate. There will be protest against politics in the Church, she predicted, but insisted, It is better to have politics than ignorance.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 22:03:35 +0000
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