Independent Black Churches Research Articles

Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia by Nicole Myers Turner

Reviewed by: Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia by Nicole Myers Turner Caroline Grego Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia. By Nicole Myers Turner. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. xxii, 210. $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-5523-9.) In Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia, Nicole Myers Turner turns an incisive eye to the formation of Black political and religious networks from the last years of slavery to the last years of Reconstruction in Virginia. Turner not only surveys an array of sources—from Freedmen’s Bureau records and the minutes of African American Baptist, Zion Union Apostolic, and Episcopal Church conventions to the papers of a Virginia political magnate—but also deploys the mapping software ArcGIS to reveal “how church networks. . . suffused the political culture of black Virginians” (p. xii). Throughout her clearly written, tightly structured monograph, Turner rejects facile depictions of Black Christianity as either “an opiate or an inspiration” (p. 2). Instead, Turner delves into a case study of Petersburg, Virginia, and its adjacent counties to chart the evolution of Black churches and postemancipation political organizing in Black Virginians’ pursuit of “soul liberty,” a seventeenth-century Protestant concept that African Americans adapted for their journeys toward “religious freedom, righteousness, equity, and justice” (p. 2). In chapter 1, “Making a New Religious Freedom,” Turner examines the fraught relationship between formerly enslaved Virginians and the Freedmen’s Bureau as African Americans sought to lay claim to their own churches or negotiate their positions within predominantly white denominations and congregations. Turner argues that in this “first stage of the formation of black religious politics,” African Americans drew strength from an antebellum “religious terrain” (pp. 13, 14). In chapter 2, “Independent Black Church Conventions, 1866–1868,” Turner illustrates how Black Virginians conceptualized their “political rights in terms of religious freedom and independence” as they formed their own church conventions (p. 33). These church conventions, she argues, were “theaters for the construction of black male identity” to prove African Americans’ fitness for citizenship, and they relied on the financial savvy of African American women (p. 43). In chapter 3, “Religion, Race, and Gender at the Congregational Level,” Turner focuses on the congregation of Gilfield Baptist Church. There, she shows how African American churchgoers “helped forge community norms and ideas of gender and sexuality” (p. 57). This process was not simple, though it ultimately settled on “a model of minister-centered leadership” that constructed acceptable norms of family and behavior and isolated Black women from leadership positions (p. 57). Chapter 4, “Theological Education, Race Relations, and Gender, 1875–1882,” examines the purpose of education among African Americans, which frequently adhered to a “Victorian ideal”: on the one hand, education allowed Black men to “distance” themselves “from the limitations of slavery,” and, on the other, education “incorporated producerist, bourgeois values of manhood” for the purposes of uplift (p. 99). In chapter 5, “Politics of Engagement,” Turner dives into the fascinating Readjuster movement, a coalition of white and Black Republicans who successfully passed a number of political reforms in the late 1870s and early 1880s, reminding the reader why Virginia is a valuable case study. Famous Readjuster William Mahone recognized the value of tapping into robust Black church networks to rally support for the Readjusters. [End Page 734] Rather than Black churches being “representations of black political acumen,” they were now “vehicles for participation and self-determination” (p. 143). Here, Turner’s use of mapping to shape the “intellectual architecture” of her argument comes into focus, and she uses Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping to its best advantage (p. xiii). “Politically engaged black churches have a history,” Turner writes with her characteristic clarity, and her book effectively proves why scholars of Black political life should not ignore the complex history of Black churches (p. 144). With three versions of the book—in print, as a verbatim open-access e-book, and as an enhanced open-access e-book with interactive maps—Turner has provided many options for scholars to explore her exciting integration of digital humanities with a traditional monograph. Caroline Grego Queens University of...

Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postempancipation Virginia by Nicole Myers Turner

Reviewed by: Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postempancipation Virginia by Nicole Myers Turner Emily Suzanne Clark (bio) Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postempancipation Virginia. By Nicole Myers Turner. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. 232. Cloth, $90.00; paper, $29.95.) Nicole Myers Turner’s Soul Liberty is impressive scholarship that reveals how black churches mediated political engagement and enabled [End Page 137] community organizing. While the book’s subtitle reflects Turner’s focus on Virginia, her deep look at the dynamics between the religious and the political demonstrates larger trends and answers some long-standing questions about black religious history at the pivotal moment of postemancipation. Rather than “presuppose political power” of black churches (147), Turner narrates this period in fresh ways to emphasize how black churches built on their existing political acumen. This approach puts the focus on the process by which churches became “vehicles for participation and self-determination” (143). Turner reveals a fascinating negotiation between the religious and the political; black church structures and networks shaped black political participation. Her use of the term “soul liberty” reflects this dynamic, as black Christians saw the intersections of “religious freedom, righteousness, equity, and justice” (2). The first chapter sets up the reader to see how some elements of life changed and others did not with the end of the Civil War. Black religious life had long been a space of communal gathering and resistance to white supremacy, as churches were “powerful bases for independence” (30). One thread begun in chapter 1 and continued throughout the book is an understanding of how black social community building transitioned into black political community organizing. In this chapter and in chapter 2, which specifically examines the creation of independent black church conventions, Turner vividly shows readers how the religious was inherently political. The church networks created and sustained by the conventions fostered powerful connections to propel black political interests. Additionally, by demonstrating their autonomy and ability to work with white church communities, black religious organizations made powerful arguments for their self-determination in matters both religious and political. As Turner explains, “The formation of independent black Baptist associations shows how black people organized themselves, developed their identities, and articulated their place within the new American freedom” (34). This dynamic is further developed in chapter 3, where Turner attends to the ways in which “a minister-centered leadership framework” developed in process and collaboration with community engagement (76). Education becomes a significant part of this conversation in chapter 4 in ways that reflect black political savvy. “Debates within the African American community about inspired versus educated ministerial leadership,” Turner explains, “often came out of concerns about how black people were perceived” (86). Access to seminary education often required interaction with white churchmen, but black political power allowed black churches to guard their autonomy even in collaboration. [End Page 138] Chapter 5, entitled “Politics of Engagement,” is where Turner’s analysis is at its strongest, in part owing to the developing themes and trends she expertly unpacks in earlier chapters. Because readers have followed the ongoing negotiation between black church networks and larger political movements, it comes as no surprise that even when they were a county minority, black church networks empowered black communities beyond their numbers. These church networks also strengthened “a race consciousness and a sense of communal power” that shaped black engagement with the patronage process (117). In exchange for their political support, black church networks negotiated for political positions for church members and leaders through the patronage system. Not only does this interaction help explain black voting trends, but it also shows the forward-thinking ways in which black churches advocated for their communities and goals. It is in chapter 5 that Turner’s use of ArcGIS and maps persuasively supports her interpretation of the historical data. Politicians could access these long-standing church networks to their advantage or ignore them to their deficit. The Pennsylvania State University recently created the Center for Black Digital Research, co-led by Gabrielle Foreman, one of the founders of the Colored Conventions Project. The center reflects increasing interest in digital humanities and...

The Future of Reconstruction Studies

The Future of Reconstruction Studies Mark A. Noll Reconstructing Religion http://journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-reconstruction-studies Fresh scholarship has documented a new understanding of religion during Reconstruction. Spurred by path-breaking research from Daniel Stowell, John Giggie, James Bennett, John Coffey, Curtis Evans, and still others, that scholarship has been particularly effective in demonstrating why African American churches became so important for black community life as well as the course of Reconstruction in the former confederacy. Significant work from, among others, Donald Mathews, Scott Poole, Molly Oshatz, Allen Guelzo, and Michael Hochgeschwender has also shown how thoroughly the religion of white Americans was affected by the forces precipitated into Reconstruction by the Civil War. The result has been a new silver age for scholarship on white religion to accompany the golden age that now exists for serious study of African Americans. Recent publications by Edward Blum and Paul Harvey have also made a persuasive claim that, absent full attention to religious dynamics, no account of Reconstruction and its long-enduring national effects can pretend to anything like completeness. The key lies in an awareness of how directly religious aspects of the nation’s antebellum history affected postbellum life. Rapid development of independent black churches, the strengthening of white racism after the ending of slavery, and the relative silence of religious voices about the effects of industrial growth emerged from a religious landscape in which the cultural authority of “evangelical America” had dramatically weakened. The causes of that weakening, as well as its spillover effects, merit full attention in every effort to grasp the complex character of American history in the Reconstruction era. [End Page 11] Copyright © 2017 The University of North Carolina Press

The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness. By Raphael G.Warnock. New York: NYU Press, 276 pages

The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness. By Raphael G.Warnock. New York: NYU Press, 276 pages

West African Drumming and Dance in North American Universities: An Ethnomusicological Perspective by George Worlasi Kwasi Dor (review)

West African Drumming and Dance in North American Universities: An Ethnomusicological Perspective. By George Worlasi Kwasi Dor. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014. [304 p. ISBN 9781617039140 (hardcover), $60; ISBN 9781496802583 (paperback), $30.] Illustrations, appendices, glossary, bibliography, index. This 300-page book was written by a Ghanaian musicologist who for many years has directed the University of Mississippi's Ole Miss African Drum and Dance Ensemble. He examines the growth of West African drumming in North American universities since the 1960s (which began in 1964 at UCLA and Columbia University). These programs were followed by Wesleyan, Berkeley, Toronto, and Tufts Universities, and drumming is now taught in approximately forty American and Canadian universities that host liberal arts, music and dance, African studies and world music programs. Dor supplies a useful table of the first such seventeen university units (p. 45). Dor first examines the reasons for the suppression of African drumming in the Americas during the era of slavery, including the Christian (and particularly Protestant) hostility to African drumming and culture in North America; however, slaves were able to perform African-influenced music within their independent black churches, with their spirituals, ring dances, and pats, in which African drum rhythms were transferred from drums to hand claps. Despite the abolition of slavery in the U.S.A. in 1865, in the Post-Reconstruction Jim Crow era with its accompanying scientific racism, the negative attitude to African performance as backwards, savage, and primitive continued to exist. Nevertheless, there was a growing interest in traditional African performance from the 1930s, reflected by six key personalities whom Dor discusses. The first was the Sierra Leonean Asadata Dafora Horton, who studied art music and opera in Europe and then in 1930 formed his Federal Theatre African Dance Troupe in Harlem. He was followed by the African American dancer Katherine Mary Dunham, who studied anthropology at the University of Chicago, researched Caribbean voudoun (voodoo) dance, became the first black choreographer for the Metropolitan Opera, and set up her own Ballet Negres in the 1940s. Pearl Primus was a dancer and choreographer from Trinidad who was born into a Santeria family and studied anthropology at New York University. She carried out ethnographic research in West and Central Africa, and her first dance production was in 1943. Dor mentions three West Africans who became important for the African drum culture in the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s. One is the Ghanaian percussionist Guy Warren (Kofi Ghanaba), who in 1957 released the first of his several African jazz albums and worked with African American jazz musicians Max Roach and Thelonius Monk. Likewise, in the 1950s, the Nigerian drummer Michael Babatunde Olatunji set up a college African drumming group in the United States; he later released records including Drums of Passion and worked with John Coltrane and Art Blakey. The sixth pioneering figure is the djembe drummer Ladji Kamara, who came to the States in the 1960s with the Ballets Africain (of the newly-independent Guinea) and became the father of the American djembe movement. Besides the roles of these six figures, Dor offers four other reason for the acceptance of African drumming in the American academy, the first being the role of African and Africanist scholars who from the 1950s and 1960s onward reassessed the importance of African culture and music: John Blacking, David McAllister, Mantle Hood, and A. M. Jones; and the West Africans, J. H. Kwabena Nketia, Akin Euba, and Chiekh Anta Diop. Secondly, there was the impact of West African independence that resulted in Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and Guinea's Sekou Toure establishing touring drum and dance performance groups like Les Ballets Africain and the Ghana Dance Ensemble (set up in 1962 by Kwabena Nketia and Albert Mawere Opoku). …

Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (review)

Reviewed by: Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers Patrick Rael (bio) Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers. By Richard S. Newman. (New York: New York University Press, 2008. Pp. 359. Cloth, $34.99.) In the pantheon of black heroes, Richard Allen looms large. He was a man of "firsts," founding the first independent black church, coauthoring the first black protest pamphlet, and organizing the first black national convention. Yet despite these accomplishments, Allen is difficult to know. He belonged to—indeed, heralded—the very first generation of free African Americans to step into American public life. As such, his traces in the historical record pale in comparison to the giants who followed him. Among luminaries such as Douglass, Washington, Du Bois, and King, Allen's name is rarely mentioned. Recent works have resuscitated the memories of figures such as James Forten and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, but Allen, perhaps first among firsts, has gone without a champion. This quintessential modern biography of an important African American is thus timely. In narrating the black founder's life, Richard Newman sets Allen in his time and place, engaging many critical debates animating the field. Newman tells Allen's story in passionate and lively prose, starting [End Page 551] with Allen's opaque early years in Philadelphia and Delaware, which climaxed with Allen's conversion to Methodism in 1777 and subsequent bargain with his master to free him after paying hefty compensation. In freedom, Allen continued his tireless campaign of work and self-uplift, eventually acquiring some capital and making a name for himself as an itinerant preacher. Allen's most famous moment arrived in 1787, when he (with Absalom Jones) led Philadelphia blacks out of the segregated St. George's Church and established Bethel Church, the first independent black church in the nation. In detailing the historical controversy over exactly when and how the walkout happened, Newman reveals Allen as a savvy architect of both public perception and historical memory. Allen's coauthoring of the first black protest pamphlet in 1794 further suggests the minister's emergence as a public politician. Published in response to accusations that Philadelphia blacks had exploited their roles as nurses during a recent yellow-fever epidemic, Allen and Jones's Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People marked a new era of black public resistance to racism, relying on the power of the written word. Allen proved to be a prolific pamphleteer, authoring tracts on topics ranging from the independence of the black church, to eulogies of famous Americans, to moral meditations on the black underclass. Throughout, he stressed themes of interracial harmony and moral uplift as key to achieving abolition and equality. By viewing blacks as "consummate representatives of republicanism" (149), Allen fostered a sense of black nationalism that could coexist with American nationalism. With the hardening of race relations in the 1810s and 1820s, Allen faced an ever more difficult challenge in reconciling black group solidarity with the unfulfilled promises of a prejudiced nation. He intensified efforts to secure the independence of Bethel, in the process uniting several independent black Methodist churches into the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Newman demonstrates how institution building at home in no way negated dreams of black nation building abroad. The prospect of black colonization had long animated Allen. When his optimistic strategies of moral uplift failed to roll back the tide of prejudice, Allen concluded that only outside of the United States could African Americans hope to replicate the very "elevation" that Allen himself represented. But—in an episode that signaled an emerging world of democratic politics among black northerners—black Philadelphians in 1817 overwhelmingly rejected elite schemes of colonization, forcing Allen to [End Page 552] retreat to save his position of leadership. Only later, when the AME toyed with the notion of Haitian immigration as a "safety valve" (253) for the release of blacks' frustrated energies, was Allen able to put forth colonization schemes that satisfied his "increasingly divided soul" (184). Meanwhile, challenges from below exercised Allen's evolving political skills. Prophetic itinerant preachers such as Jarena Lee confronted Allen with...

The First Novel in Xhosa

The first novel in the Xhosa language, USamson, written by the greatest figure in the history of Xhosa literature, S. E. K. Mqhayi (1875–1945), and published in 1907, is now lost. It was produced at a time when black people in South Africa were becoming bolder in their demand for human rights, forming independent black churches and political organizations. It appeared after a period of gestation for Xhosa literature in newspapers, at a time when missionaries were discussing the publication of books in Xhosa, but Mqhayi paid for its printing and organized its distribution. The novelette added details of setting and characterization to the biblical story to encourage the youth to gather behind black leaders who lacked support. Caught in the social tension between Xhosa and Mfengu, USamson was heavily criticized by I. W. Wauchope for departing from biblical narrative, but more generally defended by readers, who looked forward to the further publication of Xhosa literature in books.

Jacobins of the Lowcountry: The Vesey Plot on Trial

N October 1820, Edwin Holland, editor of the Charleston, South Carolina, Times, joined with a handful of other elite Charlestonians to petition the state's house of representatives for the suppression of the existing evil of an independent black church near the city, whose congregants were allegedly under abolitionist influence.1 When municipal officials executed Denmark Vesey and other class leaders of that church two years later for masterminding a sophisticated plot to raise the slaves in and around Charleston in rebellion, Holland appeared vindicated. But he was also unsated. Before white panic about black revolt had fully dissipated in the lowcountry, he published a ringing defense of slavery that concluded with this thunderclap: Let it never be forgotten, that our NEGROES are truely the Jacobins of the country; that they are the anarchists and the domestic enemy; the common enemy of civilized society, and the barbarians who would, IF THEY COULD, become the DESTROYERS

The ‘African National Church’: Self-Determination and Political Struggle Among Black Christians in South Africa to 1948

The first generations of black Christians in Southern Africa went through a painful process of critical examination and experiment as they struggled to assimilate new economic, social, and religious values. These values were presented to them mainly by white missionaries and were based largely on European models. It was as part of this dialectical process that an independent black churches movement—quickly labeled by friends and foes the “Ethiopian Movement”—had emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. The independent black churches spread and multiplied rapidly in South Africa. By 1919 there were seventy-six recognized sects; however, there were many more which were not officially recognized. A black newspaper reported in 1921 that there were “at least one thousand natives within the municipal boundary of Johannesburg who call themselves ministers, but who are unattached to any recognised chuch, and who live on the offerings of their respective flocks.” Although many members of these churches were active politically, the most pervasive influence of the movement was on the ideology of African nationalism, as the role of the church became a recurring theme in debates on the development of an African national identity.

Music of Northern Independent Black Churches during the Ante-Bellum Period

is directly related to the social values and life styles of the educated and the uneducated black. These life styles were influenced by the social, economic and political patterns of the North. As a result, the religious musical tradition of educated blacks, who were striving to achieve middle class status, was similar to that of the white Protestant. On the other hand, the tradition associated with uneducated blacks, who were struggling to survive, reflected the experiences of the segregated black community. The latter's musical tradition, therefore, was of a different character from the music associated with the white Protestant tradition. In order to understand the circumstances which led to the development of both traditions among northern blacks, it is necessary to provide the reader with general historical data concerning the institution of slavery in the North, the religious status of blacks in the North, the general trends of the white Protestant musical tradition, and the social, economic and political conditions which affected the status of northern blacks after the abolition of slavery.

The Faithful Shepherd: a History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century. By David D. Hall. Pp. xvi + 302. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press (for the Institute of Early American History and Culture); London: Oxford University Press, 1973. £6. - The Shattered Synthesis: New England Puritanism before the Great Awakening. By James W. Jones.

The Faithful Shepherd: a History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century. By David D. Hall. Pp. xvi + 302. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press (for the Institute of Early American History and Culture); London: Oxford University Press, 1973. £6. - The Shattered Synthesis: New England Puritanism before the Great Awakening. By James W. Jones. Pp. xii + 208. New Haven–London: Yale University Press, 1973. £3.50. - Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Rise of Independent Black Churches, 1760–1840. By Carol V. R. George. Pp. xii + 206. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. £3.60 (hard), £1.10 (paper). - The Western Experiment: New England Transcendentalists in the Ohio Valley. By Elizabeth R. McKinsey. (Essays in History and Literature). Pp. viii + 70. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1973. £2. - Volume 25 Issue 4

Carol V. R. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Emergence of Independent Black Churches, 1760-1840

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsCarol V. R. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Emergence of Independent Black Churches, 1760-1840Robert L. Harris, Jr.Robert L. Harris, Jr. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 59, Number 1January 1974 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2717146 Journal History This article was published in The Journal of Negro History (1916-2001), which is continued by The Journal of African American History (2002-present). Copyright 1974 The Association for the Study of African American Life and HistoryPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

THE BLACK CHURCH: Manhood and Mission

STUDENTS of black Christian church today tend to emphasize its long and honorable association with cause of black liberation, its tradition of protest, whether overt or covert, against white racism. The Black Revolution was born in 'invisible' Black Church of slave era. The independent Black Church emerged as a protest-a protest against racist theology and racist ecclesiology of church in America.' This emphasis, as Vincent Harding has pointed out, serves as a necessary counterbalance to classic interpretations of black church, by such scholars as Benjamin Mays and E. Franklin Frazier, as passive, other-worldly, not inclined to struggle for racial justice. Any definite judgment on black church will undoubtedly have to give some weight to both these interpretations, thereby recognizing what Harding terms the ambiguity, doubleness, of black religious experience, indeed of all religious experience.2 Yet even recognition of this doubleness-this polarity between religion as an opiate and religion as a stimulus to protest--does not constitute a full appreciation of contribution black church has made to earthly liberation of its people. That contribution goes beyond simple either/or of passive submission and active resistance to encompass realm of communal nurture in which a people develops and symbolizes its answer (s) to question, What does it mean to be a man? Every human community defines and authenticates those models of