The United States, c. 1783

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The United States, c. 1783

• Consequences of the War for Independence
• Economic (devastated)
• Social (chaos)
• Political (failed government)
• Religious (disestablishment, no clergy)
• 1783, Treaty of Paris extends US borders to
  Mississippi (New Frontier)

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Louisianna Purchase 1805
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Western Expansion
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Eli Whitney
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Short Staple Cotton
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Cotton Gin Patent 72XMarch 17, 1794
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Cotton Gin Press
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Picking Cotton
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Religion in America

• The Assembly bemoans the general dereliction of
  religious principles and practices among our
  fellow citizens and the visible prevailing
  impiety and contempt for the laws and
  institutions of religion. Presbyterian General
  Assembly. 1789

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Second Great Awakening 1790-1840

• Free-will Arminian (Grace available to all who
  seek it.)
• Value of Individual.
• Value of Emotions.
• Professionalization of Revivials
• Whereas First Great Awakening linked North
  South, Second links East West.

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Cane Ridge Revival
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Camp Meeting
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Lorenzo Dow
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Conversion Experience

• Long Christian tradition
• Change of heart, transformation in consciousness
  (metanoia)
• Protestant inward-looking peity
• 18-19th c. ME Baptists institutionalized the
  process

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African AmericanConversion Experience

• Profoundly personal
• Adolescents
• Role of spiritual elder
• Period of prayer, fasting, seclusion
• In relation to cosmic struggle of Good Evil
• Rejection, escape, acceptance, transformation.
• Personal history becomes intertwined with
  salvation history

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River Baptism
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Charles Grandison Finney

• Author of Lectures on Revival of Religion, 1835

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Church Discipline

• Served to remove offenses, vindicate the honor
  of Christ, promote general edification of all and
  last but not least, benefit the offender
  himself.
• Presbyterian Book of Discipline.

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Communion Tokens
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Benevolent Empire
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Abolitionist Societies
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Voluntary Associations

• American Bible Society
• American Tract Society
• American Home Mission Society
• Temperance Guild
• Salavation Army

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Plantation Missions, 1829

• Seen as Foreign Missions
• Difficulty of getting masters and slave to
  participate (earlier stand on slavery/tool of
  oppression)
• Sabbath makes good saints and servants
• Gospel imperative
• The gospel if taught properly not a threat to the
  civil order of the plantation

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Praise Houses
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Charles Colcock Jones

• 1804-1863
• Apostle to the Negro Slaves
• Liberty County, GA
• First Presbyterian Church, Savannah GA

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Charles C. Jones to William Plumber. June 1832

• The religious instruction of our servants is a
  duty. Nay man with conscience may be made to feel
  it. It can be discharged. It must be discharged,
  whatever becomes of us or them in a civil point
  of view. It must be discharged as speedily as
  possible. Our salvation from sore evils, from
  divine judgment depends upon it. The Religious
  Instruction of the Negroes is the foundation of
  all permanent improvement in the intelligence and
  morals in the slave-holding states. (The only
  entering wedge to the great and appalling subject
  of slavery.) The only sun, that appearing through
  the dark clouds, will show pure holy light, and
  if the institutions of slavery is to be
  abandoned, will cause the nation to relax its
  hold, and gradually and peacefully lay it off,
  and then sit down in delightful repose.

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Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the
United States, 1842
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Slave Catechism

• Q And what must you do to be saved from the
  anger of God?
• A I must be sorry for my sins I must pray to
  God to forgive me for what is past, and serve him
  better for the time to come.
• Q Will God forgive you if you pray for it?
• A I hope he will forgive me if I trust his
  mercy, for the sake of what Jesus Christ has
  done, and what he has suffered.
• Q Do you know who Jesus Christ is?
• A He is Gods own son, who came down form Heaven
  to save us from our sins, and Gods Anger

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Preaching to Slaves

• Epistle to Philemon Slaves be obedient unto
  your masters
• Not always appreciated by slaves
• Necessary to allow preaching however
• Slaves distinguished between true and master
  Christianity

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Disunion

• 1845 sectional tensions, theological tensions and
  political infighting lead to break up of
  Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians into
  Northern and Southern conferences/denominations.
• Radicalized anti and pro slavery rhertoric
• Plantation mission ironically suffer no ill
  effect as both sides try to out missionize the
  other

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Four Types of Preacher

• Minister
• Exhorter
• Self-Appointed Preacher
• Cult Leader/Hoodoo Man

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African Church in Cincinnati
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ME Service
The Illustrated London News (Dec. 5, 1863), vol.
43, p. 561.
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Nat Turner
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Gris Gris Bag
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Made in the image of God
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Exodus
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Philadelphia, 1796
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Richard Allen
Carter Godwin Woodson, 1875-1950 The History of
the Negro Church. Washington, D. C. The
Associated Publishers, c1921.
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Absolom Jones
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Free African Society

• "(12th, 4th mo., 1778 -- Whereas, Absalom Jones
  and Richard Allen, two men of the African race,
  who, for their religious life and conversation
  have obtained a good report among men, these
  persons, from a love to the people of their
  complexion whom they beheld with sorrow, because
  of their irreligious and uncivilized state, often
  communed together upon this painful and important
  subject in order to form some kind of religious
  society, but there being too few to be found
  under the like concern, and those who were,
  differed in their religious sentiments with
  these circumstances they labored for some time,
  till it was proposed, after a serious
  communication of sentiments, that a society
  should be formed, without regard to religious
  tenets, provided, the persons lived an orderly
  and sober life, in order to support one another
  in sickness, and for the benefit of their widows
  and fatherless children."

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Benevolent Societies
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The Causes and Motives for Establishing St.
Thomas's African Church...

• Whereas, through the various attempts we have
  made to promote our design, God has marked out
  made our ways with blessings. And we are now
  encouraged through the grace and divine
  assistance of the friends and God opening the
  hearts of our white friends and brethren, to
  encourage us to arise out of the dust and shake
  ourselves, and throw off that servile fear, that
  the habit of oppression and bondage trained us up
  in. And in meekness and fear we would desire to
  walk in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us
  free. That following peace with all men, we may
  have our fruit unto holiness, and in the end,
  everlasting life. And in order the more fully
  to accomplish the good purposes of God's will,
  and organize ourselves for the purpose of
  promoting the health the people all, but more
  particularly our relatives, of color. We, after
  many consultations, and some years deliberation
  thereon, have gone forward to erect a house for
  the glory of God, and our mutual advantage to
  meet in for clarification and social religious
  worship. And more particularly to keep an open
  door for those of our race, who may be into
  assemble with us, but would not attend divine
  worship in Other places

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St. Thomas African Episcopal Church
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Allen and Methodism

• I was confident that no religious sect or
  denomination would suit the capacity of colored
  people so well as the Methodists, for the plain
  and simple gospel suits best any people, for the
  unlearned can understand and the learned are sure
  to understand.

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AME Book of Discipline
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Walnut Street Jail
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Sheriffs Sale
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Reasons for African Supplement

• To lesson the chances of offense which arose in
  mixed worship
• To preserve from the crafty wiles of our enemy
  our weak-minded brethren.
• To build each other up in our most holy faith

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Mother Bethel
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Institutionalization of the Black Church

• New York- Zion Chapel splits from Wesley Chapel
  1801 under James Varick
• Boston- Thomas Paul founds African Baptist
  Church (Joy Street Church) 1805
• New York- Thomas Paul assists in establishing
  Abyssinian Baptist 1809 via honorable
  dismissal.
• Charleston, SC- Morris Brown founds Independent
  ME Church
• Wilmington, DE- Peter Spencer founds African
  Union Church 1813

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Peter Spencer
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Daniel Coker
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Morris Brown
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Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
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James Varick
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Thomas Paul
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African Meeting House
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Jarena Lee
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The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee,
a Colored Lady, Giving an Account of Her Call to
Preach the Gospel, 1894

• O how careful ought we to be, lest through our
  by-laws of church government and discipline, we
  bring into disrepute even the word of life. For
  as unseemly as it may appear now-a-days for a
  woman to preach, it should be remembered that
  nothing is impossible with God. And why should it
  be thought impossible, heterodox, or improper for
  a woman to preach? seeing the Savior died for the
  woman as well as for the man. If the man may
  preach, because the Savior died for him, why not
  the woman? seeing he died for her also. Did not
  Mary first preach the risen Savior, and is not
  the doctrine of the resurrection the very climax
  of Christianity--hangs not all our hope on this?
  Then did not Mary, a woman, preach the gospel?
  for she preached the resurrection of the
  crucified Son of God.

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Lee Spiritual Autobiography
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Brush Arbor
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Christopher Rus