The Black Church
The black church remains a vital e
This is an excerpt from the paper...
The black church remains a vital element in the black community today, and the importance of the black church was established in the ante-bellum South. Religion was important to the blacks brought to this country as slaves, for they had their own religion in their native land and fused elements of that earlier tradition with the Christian tradition they found here. The blacks in Africa who were captured and brought to America as slaves also had a developed and developing culture, and those who were enslaved were removed from that culture and thrust into a very different world where they were slaves rather than masters. They brought elements of their own culture with them, and some of these elements persisted in spite of the different location and the efforts of slave-owners to eliminate them. The Native Americans were Christianized by white settlers, and black slaves were Christianized by slave-owners. Religion was an excuse for challenging the earlier culture in both cases as something pagan and dangerous. Just as white settlers found ways to justify their actions toward the Native American, so did slave-owners and others find ways to justify slavery. From the point of view of the slaves, however, their church would become a source of strength, support, and community. The primary community center for the black population was the church, as the account of slave John Cameron from Jackson, Mississippi noted:
. . .
ef to the individual slave and sustaining power to the slave community. An emotional brand of Christianity, spiced with elements of the african religious legacy, developed into a distinctive African-American religion (Parish, 1989, 81-82).
Researchers believe that slave religion inspired a powerful sense of community and offered leaders and spokespersons for that community, and it also helped to provide alterative standards and alternative possibilities in terms of relations between slaves. The influence of religion was likely different on large plantations as opposed to smaller farms. Masters and white preachers alike worked to convert the slaves, but African influences remained diverse and potent. Voodoo was still widely practiced, and conjurers had great influence within the slave community. These two strains merged to produce a distinct, syncretic African-Christianity (Parish, 1989, 81-83).
The most important black denomination started when black members of St. George's Methodist Church found themselves segregated for the first time within the church, so they left and formed the African methodist Episcopal Church, or the AME. This was to be an important center for social organization, economic cooperation, education,
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Civil War, World Historians, Nat Turner, Eugene Genovese, Roman Catholic, Jackson Mississippi, Holy Book, Native Americans, American Baptist, South Religion, black church, stuckey 1987, williams 1983, civil war, elements african, slave community, black community, slave owners, elements african religious, african religious, beginning eighteenth century, feared blacks religion, forms black church, genovese 1974, african religious practice,
Approximate Word count = 2613
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
More Essays on The Black Church
The black church remains a vital e
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
