7.1: The Black Church - Readings and Media

The selected readings, images, and videos of this module will inform students about African Americans' religious traditions.

Readings and Videos

Seminary Now. "The Origins of the Black Church in America." YouTube video, 8:41. January 9, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyRHvifK3Bg.

Black Churches

The expression "Black churches," or "the Black church," has been used to refer to four groups of organizations:

1. Denominations founded by, formed of, and led by Black people
2. Black congregations that belong to predominately white denominations
3. Independent congregations
4. Loose fellowships of Black churches.

This entry makes reference only to the major Black denominations: Methodist, Baptist, Holiness, and Pentecostal.

Pre-Civil War Period

During enslavement, Africans were forced to worship with their enslavers. Black people were segregated within the white churches and were not free to worship according to their culture. In time, however, enslaved people began worshiping in secret prayer meetings, escaping the supervision of slaveholders.

Between 1773 and 1775, enslaved people in the South founded the first Black (Baptist) church in Silver Bluff, South Carolina. Similarly, in 1794, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, in opposition to mistreatment at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church, organized St. Thomas African Episcopal Church and Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Twenty-two years later, Allen organized other Methodist congregations into the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the first Black denomination in the United States.

Black Methodists in New York also became weary of prejudice; Peter Williams Sr. and James Varick, among others, organized the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church, a new denomination, in New York City in 1796. In the South, Black parishioners remained in the white Methodist fold until 1870, when they left to form the Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church. In 1954, the word "colored" was removed, and the CME became the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

From the very beginning, Black churches reflected Black political thought. For example, Bethel AME, pastored by Richard Allen, was a center of Black emigration to Haiti. Denmark Vesey, Rev. Morris Brown, and Nat Turner all used religion in planning armed revolts against slavery. The abolitionist movement was also deeply connected to the Black church; it was in the basement of a Black church that the New England Antislavery Society, the first such organization, was founded in Boston in 1832. In 1843, Black Ohio Baptists organized the Union Antislavery Baptist Society, the first Black abolitionist society.

Reconstruction

During and after Reconstruction (1866–1877), Black parishioners founded many schools to help freed people achieve a higher level of literacy and education. African Americans also developed a sense of responsibility toward foreign missions in Africa. In 1897, the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention was founded as an independent organization whose aim was to focus on missions in Africa. Black missionaries built numerous churches, schools, and orphanages in Africa with African American donations. Concern for African missions, however, did not diminish the Black Church's prophetic voice. Frederick Douglass, Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, and Bishop Henry McNeal Turner made clarion calls for justice as segregation continued after emancipation.

Black Baptists tried several forms of organization before forming a single convention. By 1894, most Black Baptists were concentrated in the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention, the American National Baptist Convention, and the National Baptist Educational Convention. In 1895, these conventions consolidated into the National Baptist Convention of the United States (NBCUSA). Twenty years later, the leaders of the National Baptist Publishing Board (NBPB) severed their connections with the NBCUSA and formed the National Baptist Convention of America (NBCA).

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some clergy disagreed with Dr. Joseph Jackson over his long tenure as president of the NBCUSA and his slow, gradual approach to civil rights. Because Jackson was not willing to change his views, Gardner Taylor, L.V. Booth, Martin Luther King Jr., and others withdrew and formed the Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC) in 1961. But this was not the last Baptist split. In 1988, another group left the NBCA because of differences over the governance of the NBPB. The new group called itself the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America.

Holiness Movement

Holiness organizations arose in the late 19th century to oppose what was perceived as the worldliness of the mainline Protestant denominations. The holiness movement first entered the white Methodist Episcopal Church before the Civil War and spread widely during the post–Civil War era. Basically, the holiness movement claimed that sanctification, and other divine work, must take place in the life of the believer after conversion/salvation (in other words, a true believer would, with God's help, live a sinless life). Scores of Baptists and Methodists chose to associate themselves with "holiness" and thus were excommunicated from their home churches or chose to leave on their own.

In 1886, Isaac Cheshier pioneered the United Holy Church of America (UHCA), the earliest Black holiness group, in Method, North Carolina. Eleven years later, Charles Price Jones, a prominent Baptist preacher, founded a holiness convention in Jackson, Mississippi. Jones's convention was informally organized as the Church of God in Christ in 1897. In 1920, Jones reorganized his group as the Church of Christ (Holiness) USA. Most holiness churches have granted freedom to women to work as evangelists and ordained pastors and have not required educational achievements as a requirement for ordination.

Pentacostal Movement

Charles Parham and William Seymour were the major promoters of what has become the Pentecostal movement. They promoted another work of grace, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, which they claimed came after salvation and evidenced by speaking in tongues. Parham, a white preacher, founded the Pentecostal movement in 1901; and Seymour, a Black pastor, led the Azusa Revival (1906–1922), an international revival based in Los Angeles. Many Black organizations added the Baptism of the Holy Spirit to their list of doctrines. The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (PAW) was organized as an interracial group in 1907, but issues of power and racism forced most white ministers to leave, thus making the PAW a predominantly Black Pentecostal denomination.

In late 1907, Charles Mason, a holiness leader who had endorsed speaking in tongues, left Jones's organization and legally retained the name "the Church of God in Christ" (COGIC) for his new Pentecostal organization. In 1908, Magdalena Tate, a female holiness preacher, pioneered the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. That same year, she was made bishop, the first Black woman to claim such a title in the U.S. In 1924, Ida Robinson, formerly associated with the UHCA, chartered Mt. Sinai Holy Church of America, a new Pentecostal group that encouraged women to pursue the ordained ministry. Robinson also ordained men as pastors, but women clergy dominated Mt. Sinai for many decades.

Great Migration

During the Great Migration after World War I, Northern churches provided shelter, financial assistance, and employment to Southern migrants. Nannie Burroughs, a women's leader in the NBCUSA, followed the Black prophetic tradition by speaking against Black oppression in the U.S. In 1934, Bishop Reverdy C. Ransom led other church leaders in founding the Fraternal Council of Negro Churches, an ecumenical group designed to create a united front in tackling the social problems of the African American community.

Civil Rights Movement

During the civil rights movement, the Black church made a sterling contribution to the social and political advancement of the race. Local congregations served as meeting places for countless rallies and fundraisers. Scores of local churches got involved in voter education and voter registration drives.

In 1957, King and other ministers formed the powerful Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Nine years later, another group of ministers pioneered the National Conference of Black Churchmen in support of the Black Power movement. Among the prominent ministers who led the national civil rights movement were King, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and Jesse Jackson. Christian women also contributed as marchers, secretaries, activists, and fund-raisers. Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer were the most famous female activists. Gospel stars Mahalia Jackson and Ernestine Washington sang in fundraising concerts for the civil rights cause. Black churches later provided strong support to Black presidential candidates Jesse Jackson (1984, 1988) and Barack Obama (2008).

Black Congregations in White Denominations

Any study of the Black church must include those congregations that belong to white denominations. Because white people introduced the gospel to enslaved Africans, the early Black churches were pastored by white ministers or found themselves under white control. Nevertheless, the founding of Black denominations did not mean that all Black people would leave white denominations.

Today, thousands of Black people can be found in the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Baptist Churches, the United Methodist Church (UMC), the Episcopal Church, the Catholic Church, and the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Black parishioners can also be found in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the United Church of Christ (UCC), the Presbyterian Church USA, the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), the Church of the Nazarene, and the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). Many Black Baptist churches claim double affiliation, with both a Black convention and a white group. Black clergy in white denominations, like their peers in the Black denominations, also supported the civil rights movement. Andrew Young (UCC) and James Lawson (UMC) are the most well-known among them. Also within the ranks of these white denominations are large numbers of immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean.

Independent Churches and Fellowships

A large number of Black people also belong to independent churches and loose fellowships. Independent churches are found in rural, urban, and suburban areas and are led by ministers who prefer independence because of personality or financial factors. Many urban storefronts and megachurches are independent.

In recent years, some ministers have preferred to organize themselves as "fellowships" instead of joining the more established denominations. These fellowships do not report standards of denominationalism (such as publishing houses, Bible schools, and Christian colleges) or strong foreign missions. Nonetheless, they do ordain ministers and organize national conferences. Today, the most well-known fellowship is the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, founded in 1992 and still led by its founder, Bishop Paul Morton. Another notable phenomenon is the acceptance of Pentecostal/charismatic worship styles in the more established and older denominations.

Influence and Impact

The Black church made other significant contributions to American society during the 20th century, such as heavily contributing to the development of Black and American Christian music. Gospel music and singing pioneers included Charles Tindley, Lucy Campbell, Thomas Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and others. Later, Andrae Crouch, Mattie Moss Clark, and James Cleveland were among those who developed and promoted contemporary gospel music and singing. In the area of ecumenism, Black people founded the National Black Evangelical Association (1964) and the Congress of National Black Churches (1978), and worked with the National Council of the Churches of Christ, the World Baptist Alliance, the World Methodist Council, and the World Council of Churches. It was probably this kind of ecumenism that influenced the AME (1948) and the CME (1954) to ordain women.

Another form of ecumenism can be seen in the Interdenominational Theological Center, founded in 1958, which is now a consortium of Black seminaries and an ecumenical fellowship. In addition, Black churches have built thousands of housing units for low-income and senior citizens, chartered credit unions and banks, and developed vocational programs. In the 21st century, the Black church continues to receive the support of the African American community. Overall, it must be understood that the Black church is more than just Christian people who are Black. The Black church is a spiritual center, a prophetic voice, and a medium for economic empowerment.

David Michel

Michel, David. "Black Churches." The American Mosaic: The African American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2025, africanamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1477639. Accessed 18 Dec. 2025.