Quakers Case Essay

This research paper will argue that the evangelicals were embraced mostly by blacks not only because it’s the nearest imitation of their African nature rituals but because they have given support to the abolition of slavery in the United States. Quakers were known to be the most vocal concerning their opposition to slavery; there were also other denominations that did not favor slavery. George Fox, founder of the Quaker group â€Å"Society of Friends†, preached against slavery in the late 16oo’s, but never really took action against it. Even though Fox, a major Quaker leader, was opposed to slavery, other Quaker leaders owned slaves. This was because they interpreted the doctrines of their religion to exclude slaves. The institution of slavery became a divided issue among Quakers in the Society. Benjamin Lay, for example, was against slavery. Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians were very vocal concerning their dissatisfaction with slavery. (1) However, the main concern was that large amounts of the population were not being exposed to God. They had to resolve whether the larger concern was to end slavery and thus allow many â€Å"unchristian† people to go to hell after death, or to evangelize the slaves while letting the issue of slavery slide under the carpet. Subsequently, Methodists and Baptists also became the two denominations to achieve the earliest successes in proselytizing slaves (Lane 184). The first third of the nineteenth century was a significant time for antislavery. Haitian slaves had risen up and freed themselves from French rule in 1803. In England, decades of antislavery agitation led Parliament to abolish slavery in the British Empire by 1834 In the United States, sectional friction related to slavery began in earnest with the Missouri crisis of 1820. Nor were black voices silent. Free African American ministers sermonized against slavery’s cruelties. Periodic fears of slave violence came to a head in 1822 with the discovery of Denmark Vesey’s planned slave uprising (2). As the conflict over slavery heated up, and as news of the Vesey conspiracy broke in 1822, and word spread about the rebellion of Nat Turner in 1831, a great fear enveloped whites (5).   All these factors caused a few whites to begin to renew the spiritual struggle against slavery. The Reverend George Bourne, an Englishman who headed a Presbyterian congregation in Virginia, refused communion to slaveholders and excoriated slaveholding ministers. Way back 1784 Methodists were so bold as to say that they â€Å"promised to excommunicate all Methodists not freeing their slaves within two years† (5). Opposing racism is definitely amongst the strongest reasons for the abolition of slavery. This argument seems quite feasible, considering the fact that only Negroes were slaves. That is to say, skin color was the most deciding factor in whether somebody was a slave or a slaveholder (1). Catherine Meeks, professor of African American studies at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, says, â€Å"It was the white control of the worship [on slave-holding plantations], the inability to accept blacks as equals, and the negation of black personhood that led to the separation of the black church from the white church and to the emergence of a black religious community.† (4) Independent black churches—most of them Baptist or Methodist—†were not separating themselves from whites because they held a different doctrinal view of Christianity,† notes James H. Cone of Union Theological Seminary. â€Å"Without exception, blacks used the same articles of faith and polity for their churches as the white denominations from which they separated. Separation, for blacks, meant that, they were rejecting racism that was based on the assumption that God created blacks inferior to whites.† (5) Even though white Protestant denominations in the 1840s split over the issue of slavery, the congregations of northern Protestants remained just as closed to blacks who moved north. Given the increasing racial proscription in the mid-1800’s, (9) Many Black preachers developed a significant following across the South among both whites and blacks. John Jasper of Virginia was one such man. Slaves would defer funeral ceremonies for as long as necessary to bring him to the plantation for the service. And Jasper was equally popular among whites. During the Civil War, Jasper won a warm response from the Confederate wounded to whom he preached and offered solace (9). A long history of antislavery and political activity among Northern black Protestants had convinced them that they could play a major role in the adjustment of the four million freed slaves to American life. In a massive missionary effort, Northern black leaders such as Daniel A. Payne and Theophilus Gould Steward established missions to their Southern counterparts, resulting in the dynamic growth of independent black churches in the Southern states between 1865 and 1900 (10). Predominantly white denominations, such as the Presbyterian, Congregational, and Episcopal churches, also sponsored missions, opened schools for freed slaves, and aided the general welfare of Southern blacks, but the majority of African-Americans chose to join the independent black denominations founded in the Northern states during the antebellum era. Within a decade the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) churches claimed Southern membership in the hundreds of thousands, far outstripping that of any other organizations. They were quickly joined in 1870 by a new Southern-based denomination, the Colored (now â€Å"Christian†) Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by indigenous Southern black leaders (11). The relentless evangelist figures were catalysts of the constitutional abolision of the slaves. They fought for the freedom through the exposure to God’s theoretical equality. Emancipation from slavery in 1863 posed distinctive religious challenges for African Americans in the South. When the Civil War finally brought freedom to previously enslaved peoples, the task of organizing religious communities was only one element of the larger need to create new lives–to reunite families, to find jobs, and to figure out what it would mean to live in the United States as citizens rather than property. Melville J. Herskovits has advanced the thesis that the success of Baptists in attracting blacks was rooted in the appeal of immersion which suggests a connection in the slaves’ mind with the river spirits in West African religions. Others have attacked this position including, the black scholar E. Franklin Frazier who argues that enslavement largely destroyed the social basis of religion among blacks, and that the appeal of Baptists to blacks concerns the emotional content of their worship. Stanley Elkins (whose views were heavily influenced by what took place in the concentration camps of World War II Europe), has argued–like Frazier–that slavery was so demeaning that blacks (like the Jews in the camps) were eventually stripped of every shred of dignity and humanity, including their faith. John Blassingame, on the other hand, has provided a significant body of evidence that blacks hung on to their religion as a form of resistance (11). African-American religion dealt with life as blacks lived it. It was about pain and sorrow, sin and shortcoming, pardon and joy, praise and thanksgiving, grace and hope. This version of Evangelicalism provided a wonderful benefit; it was able to accomplish great things in their lives that were frequently shouted about. This transition coincided with the period of intense religious revivalism known as â€Å"awakenings.† In the Southern states beginning in the 1770s, increasing numbers of slaves converted to evangelical religions such as the Methodist and Baptist faiths. Many clergy within these denominations actively promoted the idea that all Christians were equal in the sight of God, a message that provided hope and sustenance to the slaves (12). Slave Spirituals became the creative group expression of these aspirations. The Ring Shout was the most distinctive expression of religious worship in the praise service, with African-derived dancing and body movement emphasized. The invisible religion of the slave quarters also included conjure, a system of spiritual influence that combined herbal medicine with magic and sometimes gave surprising authority to slave practitioners who believed they could affect whites as well as blacks (6). They also encouraged worship in ways that many Africans found to be similar, or at least adaptable, to African worship patterns, with enthusiastic singing, clapping, dancing, and even spirit-possession. It was here that the spirituals, with their double meanings of religious salvation and freedom from slavery, developed and flourished; and here, too, that black preachers, those who believed that God had called them to speak his Word, polished their â€Å"chanted sermons,† or rhythmic, intoned style of extemporaneous preaching. The closest replication of their religious belief was the evangelicals’ approach. African Americans, often termed as ‘blacks’, was so closely intertwined with their total life experience that the starting point in understanding the meaning of that religious life must be the total life experience. For them, before they were forced to become unwilling participants in one of the most oppressive systems of slavery that the world had witnessed, the ancestors of the African Americans in Africa were very much a religious people. In their native land the totality of their lives was informed by what in western Europe was defined as â€Å"religion,† but what, to them meant as a basic and integral part of life (Jones 1991).Thus, they brought that â€Å"religion† with them. Blacks responded to the evangelical message, though, for different reasons than those advanced by slave owner-sanctioned preachers. The potential for spiritual equality, and even the hope for earthly liberty, could be taken from evangelicalism, and that was a powerful appeal to slaves. (8) Evangelicalism’s informal, spirit-driven style of worship could evoke remembrances of the religious ecstasies of African dance religions, another reason to embrace the faith. Nowhere else in southern society did African Americans find the status that they could achieve as in churches. Some African Americans worshipped in separate black churches, but black Baptists and Methodists had shaped evolving Evangelicalism in general since the earliest revivals. Most slave worship was in biracial churches. Evangelicalism took root among African-Americans. Large numbers underwent conversion, baptism, instruction, worship, and lived the life of Christian even in face of oppression. Although, the development of their own religious institutions would await Emancipation and the war’s end, there were many thousands of Negro Baptists and Methodists by 1850. Emancipation brought many tangible rewards. Among the most obvious was a significant increase in personal freedom that came with no longer being someone else’s property: whatever hardships they faced, free blacks could not be forcibly sold away from their loved ones. But emancipation did not bring full equality, and many of the most striking gains of Reconstruction — including the substantial political power that African Americans were briefly able to exercise — were soon lost. In the decades after Reconstruction African Americans experienced continued poverty and exploitation and a rising tide of violence at the hands of whites determined to re-impose black subordination. They also experienced new forms of discrimination, spearheaded by a variety of state laws that instituted rigid racial segregation in virtually all areas of life and that (in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments) effectively disfranchised black voters. The struggle to overcome the bitter legacy of slavery would be long and arduous. Many abolitionists belonged to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ). AMEZ became a platform for preaching against slavery. â€Å"The ministry was by far the most common occupation of the black leaders in the abolitionist movement† (Sorin 101). AMEZ enabled people like Denmark Vesey to plan revolts. Pennington traveled as far as Europe to preach against slavery. He wrote, â€Å"If the New Testament sanctions slavery, it authorizes the enslavement of whites as well as us† (Voices of Triumph 127). Ward was born into a slave family that escaped in 1820. He lived in upstate New York and was an agent for the American Anti-slavery Society. Ward actively protested the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. He was also an assistant to fugitive slaves (Voices of Triumph 145) (9). Over one hundred and thirty years after Nat Turner was hanged, black theology emerged as a formal discipline. Beginning with the â€Å"black power† movement in 1966, black clergy in many major denominations began to reassess the relationship of the Christian church to the black community. Black caucuses developed in the Catholic, Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches. The central thrust of these new groups was to redefine the meaning and role of the church and religion in the lives of black people. Out of this reexamination has come what some have called a ‘Black Theology’. (10) The secret meetings of â€Å"praise† of the former slaves was later institutionalized and these assemblies gave rise to independent churches. The first religious institution primarily controlled and administered by blacks was established at Silver Bluff, South Carolina in the 1770s.The Free African Society of Philadelphia, established in 1778 by two former slaves, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones was an example of one of the earliest formal organizational activity- more frequent among the free blacks in the urban North (Woodson 1922). Most of such groups were quasi-religious bodies and churches frequently came into existence from the membership of these societies. The Free African Society of Philadelphia, that newly created independent body, was the mother of two African Amertican churches- St. Thomas African Episcopal Church (later named the St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church) established in 1794, and the Bethel African Church (later becoming an independent organization known as the African Methodist Episcopal Church), which was the first black congregation in the Philadelphia Methodist Conference. In 1894 black Baptists formed the National Baptist Convention, an organization that is currently the largest black religious organization in the United States. There may be several reasons that evangelist were able to convert slaves, some would argue that this may be attributed to the verity that the slaves saw religion as the nearest observable fact to freedom. Still, it is quite notable that the evangelist were able to gather members not only because the African- Americans see their way of teaching as the nearest to their old rituals but also because of the evangelists’ unerring efforts to abolish slavery in the United States.