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In general any Black Christian person is included in the Black Church if he or she is a member of a Black congregation.
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The Black Church is a reference to those independent, historically, and totally black controlled denominations, which were founded after the Free African Society of 1787 and which constituted the core of Black Christians.
The Black sacred cosmos or the religious worldview of African-Americans is related go to their African heritage, which in envisaged the whole universe as sacred and to their conversion to Christianity during slavery and its aftermath.
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250 years of slavery were followed by 100 years of official and unofficial segregation in the south and the north.
For African-American Christianity, The Christian God ultimately revealed in Jesus of Nazareth dominated the Black sacred cosmos.
While the structure of these for Black Christians were the same orthodox beliefs as that of White Christians, there were also different degrees of emphasis and valences given to certain particular theological views.
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For example, the Old Testament notion of God as in avenging, conquering, liberating God remains a formidable anchor of the faith in most Black churches.
The CME church in America was born post slavery in the south and was originally called the Colored Methodist Episcopal church in America the name was changed in 1954 to Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
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Unique from the other Methodist Church expressions the CME church was connected with white Methodist churches who had broken from other denominational connections in 1844 over the issue of slavery
The CME church like that of the AME and AMEZ intersect at the desire on the part of Blacks to exercise their own cultural forms of religious expression including leadership and decision-making.
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Black Pentecostalism in America is the most intriguing of all of the Black church experiences because it begins with the holiness movement during the Azusa Street Revival
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The Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles was the radical manifestation of Christendom with members moved by the Holy Spirit. In its origin while lead by African-Americans it was an integrated worship experience.
The largest Pentecostal Black Church movement Churches of God in Christ (1866) led by a Elder Charles Harrison Mason he converted to Christianity during the Second Awakening and during the Azusa Street revival he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the practice of glossolalia (speaking in tongues) there are approximately 3.7 million members of COGIC.
This marks the only time when White Christians pulled away from Black Christians to form their own fellowship. The cause of this disruption of fellowship can be attributed to ecumenical emphasis and the social Gospel movement going on in America that Pentecostals and Holiness fought against. The
anti-liberal orientation of the Pentecostal and Holiness movements led to the termination of its interracial character as separatist White
denominations were organized
The CME split was not only a protest of the segregated and demeaning treatment that they were subjected to what an explicit declaration of
self-determination buy new citizenry almost all of whom were without experience beyond the conditions of slavery. In this case the separation was accomplished amicably both sides reported a spirit of altruism infusing the transition.
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Although Southern Methodist radically accepted its former slaves as members they were not prepared to radically change their conception of the proper place of blacks in the connection. While the Negro was invited to remain in the church it was expected that he or she will continue in an inferior and subordinate relation.
The Black Church was one of the few stable coherent institutions to emerge from slavery.
The AME church dates from 1787 when Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and other black worshipers left Saint Georges Methodist Church in Philadelphia after being pulled from their knees during worship in a gallery they did not know was closed to Black Christians.
Early Black Methodist churches were formed in the north in response to the demeaning conditions of the white controlled Methodist Episcopal churches.
The independent church movement of Black Christians was the first effective stride towards freedom by African-Americans.
The AMEZ church was formed in 1793 in New York it separated from its fellow Methodist as a result of discriminatory treatment in conjunction with the refusal to fully or ordain Black preachers and allow them to join the conference as itinerant ministers
This denominational development was the result of offensive racial segregation in the churches and not a substantive argument over religious dogma in effect the Black Church in Methodism began as rebellion over the treatment of worshipers.
In protest, they left it in the words of Richard Allen "they would know more plagued with us in that church."
In the 21st century it is freedom: social, political and economic justice.
Among their ranks abolitionist Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman Frederick Douglass.
The convention was led by Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, Martin Luther King, Sr, Martin Luther King Jr, Ralph David Abernathy, and Benjamin Mays. This group formed a nucleus of individuals who believed in liberation and supported the Black power movement,
civil rights movement while
opposing the Vietnam War.
A major aspect of Black Christian belief is found in the symbolic importance given to the word freedom.
Throughout Black Church history the term freedom has found a deep religious resonance in the lives in hopes of African-Americans. Depending on the time it was freedom from slavery and bondage after emancipation it was the right to be educated and employed.
The trauma of being officially defined by the US Constitution as "three-fifths" human and treated in terms of that understanding gave way to the struggle for humanity and
self-worth in an environment that totally dismissed them as children of God.
From 1890 to 1910 legislation was passed by the states which effectively disenfranchised African-Americans, and gave license to lynchings and other forms of racial suppression.
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The Supreme Court also ratified the Jim Crow segregation by approving separate but equal railroad cars, and by extension to all of the public facilities in the Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896.
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In the process the ranks of Black churches, which constituted the sole place of sanctuary, expanded accordingly.
In 1915 the National Baptist Convention USA Inc. (7.5 million members) was formed. This convention split in 1961 forming the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
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The Progressive National Baptist Convention (1.2 million members) began in 1961 it was the result of a split within the national Baptist convention USA Inc. over leadership style of President J. H. Jackson and his accommodationist approach to civil rights.
As the spirit of the Revolutionary era wained tensions were aggravated by incidents such as the plant slave uprising by Gabriel Prosser in 1800, the Denmark Vesey revolt of 1822, and the Nat Turner rebellion of 1831, increasingly severe restrictions were imposed on religious activities until independent became a misnomer where southern Black congregations were concerned.
Heightened by raise consciousness, partly a reaction to discrimination of southern White Baptist and the paternalism of Northern White Baptist, the Independent church movement initiated among Black Baptist in the antebellum intensified during the Reconstruction and its aftermath. Ultimately the tensions culminated in the establishment of an independent Baptist denomination founded by both free and former slaves.
For a period Black and white baptist worshiped together. The Baptist Church split in 1845 over the issue of slavery.
The direct relationship between the holocaust of slavery in the notion of divine rescue colored the theological perceptions of Black laity and the themes of Black preaching in a very decisive manner, particularly in those churches closest to the experience.
The first Baptist church was founded on the William Byrd plantation near the Bluestone River in Mecklenberg, Virginia in 1758, and the Silver Bluff Baptist Church, located on the South Carolina bank of the Savannah River not far from Augusta, Georgia sometime between 1773 and 1775 although the cornerstone of the present church building claims a founding date of 1750.
Although early churches populated by slaves began to spring up most of these churches were pastored by white clergymen. Many of the slaves were permitted to attend church as long as they had written permission to leave the plantations for worship.
During the same period many slaves began to worship clandestinely in hidden enclaves on the plantations as units of what came to be called the "invisible institution"
The term the Black Church is a sociological and theological shorthand reference to the pluralism of the Black Christian churches in United States.
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The seven major Black
denominations account for more
than 80% of black religious
affiliation in the United States,
The Seven major historically Black denominations:
- African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church,
- African Methodist Episcopal Zion (A.M.E.Z.) Church,
- Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church,
- the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Incorporated (NBC),
- the National Baptist Convention of America,
Unincorporated (NBCA),
- the Progressive National Baptist Convention
(PNBC)
- and the Church of God in Christ
(COGIC)
This term has been used since the late 1960s the "Black Church" replaced the old reference the
"Negro Church" which was used by scholars in a previous generations
The remaining 15 to 20% of Black Christians are scattered among numerous small Black sections, the Roman Catholic Church, and the mainline white Protestant denominations. The overwhelming majority of the latter are in predominantly Black congregations despite denominational affiliation with white communions.
+Rt. Rev. Dr. Benjamin K. Watts