Introduction
Many African Americans believed that it is their divine mission to take Christianity to Africa. There have been many African Americans in late 1700s and early 1800s, which traveled to Africa with the sole purposes of evangelizing and establishing churches. Men such as David George, Lott Carey and Colin Teague, where some of the first African Americans who went to Africa to promote Christianity. Their efforts to spread Christianity presented a justification for the inhuman bondage suffered by people of African descent in America.1 In this paper, I will show how African Americans went from being slaves in the United States to being evangelical missionaries to their home country of Africa. A Historian by the name of Albert Raboteau states that those African American missionaries believed, “that God was drawing good out of the evil of slavery by using the American descendents of African slaves to take Christianity to the lands of their ancestors”.2
Early African American Missionary Activity
Majority of the first African American missionary activity involved the sending freed Black slaves back to Africa.3 Blacks and Southern land owners, who feared that the freed Blacks would come back to start a revolution, Northern politicians and clergy all thought that the free black slaves would want to go back to their homeland.3 This movement caused a lot of unrest in the African American community about whether or not this was a good idea.5
1. Wilmore, Gayraud S. Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of Afro-American People. (1972) Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993. pp. 1-21.
Raboteau, Albert J. Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans. Oxford: Oxford University 2001. pp. 33...
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... Publishers, 2002. Retrieved 5/6/2014 from http://missionbooks.org/williamcareylibrary/product.php?productid=10&cat=0&page=1
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
Today, even though the number of black churches has grown tremendously the number of black missionaries has declined. According to a 2013 Christian Times article, out the 4900 Southern Baptist Convention missionaries only 29 are black.50 We as culture need to get back to being dedicated to missionary work. There are a lot of people claiming to be Christians, but are they really? The question that needs to ask is you really a Christian, and if so what are you doing to either help others or spread the gospel?
50 Sarah E. Zylstra."Black Churches' Missing Missionaries." ChristianityToday.com. ChristianityToday, 2 Apr. 2013. Web. 06 May 2014.
Cleophus J. LaRue in I Believe I’ll Testify makes it clear that great preaching comes from somewhere, it also must go somewhere, so preachers need to use the most artful language to send the Word on its journey. There is always purpose in life in black preaching says LaRue. Some of the greatest preaching in America happens on Sundays. The articulation and cadence of the black preacher often arise and causes people to feel something deep down inside their souls. The heart of black preaching has been deeply entrenched in our society and is a staple in the life blood of the traditional black family and community. Many a congregation has been stirred to conviction, repentance, and action by the powerful voice of the African american preacher. In I Believe I’ll Testify, LaRue seeks to explain the designing characteristics that exist in black preaching and how it has become a tooled force in the twenty-first century African American community. Using stories and antidotes and his own experiences, LaRue describes what actually makes for good preaching and gives insightful advice in the art of preaching that many seminarians do not learn from seminary. This book is an informative and well written book and could benefit pastors, former pastors, and anyone interested in the art of good black preaching.
David Walker was “born a free black in late eighteenth century Wilmington,” however, not much more information is known about his early life. During his childhood years, Walker was likely exposed to the Methodist church. During the nineteenth century, the Methodist church appealed directly to blacks because they, in particular, “provided educational resources for blacks in the Wilmington region.” Because his education and religion is based in the Methodist theology, Methodism set the tone and helped to shape the messages Walker conveys through his Appeal to the black people of the United States of America. As evident in his book, Walker’s “later deep devotion to the African Methodist Episcopal faith could surely argue for an earlier exposure to a black-dominated church” because it was here he would have been exposed to blacks managing their own dealings, leading classes, and preaching. His respect and high opinion of the potential of the black community is made clear when Walker says, “Surely the Americans must think...
This paper elaborates on the diverse contributions peoples of African descent have made to the pluralistic religious landscape of America and replicates various passages from our textbook. It focuses on the personal narratives of non-religious to religious leaders—exemplifying their influence on the African American religious movement during slavery and the reconstruction of America. Each section represents different historical periods, regional variations, and non-Christian expressions of African-American religion.
Slave-owners forced a perverse form of Christianity, one that condoned slavery, upon slaves. According to this false Christianity the enslavement of “black Africans is justified because they are the descendants of Ham, one of Noah's sons; in one Biblical story, Noah cursed Ham's descendants to be slaves” (Tolson 272). Slavery was further validated by the numerous examples of it within the bible. It was reasoned that these examples were confirmation that God condoned slavery. Douglass’s master...
Kroll, P. (2006). The African-American Church in America. Grace Communion International. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from http://www.gci.org/history/african
Ogbar, Jeffrey. Black Power Radical Politics and African American Identity. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2004, 124.
James H. Cone is the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Cone probably is best known for his book, A Black Theology of Liberation, though he has authored several other books. Dr. Cone wrote that the lack of relevant and “risky” theology suggests that theologians are not able to free themselves from being oppressive structures of society and suggested an alternative. He believes it is evident that the main difficulty most whites have with Black Power and its compatible relationship to the Christian gospel stemmed from their own inability to translate non-traditional theology into the history of black people. The black man’s response to God’s act in Christ must be different from the whites because his life experiences are different, Dr. Cone believes. In the “black experience,” the author suggested that a powerful message of biblical theology is liberation from oppression.
Moreover, many owners later came to feel that Christianity may actually have encouraged rebellion (all those stories of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt, after all, talked about the liberation of the slaves), and so they began to discourage Christian missionaries from preaching to the slaves. African Americans have taken their own spiritual, religious journey. God was looked upon as a source of peace and encouragement. The community of enslave Africans were able to use religion and spirituality as a way of overcoming the mental anguish of slavery on a daily basis. To a slave, religion was the most important aspect of their life. Nothing could come between their relationship with god. It was their rock, the only reason why they could wake up in the morning, the only way that they endured this most turbulent time in our history.
Turner, Darwin T. "Visions of Love and Manliness in a Blackening World: Dramas of Black Life Since 1953." Black Scholar 25.2 (1995): 2-13. EBSCO. Wake Co. Public Lib. 5 Jan. 2001 <http://www.ebscohost.com>.
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 Black Theology.... ... middle of paper ...
Many people who hear the name African Methodist Episcopal Church automatically make assumptions. These assumptions are based on the faulty premises that the name of the church denotes that the church is only meant for African-Americans or that it is filled with racist’s teachings. Neither of those assumptions is true. The Africans communities established their own churches and ordained their own preachers who could relate to the struggle of being a slave and the struggle of being a free African in a strange land that spoke freedom but their action said something different.
Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Print. The. 2003 Roberts, Deotis J. Black Theology in Dialogue. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press. Print.
...cy." Western Journal Of Black Studies 28.1 (2004): 327-331. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Sept. 2013.
This has been a pretty thought-provoking last and final semester here at R.I.C.E. I am happy that the next journey has already begun and I am extremely grateful for how much I have absorbed. For this reflection I will focus on three major points or themes. I have been lucky enough to get two different perspectives on the details about mission work from two great teachers. Both perspectives have helped to shape my experience and redirect my thinking for the subject. While there are many things to reflect on the points I would like to discuss are centered on a few points. 1) A greater gratefulness for the work of missionaries, 2) the delusion around African Americans involvement in early mission work, 3) the dyer need in the active continued presence on the missionary field.
“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”- Bishop Desmond Tutu.