The African American Denominational Tradition: The Rise of Black Denominations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis C. Dickerson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Black People ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
African American Leadership ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Church

From the formation of the first independent African American Protestant denomination in the 1810s and 1820s to the opening decades of the 21st century, independent African American denominations have stood at the center of black religious life in the United States. Their longevity and influence have made them central to the preservation of black beliefs, practices, and rituals; have provided venues to promote movements for black freedom; and have incubated African American leadership in both the church and civic spheres. They have intertwined with every aspect of American and African American life, whether cultural, political, or economic, and they engaged the international involvement of American society and the diasporic interests of black people. Parallel assemblies composed of black ministers pastoring black congregations that remained within white denominations also emerged within the traditional white denominations, including the white Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Congregational Protestant groups, plus the Catholic Church. Although they eschewed withdrawing from the white denominations, their extramural bodies functioned as a virtual black ecclesia, or institutional bodies, even though they remained smaller than the growing independent black denominations. Together, the black preachers and parishioners in independent black denominations and inside traditional white denominations maintained churches characterized by proud histories and long records of frontline involvements in black freedom pursuits.

Conclusion

2014 ◽  
pp. 115-118
Author(s):  
Eddie S. Glaude
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black People ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
American Religion ◽  
Cultural Inheritance ◽  
African American Religion

African Americans are generally more religious than other groups in the United States. But African American religion is much more than a description of how deeply religious African Americans are. The phrase helps to differentiate a particular set of religious practices from others that are invested in whiteness; it invokes a particular cultural inheritance that marks the unique journey of African Americans in the United States. African American religion is rooted in the sociopolitical realities that shape the experiences of black people in America, but this is not static or fixed. The ‘Conclusion’ suggests that African American religious life remains a powerful site for creative imaginings in a world still organized by race.

The Optics of Liberian Emigration

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-167
Author(s):  
Aston Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Colonization Society ◽  
Fugitive Slave

This chapter explores the life and work of Augustus Washington, the free African American photographer, who envisioned more rights and freedoms than those available in the United States. Anticipating a future in the United States bound by racial restraints, he packed up his successful photography studio in Hartford, Connecticut, and emigrated to Monrovia, Liberia. Washington worked closely with the American Colonization Society to convince black Americans to leave their homeland for Liberia and attempted to provoke viewers of his images to envision the potential of black rights in the United States that he enjoyed in Liberia. Washington’s images promulgating black Liberian political leadership and economic promise abroad offered a vision of freedom that belied a hierarchical, and often oppressive, Liberian society. In the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, his images brought into focus the debates among African Americans about the uncertain, and perhaps imperiled, future of black people in the United States.

Calvinism in the United States

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darryl Hart
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
American Society

The history of Calvinism in the United States is part of a much larger development, the globalization of western Christianity. American Calvinism owes its existence to the transplanting of European churches and religious institutions to North America, a process that began in the 16th century, first with Spanish and French Roman Catholics, and accelerated a century later when Dutch, English, Scottish, and German colonists and immigrants of diverse Protestant backgrounds settled in the New World. The initial variety of Calvinists in North America was the result of the different circumstances under which Protestantism emerged in Europe as a rival to the Roman Catholic Church, to the diverse civil governments that supported established Protestant churches, and to the various business sponsors that included the Christian ministry as part of imperial or colonial designs. Once the British dominated the Eastern seaboard (roughly 1675), and after English colonists successfully fought for political independence (1783), Calvinism lost its variety. Beyond their separate denominations, English-speaking Protestants (whether English, Scottish, or Irish) created a plethora of interdenominational religious agencies for the purpose of establishing a Christian presence in an expanding American society. For these Calvinists, being Protestant went hand in hand with loyalty to the United States. Outside this pan-Protestant network of Anglo-American churches and religious institutions were ethnic-based Calvinist denominations caught between Old World ways of being Christian and American patterns of religious life. Over time, most Calvinist groups adapted to national norms, while some retained institutional autonomy for fear of compromising their faith. Since 1970, when the United States entered an era sometimes called post-Protestant, Calvinist churches and institutions have either declined or become stagnant. But in certain academic, literary, and popular culture settings, Calvinism has for some Americans, whether connected or not to Calvinist churches, continued to be a source for sober reflection on human existence and earnest belief and religious practice.

A Saint of Our Own

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Sprows Cummings
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Panoramic View ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Heaven And Earth ◽  
The Church ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

Canonization, the process by which the Catholic Church names saints, may be fundamentally about holiness, but it is never only about holiness. In the United States, it was often about the ways in which Catholics defined, defended, and celebrated their identities as Americans. This book traces saint-seeking in the United States from the 1880s, the decade in which U.S. Catholics nominated their first candidates for canonization, to 2015, the year Pope Francis named the twelfth American saint in the first such ceremony held on U.S. soil. It argues that U.S. Catholics’ search for a saint of their own sprung from a desire to persuade the Vatican to recognize their country’s holy heroes. But Rome was not U.S. saint-seekers only audience. For the U.S. Catholic faithful, saints served not only as mediators between heaven and earth, but also between the faith they professed and the American culture in which they lived. This panoramic view of American sanctity, focused on figures at the nexus of holiness and U.S. history, this book explores U.S. Catholics’ understanding of themselves both as members of the church and as citizens of the nation—and reveals how those identities converged, diverged, and changed over time.

A Brief History of the Sociology of Parishes in the United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-46
Author(s):  
Tricia C. Bruce
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Sociological Literature ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Good For ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
The Church

Exploring sociological literature across almost three-quarters of a century, this chapter maps the origins and trajectory of sociologists’ exploration of the parish from the 1950s to today. From its contentious start to its largely applied orientation today, the chapter highlights several eras of parish research and argues that our current lack of sociological research on Catholic parishes can be traced to the tenuous relationship between the academy and the institutional Catholic Church. The chapter concludes by asserting that parish studies can be simultaneously good for the academy and good for the church. The future of sociological studies of the parish rest upon the willingness of both the academy and the church to accept this proposition.

An Africana Philosophical Reading of Du Bois’s Political Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis R. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
New England ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Black People ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The Status ◽  
Global Influence

Lewis R. Gordon’s essay focuses on Du Bois’s shift from New England liberalism to international radicalism and his global influence in Africana thought, despite his focus on African American politics. Though Du Bois’s expectation of equality for black people in the United States was a supremely radical idea on its own, it was his association with the black tradition of addressing social contradictions and imagining a future of grappling with them that led to the development of his radical philosophical anthropology. Du Bois, like many other Africana scholars, used his theories to express why black people could no longer wait to challenge the status quo. Therefore, Africana political theorists must assert the humanity of people of African descent, which necessitates an explanation of why they are human and how they have historically been excluded from definitions of humanity.

Bridges, Not Walls

2019 ◽  
pp. 169-184
Author(s):  
Mary Johnson ◽  
Mary L. Gautier ◽  
Patricia Wittberg ◽  
Thu T. Do
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Ministry ◽  
The Church

This chapter focuses on the contributions that Catholic international sisters make to the United States—to religious life, the Church, and the nation. Sisters identified their contributions along two lines—the benefits of diversity and the benefits of evangelization. The sisters responded that their presence and their cultures added a beneficial diversity to a wide variety of settings—to community, ministry, the Church, and the society more broadly. The chapter concludes with the point that there is a disjuncture between the sisters’ acceptance of diversity in the society and, to a degree, in the Church, but their nonacceptance of diversity in the charisms and lifestyles of religious life.

Comments on “The Crisis in Church-state Relationships in the U.S.A.”

1999 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 710-714
Author(s):  
Francis J. Connell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

The author seems to have no regard for the supernatural life and vigor of the Catholic Church. He proposes as the most necessary means of protecting the Church from grave harm in the United States something natural—the “adaptation” of a traditional Catholic doctrine to a naturalistic concept of the State. The truth is that the most effective means toward preserving the Church from harm and promoting its apostolic activity will be found in a more ardent zeal on the part of bishops and priests and in a more faithful observance of God's law by Catholics. It should not be forgotten that Christ has promised to abide with His Church and to sustain it, so that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it. The author does not take this promise into consideration.

scholarly journals Experiencing Uncommon Faithfulness:

Lumen et Vita ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-28
Author(s):  
Stephen Nicholson, SJ
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Black Catholics ◽  
God's People ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Church

The challenges confronting the church in the 21st century, especially that of persistent systemic racism, call for a methodological shift in ecclesiology.  This paper explores the meaning and benefits of Natalia’s Imperatori-Lee’s narrative ecclesiology within the context of race in the United States Catholic Church.  By turning to the story of God’s people, especially the silenced and oppressed, ecclesiology is empowered to challenge false histories and overturn theologies which justify oppression.  Furthermore, the work of the Holy Spirit and the responses of the faithful are made evident in lives of “uncommon faithfulness,” such as those of Black Catholics in the US.  To be guided by narrative ecclesiology today, members of the church must engage in an embodied struggle for liberation and so hear the story of God’s people anew.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study: Anxiety as an Impact of Slavery in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Bhakti Satrio Nugroho
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
Psychological Element ◽  
American Society

This paper discusses the anxiety as an impact of slavery reflected in two outstanding African-American novels: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!. These novels are set in around the slavery period which shows how cruel and brutal slavery practices in the United States. The plots consist of some traditions and beliefs among White and African-American which have emerged since the antebellum period. By using a comparative approach, this paper focuses on the types of anxiety mentioned by Sigmund Freud. The analysis shows that both neurotic and moral anxieties play a pivotal psychological element throughout the intense “black-white” binary narratives. In this case, Toni Morrison’s Beloved consists of neurotic anxiety in the form of trauma experienced by Sethe and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! consist of moral anxiety in the form of shame for having Negro bloodline in aristocrat Southern plantation culture. Both novels show that slavery, whether it stands as a tradition or as an economic value, has significantly shaped the direction of American society.

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