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African Americans and Christianity
Scientific posting about the African American national anthem renewed my interest in this. I looked up the lyrics and the history of the anthem which, according to Wikipaedia ,was first performed in public in Jacksonville, Florida as part of a celebration of Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900 by a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School.
I don't understand it - but would like to and am wondering if anyone here can help.
From the last verse,
`Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light...`
This was being sung when the Klu Klux Klan and lynchings were on the rise at the turn of the century!
How/why did African Americans buy into Christianity - the white man's religion? How could they possibly under the feel they had been led into the light?
It didn't take me any time at all as an adolescent viewing the brutality of the famines & many regimes in the the 3rd World, babies born with dreadful genetic diseases, spina bifida etc, to baulk at the notion of a benign creator who had made both the world and man and loved them: who never laid on his childrens' shoulders burdens greater than they could bear. And I was a child of relative privilege.
How/why did African Americans adopt the white man's God?
(And, as an aside, the last line of the hymn is
`True to our native land`
Was that viewed as America? Or Africa?)
Comments (11)
How did Gauls and Germans adopt the Roman conqueror's God?
It's not a new phenomenon.
As for the problem of evil, it can push you in a lot of different directions depending on the presuppositions you bring to it. Your response makes sense if you believe that earthly life is basically a good thing, though marred by suffering. If you believe that the earth is basically a vale of tears, full of cruelty and injustice from one end to the other, then it's equally obvious that there must be something better -- a divine justice to compensate for this fallen world.
July 10, 2008 8:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks. If you meant the you personally (`your response` it doesn't make sense to me. (I don't accept the basic premises. What I believe about the quality of this life doesn't in any way create any propositions about whether or not there's another: I don't see any logical cause and effect there.)
But I do see that you're making an argument that rests on emotive force and I'm in the process of wrapping my mind around it. (It's hard though. ie it was a white God - it's hard for me to encompass that - that they could put their faith in their enemies' propaganda.)
July 10, 2008 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
To approach it a little more sociologically:
People need shared ideals -- it's how we rise out of our personal misery and express solidarity with each other. We call our shared ideals "progressive politics"; most people in history have called them "religion."
Well, if you kidnap people from a bunch of different communities and throw them together, they're not going to share the same religion. But they're going to need *some* religion, especially if their lives are filled with more than usual suffering.
If African-Americans converted to Christianity a little more quickly and completely than, say, the Celts, this is probably why.
July 10, 2008 9:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
I understand shared ideals. But this doesn't even begin to explain for me how African-Americans could have possibly associated goodness with the people who perpetrated such evil on them.
July 10, 2008 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
uh...Jesus was a Jew.
And if you read the Bible you would know Jesus' lineage and how many African and dark skinned people were predominant in the bibles' history.
They say Adam and Eve were in Africa. Moses' wife was black. So was the the wife in the Song of Solomon.
Y'all watch too many movies and depictions in art where Jesus has blue eyes, straight hair, white skin (after all his ministry in the sun, wears tattered clothes,(not of his position of a Rabbi of high order) and speaks with a British accent.
Secularism has deluded you.
July 10, 2008 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Secularism has deluded you"
Well, maybe that's right: lack of knowledge certainly, which is why I asked the questions in the first place.
Are you saying the African Americans brought Christianity with them - had an image of a black God & Jesus? You see, the thing is I had thought they were brought from Africa in the 1600's and 1700's and I had assumed that they were introduced to Christianity once they were already in bondage.
July 10, 2008 7:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Successful Troll is successful.
July 10, 2008 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ms. Hamilton,
Faith is often forged in the fires of extreme suffering. Christianity offered my ancestors a belief system that provided an avenue for salvation, redemption, forgiveness, and basic human dignity. There was also this little matter of Judgement Day being just around the corner, too. FYI, James Weldon Johnson meant HERE, as in the United States, not the Motherland.
July 10, 2008 10:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Faith is often forged in the fires of extreme suffering. Christianity offered my ancestors a belief system that provided an avenue for salvation, redemption, forgiveness, and basic human dignity."
Right. But what I don't get is that they could be inspired by a belief system that was being offered by the very people who were imposing such incredible degredation and suffering.
`FYI, James Weldon Johnson meant HERE, as in the United States, not the Motherland.`
Thanks.
July 10, 2008 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
First let me say that I am not an expert on religious matters but I will give this a shot.
Perhaps some Christian groups, like the Quakers, who were abolitionist, may have proved a glimpse of Christianity which might have appealed to African people. There are cases like Somerset v. Stuart which pitted those in the slave trade against abolitionist in Great Britain. It literally a case where Christians say what they mean and mean what they say.
Finally, it was always said that during the slave trade---and among other colonial eras--that Christianity was being brought to the "native" people to "civilize" and save their souls. Perhaps Christianity itself changed as it blended with forms of African religions to create a different flavor of Christianity.
In this country Richard Allen and a few others in Philadelphia broke away from the Methodist church due to discrimination to form the the African Methodist and Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church in 1816. It wasn't exclusively a black church. I think that this was also the case with different black leaders in different areas in different orders. Sometimes Africans where not allowed to form their own churches because churches were places people could learn and talk about their particular situation in the United States. Black churches have always been under suspicion (see Trinity Church circa 2008).
There might be another piece of information that might explain the phrase "True to our native land." In some U.S. Censuses there are instances where people reported that they were born in Africa--not a specific nation state--and I think this continued up until 1900. I can't explain why people from Africa were still being allowed in the United States--perhaps forced to come-- when there was an effort to deport black people to Africa?
Sometimes despite forced Christianity, African people secretly worshiped in the manner that suited spiritual needs.
July 10, 2008 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this. The moment you bring in the Quakers, it starts to make more sense.
July 10, 2008 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
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