African American Religious History

by Sernett, Milton C.

• ISBN13: 9780822324492
• ISBN10: 0822324490
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-03-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

This widely-heralded collection of remarkable documents offers a view of African American religious history from Africa and early America through Reconstruction to the rise of black nationalism, civil rights, and black theology of today. The documents-many of them rare, out-of-print, or difficult to find-include personal narratives, sermons, letters, protest pamphlets, early denominational histories, journalistic accounts, and theological statements. In this volume Olaudah Equiano describes Ibo religion. Lemuel Haynes gives a black Puritanrs"s farewell. Nat Turner confesses. Jarena Lee becomes a female preacher among the African Methodists. Frederick Douglass discusses Christianity and slavery. Isaac Lane preaches among the freedmen. Nannie Helen Burroughs reports on the work of Baptist women. African Methodist bishops deliberate on the Great Migration. Bishop C. H. Mason tells of the Pentecostal experience. Mahalia Jackson recalls the glory of singing at the 1963 March on Washington. Martin Luther King, Jr. writes from the Birmingham jail. Originally published in 1985, this expanded second edition includes new sources on women, African missions, and the Great Migration. Milton C. Sernett provides a general introduction as well as historical context and comment for each document.

Author Biography

Milton C. Sernett is Professor of African-American studies at Syracuse University.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition

Introduction

From Africa Through Early America

Traditional Ibo Religion and Culture

African Religions in Colonial Jamaica

Slave Conversion on the Carolina Frontier

"Address to the Negroes in the State of New York"

Letters from Pioneer Black Baptists

A Black Puritan's Farewell

Slave Religions in the Antebellum South

Plantation Churches: Visible and Invisible

"Proud of the 'Ole Time' Religion"

Conjuration and Witchcraft

"Great Moral Dilemma"

Religion and Slave Insurrection

Slaveholding Religion and the Christianity of Christ

Slave Songs and Spirituals

Black Churches North of Slavery and the Freedom Struggle

"Life Experience and Gospel Labors"

Rise of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

A Female Preacher among the African Methodists

African Baptists Celebrate Emancipation in New York State

"Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Preachers of Religion"

"Mrs. Stewart's Farewell Address to Her Friends in the City of Boston"

"To the Citizens of New York"

Black Churches in New York City, 1840

Protesting the "Negro Pew"

"I Will Not Live a Slave"

"Welcome to the Ransomed"

Freedom's Time of Trial: 1865-World War I

From Slave to Preacher among the Freedmen

"The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church"

Black Religion in the Post-Reconstruction South

"Education in the A.M.E. Church"

The Travail of a Female Colored Evangelist

"The Regeneration of Africa"

Emigration to Africa

The First African American Catholic Congress, 1889

1899 Presidential Address to the National Baptist Convention

Bishop C.H. Mason, Church of God in Christ

"Of the Faith of the Fathers"

"The Race Problem in a Christian State, 1906"

"What Induced Me to Build a School in the Rural District"

From the Great Migration to World war II

Address on the Great Migration African Methodist Episcopal Council of Bishops

"Dear Mary" and "My dear Sister"

Social Work at Olivet Baptist Church

Effects of Urbanization on Religious Life

Report of the Work of Baptist Women

Address to the Suehn Industrial Mission, Liberia

A Letter from the "Foreign Field"

"Things of the Spirit"

"The Genius of the Negro Church"

"The Churches of Bronzeville"

Twentieth-Century Religious Alternatives

Garvey Tells His Own Story

"Organized Religion and the Cults"

Black Judaism in Harlem

"The Realness of God, to you-wards..."

Elder Lucy Smith

"Self-Government in the New World"

CIvil Rights, Black Theology, and Beyond

"National Baptist Philosophy of Civil Rights"

"Letter from Birmingham Jail--April 16, 1963"

Singing of Good Tidings and Freedom

"The Anatomy of Segregation and Ground of Hope"

"Black Power" Statement, July 31, 1966, and "Black Theology" Statement, June 13, 1969

"Black Theology and the Black Church: Where Do We Go From Here?"

"The Black Churches: A New Agenda"

Index

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