Since the first African slaves arrived in North America, religion has likely been a powerful force in the development of African American culture and identity. However, there is little evidence of organized religion among African slaves and their descendants in the Thirteen Colonies before 1775. The Methodist and Baptist churches became more active in the 1780s. Their growth was quite rapid for the next 150 years, until their membership included the majority of Black Americans.
After Emancipation in 1863, Freedmen organized their own churches, chiefly Baptist, followed by Methodists. Other Protestant denominations, and the Catholic Church, played smaller roles. In the 19th century, the Wesleyan-Holiness movement, which emerged in Methodism, as well as Holiness Pentecostalism in the 20th century were important, and later the Jehovah's Witnesses. Centuries after early Black Muslims, The Nation of Islam and el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (also known as Malcolm X) reinvigorated Islam in the 20th century. Powerful pastors often played prominent roles in politics, often through their leadership in the American civil rights movement, as typified by Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Religious demographics
The vast majority of Black Americans are Protestants, with descendants of American chattel slavery being largely Baptists or adhering to other forms of Evangelical Protestantism. According to a survey conducted between November 9, 2019, and June 2, 2020, Pew Research found that 78% of Black American adults have a religious affiliation compared to 72% of American adults generally, and about 75% of Black American adults identify as Christian (66% Protestant Christian, 6% Catholic Christian, and 3% Other Christian) compared to 66% of the general US adult population.
Black Americans are more religious than the U.S. population as a whole. About 97% of adult Black Americans believe in God or a higher power (compared to 90% of American adults generally), 59% consider religion "very important" in their lives, and 54% consider belief in God necessary to be moral and have good values.
In 2019 there were approximately three million African American Catholics in the US, 24% of whom worshiped in the country's 798 predominantly African American parishes.
History Colonial era Many enslaved Africans brought religion with them from Africa, including Islam and African traditional religions. The Portuguese introduced Christianity to many Western Africans; and before Islamic expansion in North Africa, parts of the region were already Christian or indigenous.
Until 1800, the majority of slaves in the United States had not embraced Christianity. Prior to the 1700s, the majority of slaves in the United States practiced traditional West African religions or Islam, with a smaller number converting to Protestantism. Additionally, Catholicism was also prevalent among Black Americans in states such as Maryland, Kentucky and Louisiana during the period of slavery.A brief overview of Black religious history in the U.S.
In the 1770s no more than 1% of black people in the United States had connections with organized churches. The numbers grew rapidly after 1789. The Anglican Church had made a systematic effort to proselytize, especially in Virginia, and to spread information about Christianity, and the ability to read the Bible, without making many converts.Antonio T. Bly, "In Pursuit of Letters: A History of the Bray Schools for Enslaved Children in Colonial Virginia," History of Education Quarterly (2011) 51#4 pp. 429–59.
No organized African religious practices are known to have taken place in the Thirteen Colonies. In the mid-20th century scholars debated whether there were distinctive African elements embedded in black American religious practices, as in music and dancing. Scholars no longer look for such cultural transfers regarding religion.Sylvia R. Frey, "The Visible Church: Historiography of African American Religion since Raboteau," Slavery & Abolition (2008) 29#1 pp. 83–110
Muslims practiced Islam surreptitiously or underground throughout the era of the enslavement of African people in North America. The story of Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori, a Muslim prince from West Africa who spent 40 years enslaved in the United States from 1788 onwards before being freed, demonstrates the survival of Muslim belief and practice among enslaved Africans in America.
Prior to the American Revolution, masters and revivalists spread Christianity to slave communities, including Catholicism in Spanish Florida and California, and in French and Spanish Louisiana, and Protestantism in English colonies, supported by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
In the First Great Awakening (ca. 1730–1755) Baptists were drawing Virginians, especially poor-white farmers, into a new, much more democratic religion. Baptist gatherings made slaves welcome at their services, and a few Baptist congregations contained as many as 25% slaves. Baptists and Methodists from New England preached a message against slavery, encouraged masters to free their slaves, converted both slaves and free blacks, and gave them active roles in new congregations. The first independent black congregations were started in the South before the Revolution, in South Carolina and Georgia. Believing that, "slavery was contrary to the ethics of Jesus", Christian congregations and church clergy, especially in the North, played a role in the Underground Railroad, especially Wesleyan Methodists, Quakers and Congregationalists. White clergy within evangelical Protestantism actively promoted the idea that all Christians were equal in the sight of God, a message that provided hope and sustenance to oppressed slaves.
Over the decades and with the growth of slavery throughout the South, some Baptist and Methodist ministers gradually changed their messages to accommodate the institution. After 1830, white Southerners argued for the compatibility of Christianity and slavery, with a multitude of both Old and New Testament citations. They promoted Christianity as encouraging better treatment of slaves and argued for a paternalistic approach. In the 1840s and 1850s, the issue of accepting slavery split the nation's largest religious denominations (the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches) into separate Northern and Southern organizations; see Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Southern Baptist Convention, and Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America). Schisms occurred, such as that between the Wesleyan Methodist Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Southern slaves generally attended their masters' white churches, where they often outnumbered the white congregants. They were usually permitted to sit only in the back or in the balcony. They listened to white preachers, who emphasized the obligation of slaves to keep in their place, and acknowledged the slave's identity as both person and property. Preachers taught the master's responsibility and the concept of appropriate paternal treatment, using Christianity to improve conditions for slaves, and to treat them "justly and fairly" (Col. 4:1). This included masters having self-control, not disciplining under anger, not threatening, and ultimately fostering Christianity among their slaves by example.
Slaves also created their own religious observances, meeting alone without the supervision of their white masters or ministers. The larger plantations with groups of slaves numbering 20, or more, tended to be centers of nighttime meetings of one or several plantation slave populations. These congregations revolved around a singular preacher, often illiterate with limited knowledge of theology, who was marked by his personal piety and ability to foster a spiritual environment. African Americans developed a theology related to Biblical stories having the most meaning for them, including the hope for deliverance from slavery by their own Exodus. One lasting influence of these secret congregations is the African American spiritual.Frost (1998), Christianity, 448.
Black religious music is distinct from traditional European religious music; it uses dances and ring shouts, and emphasizes emotion and repetition more intensely.Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion (1978) pp. 68–87
Formation of churches (18th century)
Scholars disagree about the extent of the native African content of black Christianity as it emerged in 18th-century America, but there is no dispute that the Christianity of the black population was grounded in evangelicalism.Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (1998).
Central to the growth of community among black people was the black church, usually the first community institution to be established. Starting around 1800 with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and other churches, the black church grew to be the focal point of the black community. The black church was both an expression of community and unique African-American spirituality, and a reaction to discrimination.Albert J. Raboteau, Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans (2001)
The church also served as neighborhood centers where free black people could celebrate their African heritage without intrusion by white detractors. The church also the center of education. Since the church was part of the community and wanted to provide education; they educated the freed and enslaved black community. Seeking autonomy, some black religious leaders like Richard Allen founded separate black denominations.
The Second Great Awakening (1800–20s) has been called the "central and defining event in the development of Afro-Christianity".James H. Hutson, Religion and the founding of the American Republic (1998) p. 106
Free black religious leaders also established black churches in the South before 1860. After the Great Awakening, many black Christians joined the Baptist Church, which allowed for their participation, including roles as elders and preachers. For instance, First Baptist Church and Gillfield Baptist Church of Petersburg, Virginia, both had organized congregations by 1800 and were the first Baptist churches in the city.Albert J. Raboteau,Slave religion: the "invisible institution" in the antebellum South (1978) online
Preaching
Historian Bruce Arnold argues that successful black pastors historically undertook multiple roles.Bruce Makato Arnold, Arnold, "Shepherding a Flock of Different Fleece: A Historical and Social Analysis of the Unique Attributes of the African American Pastoral Caregiver." Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling 66.2 (2012): 1–14. online; download These include: The black pastor is the paterfamilias of his church, responsible for shepherding and holding the community together, passing on its history and traditions, and acting as spiritual leader, wise counselor, and prophetic guide. The black pastor is a counselor and comforter stressing transforming, sustaining, and nurturing abilities of God to help the flock through times of discord, doubts, and counsels them to protect themselves against emotional deterioration. The black pastor is a community organizer and intermediary.
Raboteau describes a common style of black preaching first developed in the early nineteenth century, and common throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries: The preacher begins calmly, speaking in conversational, if oratorical and occasionally grandiloquent, prose; he then gradually begins to speak more rapidly, excitedly, and to chant his words and time to a regular beat; finally, he reaches an emotional peak in which the chanted speech becomes tonal and merges with the singing, clapping, and shouting of the congregation.Albert Raboteau, A Fire in the Bones, Reflections on African-American Religious History (1995), pp. 143–44