Nikole Hanna-Jones: 1619 Project, “Church” Notes and Summary by Anthea Butler

1. Jeremiah Wright’s “god damn America” sermon that surfaced during the presidential election that brought Obama into the White House also brought to the fore the importance of the Black Church, particularly with its sometimes emphasis on Black (liberation) Theology.
   • The author argues that Wright was mentored by James Cone and that Cone, the inventor of “Black Theology” was continuing the jeremiad style of Black preaching that went back to the abolitionist preaching during the 19^th century and earlier.
2. History of the jeremiad
   • White puritans preached a form of lament that members of White congregations had not utilized their God-given land more fruitfully.  Sounds like an early self-help sermon or prosperity gospel.
   • Blacks, on the other hand, used the jeremiad to lament social injustice. (p. 338)
3. The author celebrates Black preaching, which in the 20^th century castigated an array of social ills, from Jim Crow to lynching.
   • This tradition culminated with the preaching of Martin Luther King who declared at one point that America was the world’s biggest purveyor of violence.
4. Pastoral Care in the Black Church
   • Alongside of its prophetic social witness, the Black church provided Black people a place where they could gather for educational purposes, to arrange mutual aid groups, and form political organizations.
5. Black churches are the objects of attack because they are Inherently counter to White supremacy.  (p.339)
   • Terror campaigns have long targeted Black Churches.
   • One week after Michael Brown’s father was baptized at the Flood Christian Church in Fergusson, Missouri, the building was burned to the ground.
   • Nine members of Emanuel A.M.E. Church Charleston, South Carolina, were murdered when a white supremacist named Dylann Roof opened fire in a Bible study group.
     1. Members of the Charleston were often quick to forgive Roof
     1. Obama sang “Amazing Grace” at a eulogy there.
   • The author thought that the Jeremiah Wright sermon and the Charleston AME massacre were bookends to Obama’s presidency.  They represented both the prophetic and pastoral character of the Black Church.
6. Pre-revolutionary White Protestant America
   • Genesis’ narrative about Noah’s son, Ham was believed by settler Protestants to support the subjugation of African descent peoples.
   • Blacks, both enslaved and free were drawn to Christianity and received and administered baptism.
     • Theologians at the time felt a prohibition against enslaving Christians (p.340)
     • Virginia in 1667 passed law that “the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage.”
     • Protestants felt an incentive to evangelize but enslavers were jumpy that christianizing the enslaved would plant a desire for freedom.  In other words, Protestants knew the liberationist character of the gospel.
7. First Great Awakening
   • The character of worship was more expressive and ecstatic, a change that resonated with the Black community
   • Blacks would gather for their own services
   • Book: Slave Religion, Albert Raboteau
   • The character of Black religion was informal, open air, lyrical, and divergent from hierarchical, White Protestantism.
8. Methodism late 1700’s
   • This was an early and significant welcome to Black members from a Protestant group. 
   • Soon, Black Methodist adherents amounted to 20% of Methodists
9. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, founded an aid organization called the Free African Society to help formerly enslaved people get on their feet.
   • In 1792 Allen and Jones, together with a congregation of Black Methodists were expelled from the otherwise White congregation.
   • As the drama of being expelled played out a Yellow Fever epidemic fell upon the city. 
   • Whites believed that Blacks were immune to the fever and forced them into service as nurses, caretakers, and gravediggers.
   • Allen, Jones, and other members of the Free African Society were instrumental in tending to the city’s sick, with Allen himself falling ill and recovering.
   • In 1794, Allen was able to garner enough support to start the Bethel Church in an old blacksmith’s shop.
10. Second Great Awakening
    • More Black Churches were established in the late 1700’s
    • The first woman preacher was authorized by Allen
    • Denmark Vesey, a free carpenter, and a member of Charleston’s A.M.E. church, made plans for a rebellion in the city in 1822. After his capture and execution, local white residents burned the church to the ground.  It was the same congregation Dylann Roof attacked in 2015.
    • Nat Turner (1831) led his rebellion in this period.  (p. 343)
11. Black Christians political activity.
    • Henry McNeal Turner, born free in SC; formed first Black Regiment and was part of the Freedman’s Bureau.  Won seat as state legislator in Georgia but Whites prevented him from being seated.
12. The Redemption: The reaction by Whites in the 1870’s to take back the advance of Black rights.
    • Much White thinking in the South saw a restoration of White supremacy as a divine cause.
    • Book: Beyond Redemption: Carol Emberton
13. 1866, Memphis City policemen and White mob men, attacked Black neighborhoods and contraband camps of formerly enslaved people. The white mob burned down four Black churches, destroyed twelve schools, killed forty-six African Americans, and raped five women.
    • Henry McNeal Turner, AME minister, decided to work outside the system began to preach a version of Black nationalism: the belief that Black people should have their own autonomy, even their own country. He became a proponent of the Back to Africa movement and believed that slavery had existed to expose Africans to Christianity.
14. Civil Rights Era  
    • What had gone on before served Blacks well in enduring Jim Crow.
    • The church was the home base of the civil rights movement of the 1950’s
    • Rosa Parks challenge of the Jim Crow seating on Montgomery buses was a planned act of civil disobedience and brought MLK to the fore.
    • Benjamin Mays, President of Morehouse College studied under Gandhi and propelled MLK to doctoral studies at Boston University.
    • The movement attracted young divinity school scholars like James Lawson, of Vanderbilt Divinity School.  He organized the Nashville sit-ins in 1960 that also included John Lewis and C. T. Vivian, both divinity students at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, as well as college students like Diane Nash, who was at Fisk University.
15. Non-Church organizations during the Civil Rights Era
    • Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, and the rise of Black Power presented a more serious challenge to the Black church’s vision of the path toward freedom.
16. The black power movement
    • Started with Stokely Carmichael and SNCC
    • 1965 Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles
    • As the movement moved from “freedom” to “Black power” it seemed to move further away from its Church moorings.
    • Black Power was a compelling vision of Black self-determination, and a clear repudiation of King’s emphasis on nonviolence and integration. (p. 348)
    • Alarmed, some white religious leaders criticized the Black Power movement for preaching hatred of white people.
    • The National Conference of Negro Churchmen was formed out of the NCC to try to steer a course between Black Power and Black Churches.
17. James Cone was influenced by the NCNC.  His theology worked to steer a path between the Christian and power/violence impulse.
    • Black Theology and Black Power was published three months before another statement from the group of pastors who had come together at the 1966 NCC.
    • They now called themselves the National Conference of Black Churchmen, and their statement opened with a section entitled “Why Black Theology?”
    • So the move back into the Christian sphere was accomplished.
    • The following year Cone published his second book, A Black Theology of Liberation. The book would make him a major expositor of Black liberation theology. It was a heady time for liberation theologies.
    • The Dominican priest Gustavo Gutiérrez published his book on Catholic liberation theology in 1971.
    • Cone’s teaching and advocacy would span more than thirty years and were a major influence on people like Reverend Wright.
18. Raphael Warnock: a student of James Cone.  Wrote the Divided Mind of the Black Church. (p. 351)
19. Black Lives Matter, Color of Change, and other social-justice movements not explicitly Christian call America’s failings to account.
20. Even today the Black Church carries a long legacy of prophetic proclamation against America’s failures.

Summary: Chapter 13: “Church” Anthea Butler

Beginning with Jeremiah Wright’s “god damn America” sermon, Butler presses the point that the Black Church has been a continuing and effective resource for the advance of justice and reassurance for Black America.  This tradition began with slaves sneaking off to meet and worship during slave years.  During the First and then Second Great Awakenings, Black Christianity became more established and distinct.  Early in the 19^th century during the First Great Awakening, Black Christianity began to distinguish itself as a distinct expression of biblical faith.  Black religion was informal, open air, lyrical, and divergent from hierarchical, White Protestantism.  During the second Great Awakening Black Churches became more numerous and differentiated from White Christianity.  The theological character of the Black church emerged.  Women began to be ordained, an innovation not seen in White churches.  Following the Civil War and attempts at Reconstruction there emerged the White Supremacist movement called the Redemption.  This was the white counter to the advance of Black rights.  Butler acknowledges that the cause of justice and economic advance for Black Americans was not always carried by churchmen.  Martin Luther King embodied the finest qualities of the Christian-influenced Black church.  But King was challenged profoundly by secular leaders like Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X.  James Cone emerged in the 1960’s and worked to recover the Christian liberationist character of Black uplift.  And even today, Raphael Warnock, a student of Cone, represents the very best of the Black church.