Formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Nineteenth Century

Rhetoric of Identification

A. Owens

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137342379
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

This book explores the parameters of the African Methodist Episcopal Church's dual existence as evangelical Christians and as children of Ham, and how the denomination relied on both the rhetoric of evangelicalism and heathenism.

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Rhetoric of Identity: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and What It Means to be Children of God and Children of Ham

The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC), a denomination with its roots and genesis in the birth of the American nation, has had social, religious, and political constructs imposed upon it as it attempted to define its own reality. Only 26 years after the ratification of the US Constitution, delegates of several African congregations affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC), met in Philadelphia to discuss their grievances with that parent body, grievances that stemmed from the socioreligious limitations imposed upon the African Christians by the MEC. The churches from which these delegates traveled had all, in myriad aspects, suffered debilitating impositions on their ability to worship freely; therefore, feeling that no other viable alternative was available, these delegates endeavored to form an independent religious body, one that did not rely upon the MEC to set definitional limits on it as a religious body.

As a marginalized people, these African delegates began the process of struggling against constructs that limited their religious and social identities, and struggling toward a self-definition, one that could then be broadcast to the larger society. However, even within the context of self-definition, the delegates were limited by the language given them by the parent religious body; their acting out and speaking out as a religious body was, to a large extent, “confined to the categories established by the early power brokers for the dominant society.”¹ The MEC provided the religious language by which the African Christians spoke of their religious identity and postcolonial America defined their social identity. It should be noted that the African Christians who met in Philadelphia were not absolutely confined by the dictates of the MEC or of postcolonial America. Unlike their enslaved brothers and sisters on southern plantations, they had the requisite freedom, both socially and religiously, to actually assemble relatively free of constriction to discuss the grievances they had against the MEC. What it does mean, however, is that by affirming themselves as African Christians residing in America, the men and women gathered in Philadelphia had been provided with certain categories that comprised the constructs of their self-identification; from the MEC and postcolonial American society, these African Christians inherited a structure of discourse that established the parameters of their Christian identity.²

Molefi Asante asserts that “certain political [and religious] constructs impose definite limitations in concepts and content on all discourse about reality.”³ During the era of nineteenth-century African American Christian religiosity, these limitations can be seen in how Christians of African descent, including the African Christians assembled in Philadelphia, defined their particular religious reality. Brought to the Americas on ships such as the Jesus of Lubek,⁴ West Coast Africans possessed their own constructs—constructs that described reality in terms that helped them to exist in the world. Enslaved primarily by Christians in Christian nations, these Africans encountered a world vastly different from their home, one that compelled them to make sense of the incongruities between the world in which they now existed and the world that they had left. The experience of enslavement undoubtedly caused them to question reality as they had known it.

Initially, the enslaved Africans worked in various capacities for the enslavers, primarily on plantations, without the enslavers having any particular regard to the spiritual status of the enslaved. As far as the enslavers were concerned, the Africans had no souls to speak of; they were like the other commodities that belonged to the plantations, used for the economic advancement and perpetuation of the plantation.

As the system of chattel enslavement progressed in the Americas, particularly on the North American continent, some Protestant religionists became concerned about the spiritual status of the enslaved Africans. They began to exert religious pressure on plantation owners to make sure that the enslaved had proper religious instruction; they desired that the plantation owners consider the heathen souls of the Africans.⁵ Specifically, the religionists sought to ensure that, upon death, the Africans would be guaranteed a home in heaven and not be consigned to hell because of their irreligious beliefs. Thus began a long and arduous process of teaching the enslaved Africans the primary tenets of the Christian faith.

The Christianization of the enslaved Africans proceeded slowly; prior to the Great Awakenings of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the conversion of Africans to Christianity was sporadic at best. Michael Gomez postulates that the number of enslaved Africans converted to Christianity remained small. He states that for the greater part of their history on southern plantations, most of the enslaved had little encounter with, or affinity for, Christianity. However, with the onset of the Great Awakenings of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, relatively substantial gains were made in the conversion of the African heathens to Christianity. Even then, the converted represented a small minority of the slave population: “By the close of legal slavery . . . they remained a numerical minority . . . only one out of every nine blacks was on official church rosters . . . this means that only 22 percent . . . of the black community may have been Christian by the dawn of the Civil War . . . we can only conclude that approximately 78 percent of African Americans remained unconverted just prior to the South’s secession.”⁶ Further, as noted by Albert Raboteau, the process of conversion occurred at a sluggish pace, one whereby the Africans ceased to be Africans and became, if not quite American, “New Negroes.”

What was involved in the slave’s acceptance of Christianity . . . was the slow process by which “Africans became New Negroes.” A generational process . . . it involved complex social and psychological adaptation on the part of both black slaves and white colonists. Adapting to the foreign culture of the Europeans meant for the Africans not the total abandonment of their own cosmologies but, rather, a process of integrating the new into the old, of interpreting the unfamiliar by reference to the familiar . . . The slaves were taught the prayers, doctrines, and rites of Christianity.⁷

The movement from African to New Negro meant that the enslaved had to learn a new language and adapt to a prevailing worldview that imposed certain religious structures of discourse. According to Asante, the structure of discourse entails negotiating power dynamics within the discursive enterprise itself. Those who set the guidelines for the discourse control not only the language of the discourse, but also the structure. In postcolonial and antebellum America, white patriarchy created the language and structural guidelines, guidelines that set limitations on those not members of the patriarchal structure. Conversely, those who did not set the guidelines maintained little control over the language or the structure; they were left to negotiate within and struggle against the hierarchical structure imposed by those who set the limiting guidelines:

Out of these limitations the oppressed, nonfree people, who are exploited by ruling classes, those whose wills are enjoined, are challenged to struggle against a structural discourse that denies their right to freedom and, indeed, their right to existence.⁸

The slow process of the enslaved’s Christianization entailed negotiating the structures of discourse imposed by ruling classes. With no formal understanding of Christianity, they learned what it meant to be Christian from their enslavers.

However, as suggested by Raboteau, these New Negroes did not negotiate the structures of discourse blankly; rather, learning and adapting to the new worldview was a process that could not have taken place without the Africans retaining some aspects of their own cosmologies. Even as time passed and a greater number of enslaved were born in the United States than were imported, enough of their cultural roots may have been retained to inform their views of Christianity. Although the transformation to Christianity became somewhat easier after 1808, when the official importation of enslaved Africans to the United States became illegal and there existed a critical mass of American-born Africans more amenable to religious instruction, the enslaved interpreted the language and symbols of Christianity by reference to their own African cosmologies. Raboteau states that the enslaved “brought their cultural past to the task of translating and interpreting the doctrinal words and ritual gestures of Christianity.”⁹

Gomez also posits that in the category of religious belief and practice, where the enslavers coerced the enslaved to act in particular patterns that cohered more with the culture of the enslavers, the enslaved could still reinterpret what was given to fit their own situation:

A familiar example of the phenomenon of reinterpretation is found in the realm of religion. As practiced in North America, Protestantism tended to be rigid and inflexible, hostile to the kind of association between African deities and Christian saints found in a number of Catholic societies elsewhere in the New World . . . the African convert to Protestantism . . . may have very well reinterpreted the dogma and ritual of the Christian church in ways that conformed to preexisting cosmological views.¹⁰

Thus, the Africans, who brought with them a fluid sense of what it meant to be spiritual, encountered a static construction of religion. American Protestantism disallowed any formulations or practices that did not conform to its rigid standards; through its taught prayers, doctrines, rites, and other Orthodox structures, nineteenth-century Protestant Christianity imposed a structure of discourse that pervaded the Africans’ changing worldview. Yet, even the milieu of nineteenth-century evangelical Protestant Christianity could not deter the African Christians from using their cultural past to understand Christianity; they endeavored to take the rhetorical structure of Protestant Christianity and create a religious discourse that cohered with their existence.

For the men and women gathered in Philadelphia, many of whom were formerly enslaved, the struggle against a structural discourse that attempted to deny them religious freedom meant the simultaneous struggle toward a religious identity that cohered with their status as African Christians. Despite the limitations imposed upon them by the MEC, postcolonial America, and antebellum America, the African descended Christians in Philadelphia endeavored to reach a consensus on their own identity. They strove to create a discourse of self-understanding, an understanding rooted in their dual identities as Christians and Africans residing in America. As a result of the dyadic confluences of their religion and their Africanness, these men and women in Philadelphia sought to traverse the hierarchical discourse of the MEC and to find a rhetorical space where they could continue to exist on their own terms. To traverse the hierarchical discourse of the MEC, the African Christians had to overcome the overlapping structures of the dominant discourse.

Asante recognizes three overlapping components of hierarchical discourse. First, those who set the guidelines for discourse maintain control over the discourse by organizing the definitional structure of the discourse; they define “not only the terms of discussion but also the grounds upon which the discussion will be waged.” Second, certain self-perpetuating rituals are created so that only a limited number of people have access to the discursive language, and this language is reserved only for those few “who are initiated” into the secret language. These votarists can then speak with the authority of the initiating body. Third, any opposing discourse is curtailed; those who set the guidelines of discourse denounce any views they deem a threat to the established hierarchy.¹¹

As it pertains to the African descended Christians who met in Philadelphia to discuss their grievances with the MEC, they existed in a rhetorical space wherein the structure of discourse had been established by a controlling white hierarchy. In society, in politics, and in religion, the hierarchy defined the world in terms that ensured the dominance of white society. It also created rites that coalesced into an overarching theory of white dominance, while at the same time marginalizing the uninitiated, particularly those of African descent. If by chance the uninitiated attempted to gain access into the hierarchy, or sought to define reality in their own terms, they met with strong resistance from the controlling body.

Such was the situation of the African Christians in Philadelphia. Prior to their 1816 meeting in Philadelphia, the MEC had defined how the African descended Christians could participate in the religious life of the church. Richard Allen, one of the Christians meeting in Philadelphia, was relegated to preaching at odd hours, primarily at 5:00 a.m.¹² The MEC engaged in similar acts that meant that its white members would dominate the religious landscape. The MEC also ritualized the religious space, creating rites of passage that further marginalized the African descended Christians to the periphery. Only white male members occupied positions of authority. Only white male members could be ordained elders within the denomination; black male members could participate as lay preachers, limited to hours when few, if any, would be in attendance. The presence of black male lay preachers within the MEC points to another complicating issue of those who gathered in Philadelphia. Those African Christians who met to discuss their grievances knew and adopted the rhetorical structures of the MEC; they adhered to the polity, doctrinal structures, and the explicit and implicit mand...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1   Rhetoric of Identity: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and What It Means to be Children of God and Children of Ham
• 2   It Is Salvation We Want: The Path to Spiritual Redemption and Social Uplift
• 3   Saving the Heathen: The AMEC and Its Africanist Discourse
• 4   Africa for Christ: The Voice of Mission and African Redemption
• 5   We Have Been Believers: Revisiting AMEC Rhetoric of Evangelical Christianity
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index