Mercede Broadwater December 08, 2008 Systemic Theology Dr. Noel Erskine Final Paper My understanding of Christian doctrines is rooted in the Black Religious Experience, which can be traced back to slavery or even beyond. I have been apart of Greater Mount Calvary Baptist Church all of my life, which is a predominately traditional black church. I believe that that the ideas and philosophies of my church differ from other Baptist churches. However, the reasoning of the teachings and experiences that I have encountered along with my revelation at my church has shaped my understanding about how I view God, in relation to the Trinity, as well as some other mainline doctrines such as evil and sin, and the scripture in relationship to society.
They met in camp meetings and sang without any hymnbook. Spontaneous songs were songs that were composed on the spot. As Negro spirituals are Christian songs, most of them have to do with what the Bible says and teaches. These songs show how to live with the Spirit of God. These songs were meant for hope to let slaves know that God is watching over them even though the times fell hard on them.
The slaveholding system had become self-sufficient and this dictated the end of many tribal practices among black slaves. Blake, by Martin R. Delany, takes place in the antebellum period in America. One may realize that most of the slaves depicted in the novel are now converted to Christianity, their masters’ religion. The problem here is that this conversion is nothing less than a subversive way to control the group of slaves in the Franks plantation. Master Frank uses religion to pour fear and obedience in his slaves’ minds.
The nation’s lower and middle-class groups were not content to remain in mainline churches so they formed new religious communities committed to the theological doctrine of perfectionism” (Dieter 199-200). But it is notably the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, California where we can clearly find the origin of the Pentecostal movement in America and the Black Pentecostal movement in particular. The Black Pentecostal Movement and the Azusa Street Revival was led by William J. Seymour, an African America Preacher and the son of former slaves who had studied under Charles Parham. In 1900 Charles Fox Parham, a former Methodist minister, opened Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas and about 40 students were enrolled (Goff). Their only textbook was the Bible and Parham gave the students the assignment of discovering some certain common evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, before he left on a preaching trip.
Faith in God was the driving force behind the (mostly) non-violent marches, protests, boycotts, rallies, and sit-ins that were designed to bring about equality for African Americans. Martin Luther King Jr. is the first name that comes to mind when one thinks about the movement, and he was a minister of the word of God. This shows the direction that the movement would have followed in. Our American history is replete with examples of people of faith, who have broken the vessels of
“Not another book by a preacher, especially a black preacher.” Those words rolled around in my head as if they had been placed there by some long held messenger, as if it was wrong to contemplate, let alone carry out what I had in mind. That I would write a book about my experiences as a black preacher/pastor and as an African American southerner. No, this is not another book by a black preacher limited to the church and preaching, church members, and church behavior, although a big part of the narrative and story includes the black church and some semblance of southern and black religion. It is also not just a book about the failings of the south from the perspectives of a black man. I am not interested in writing a book about a subject that has a well worn academic, sociological and historic path, although well worn paths should provide appropriate opportunities for us to find our way, never-the-less even as we meander through our history, our faith, and life, we don’t always understand everything we see and experience on that path, and sometimes I think it is o.k.
The new Baptist believers did not think that was the Godly idea or thing to do and they started their own separate belief system strictly from interpretation (Gourley). Roger Williams and John Clarke were the first famous evangelists of the Baptist faith and were one of the many key individuals that helped to expand the Baptist faith. Both of these individuals preached the Baptist faith all up and down the Eastern board of the United States and really helped make disciples for the faith. They were also the founders of the oldest Baptist church in the south named the First Baptist Church in Charlestown South Carolina. The Baptist church was frequently criticized by other churches that were supported by public taxes.
Dubois is an editor, historian, civil rights leader, pan Africanist, and novelist. The experiences he had from the South made him rise and stand up for himself and many others. He had pressed for public protest against racial violence and discrimination against the blacks. He did not agree with Booker T. Washington for the things Booker T. wanted to do for the African American people. Du Bois began to publish his own book called “The Souls of Black Folk”.
However, the law on discrimination in the workplace is constantly evolving. Despite Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 abolishing slavery, society in the Quaker-founded Commonwealth remained deeply divided racially and ethnically throughout its history. One example, free blacks were prohibited from worshipping with white Methodists. Richard Allen founded Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1794 in Philadelphia. It was the first of many all-black institutions created as a response to racial discrimination.
New access to education and employment to boot to illustration among the best levels of Yankee government has been gained by African Americans among the post-civil rights era. The bulk of African Americans are Protestant.” (Crary, 2012)Known as the 1st institution by the free slaves at the tip of the seventeenth century, the protestant were referring as ministers of the African Yank congregations. This was abolished once slavery African Americans were allowed to make a novel kind of Christianity that was culturally influenced by African religious traditions.” (U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 2008) Most African Americans square measure the descendants of captive Africans and take them to the United States as slaves. Blacks immigrated to the United States from the Caribbean, or United Nations agency immigrated to the U.S., conjointly historically are thought of African Yankee, as they share a standard history of preponderantly West African or Central African roots, the center Passage and