Article contents
Slavery and Theology: The Emergence of Black Christian Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
Extensive discussion of the origin and nature of Black Christianity in America has in recent years linked together two issues which are logically distinct: the degree of uniqueness attributable to the beliefs of Afro-Americans, and whether or to what extent their faith sustained resistance to the system of slavery. Abundant evidence that slaveowners hoped Christian instruction would persuade Black people to asquiesce in their bondage has been readily taken for proof that acquiescence was in fact the usual result of their conversion. This questionable conclusion has sometimes led to another: that such religious notions as occasionally inspired resistance were brought from Africa and were uniquely the heritage of Black men. According to this view, the biblical rationales for revolt such as Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner appear to have employed were merely a gloss upon ideas of freedom and justice which they and their people had long held.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1972
References
1. The setting and the reception of early efforts to convert Negroes is suggested in Robert Jenney, Philadelphia, Nov. 14, 1745, to the Secretary, in Perry, William S., Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church. Volume II:Google ScholarPennsylvania (Hartford, Conn., 1871), 237Google Scholar; William, S. Perry, ed., Papers Relating to the History of the Church in Virginia, A.D. 1650–1776 ([privately printed], 1870), 301, 306, 369Google Scholar; Asbury, Francis, The Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury, ed. Clark, Elmer T. and others. 3 vols. (Nashville, 1958), I, 89, 222, 747Google Scholar; Garrettson, Freeborn, The Experience and Travels of Freeborn Garrettson (Philadelphia, 1791), 72Google Scholar; Davies, Samuel, State of Religion Among the Protestant Dissenters in Virginia in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Joseph Bellamy … (Boston, 1751), 23–24Google Scholar; Boucher, Jonathan, Reminiscences of an American Loyalist, 1738–1789…(Boston, 1925), 57–58Google Scholar; and Semple, Robert B., A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia, ed. Beale, G. W. (Philadelphia, 1894), 126, 140, 148.Google Scholar
2. Perry, , ed., Papers … Church in Virginia, 280, 293, 299, 369Google Scholar; Yetman, Norman R., Life Under “The Peculiar Institution”; Selections from the Slave Narrative Collection (New York, 1970), 89Google Scholar; Jones, Charles C., The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States (Savannah, Georgia, 1842), 62–64, 125.Google Scholar Compare Jernegan, Marcus Lee, “Slavery and Conversion in the American Colonies,” The American Historical Review, XXI (04, 1916), 519–525Google Scholar; and Frazier, E. Franklin, The Negro Church in America (New York, 1966), 7–9.Google Scholar
3. As contrasted with the shallowness of some of its modern survivals, stressed in Frazier, , Negro Church, 52, 54–63Google Scholar; Washington, Joseph R., Black Religion: The Negro and Christianity in the United States (Boston, 1964), 37–42Google Scholar; the same author's The Politics of God (Boston, 1967), 167–168, 209Google Scholar; and Powdermaker, Hortense, After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South (New York, 1967), 230–234, 245.Google Scholar
4. In addition to numerous examples cited below, see Douglass, Frederick, My Bondage and My Freedom (New York, 1855), 71–72, 86, 148–149, 166–168, 228–230, 235.Google Scholar
5. Asbury, , Journal and Letters, III, 15.Google Scholar Compare Douglass, , My Bondage, 99.Google Scholar
6. Some thoughtful ex-slaves believed their theological understanding superior to that of white Christians; see Pennington, James W. C., The Fugitive Blacksmith, or Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church, New York, Formerly a Slave … (London, 1850), 10–11, 71Google Scholar; Nathaniel Paul, Bristol, England, April 10, 1833, to William L. Garrison, in Carter, G. Woodson, ed., The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written During the Crisis, 1800–1860 (Washington, D.C., 1926), 166.Google Scholar
7. See Simms, James M., The First Colored Baptist Church in North America … (Philadelphia, 1888), 74Google Scholar; Olmstead, Frederick Law, A Journal in the Seaboard Slave States, with Remarks on Their Economy (New York, 1868), 408–409.Google Scholar See other protests in Douglass, , My Bondage, 190–198, 228–241, 257–259, 266–267Google Scholar; Loguen, Jermain Wesley, The Rev. J. W. Loguen as a Slave and as a Freeman (Syracuse, New York, 1859), 107–109, 118–119Google Scholar and passim; Steward, Austin, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman … (Rochester, New York, 1857), 97–98Google Scholar; Lunsford Lane, The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. … (Boston, 1842), 11–13, 23.Google Scholar
8. Pennington, , Fugitive Blacksmith, 68.Google Scholar
9. Walker, David, Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, ed. Wiltse, Charles M.; from the 3rd edition [Boston, 1830]; (New York, 1965), 37.Google Scholar Compare Yetman, Life Under the “Peculiar Institution,” 45–46.
10. Drew, Benjamin, A North-Side View of Slavery. The Refugee: or, The Narrative of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, Related by Themselves … (Boston, 1856), 105.Google Scholar The quotation is a corruption of Luke 12:47. For other fugitive accounts in the same vein, see the same, 33, 97, 355–357; Pennington, Fugitive Blacksmith, 66–67; Lane, , Narrative, 21;Google ScholarDouglass, , My Bondage, 201.Google Scholar See also Yetman, , Life Under the “Peculiar Institution,” 12–13, 26, 171.Google Scholar
11. Parrinder, Geoffrey, Religion in Africa (Baltimore, 1969), 28, 41, 81–89;Google ScholarBall, Charles, Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man (Lewiston, Pennsylvania, 1836), 24.Google ScholarFrazier, , Negro Church, 3–6, 8–13Google Scholar, discounts the role of survivals of African culture.
12. For two examples widely separated in time, see Henricus Selyns, Brooklyn, October 4, 1660, to the Dutch Reformed Classis of Amsterdam, in Jameson, James Franklin, ed., Narratives of New Netherland, 1609–1664 (New York, 1909), 408CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stoyer, Jacob, My Life in the South (Salem, Mass., 1898), 7, 22.Google Scholar
13. Brawley, Benjamin, Early Negro American Writers (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1935), 157,Google Scholar and, for a sketch of Payne's life, 147–151.
14. Clipping from The Colored American, signed by W. P. Johnson in Amos G. Beman, MS “Scrapbook, 1838–1857,” 6, in the Beman Collection, Yale University.Google Scholar Compare Lundy, Benjamin, The Life, Travels and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy, Including His Journeys to Texas and Mexico … (Philadelphia, 1847), 207Google Scholar, quoting from the New York Christian Inquirer [December 15, 1826].
15. Allen, Richard, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, To Which is Annexed the Rise and Progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church … (New York, 1960), 69–71.Google Scholar Compare Douglass, , My Bondage, 166–169.Google Scholar
16. Asbury, , Journal and Letters, I, 655–656.Google Scholar
17. Pennington, , Fugitive Blacksmith, 69.Google Scholar Compare Allen, , Life, Experience, 48–64Google Scholar; Douglass, , My Bondage, 195–196Google Scholar; Steward, , Twenty-Two Years a Slave, 24, 39, 84–87Google Scholar; Hawkins, William G., Lunsford Lane; or, Another Helper from North Carolina (Boston, 1863), 64–65, 167–168.Google Scholar
18. Clipping from The Colored American in Beman, “Serapbook, 1838–1857,” 12, Beman Collection, Yale University.Google Scholar Compare Easton, Hosea, A Treatise on the Intellectual Character and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the United States and the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them (Philadelphia, 1869), 18–19.Google Scholar
19. Lucy Chase, Norfolk, Virginia, July 1, 1864, to her “dear friends,” in Swint, Henry Lee, ed., Dear Ones At Home: Letters from the Contraband Camps (Nashville, 1966), 126.Google Scholar
20. Bowen, J. W. E., What Shall the Harvest Be? A National Sermon; or a Series of Plain Talks to the Colored People of America … (Washington, D. C., 1892), 32, 40–41.Google Scholar
21. See, for a powerful example, Miller, William, A Sermon on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Delivered in the African Church, New York … (Philadelphia, 1869), 7–8, 10, 13.Google Scholar
22. Paul, Nathaniel, “An Address Delivered on the Celebration of the Abolition of Slavery in the State of New York, July 5, 1827,” Freedom's Journal, 08 10, 1837Google Scholar, reprinted in Woodson, Carter G., ed., Negro Orators and Their Orations (Washington, D.C., 1925), 66–69.Google Scholar Compare the passages quoted and interpreted quite differently in Mays, Benjamin E., The Negro's God As Reflected in His Literature (Boston, 1938), 43–44Google Scholar, with their sequence and context in Woodson, , Negro Orators, 72–73.Google Scholar On Paul's pastoral relation, see Woodson, , ed., Mind of the Negro, 179, 180.Google Scholar
23. Such as I reviewed in Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (New York, 1965), 60–62, 80–94.Google Scholar See Miller, Perry, The Life of the Mind in Nineteenth-Century America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Boston, 1965)Google Scholar, Section I; and the critique of nineteenth-century American theology in Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York,1949).Google Scholar
24. Mead, Sidney E., The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York, 1963), 72–74, 84, 87–89.Google Scholar
25. Perry, , ed., Papers Relating to … the Church in Virginia, 280, 293, 297, 299Google Scholar, stresses the language problem, but mentions on pp. 261, 281, 344, 347 only catechizing and the memorization of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments as means of instructing those born in this country. Compare Jones, , Religious Instruction of the Negroes, 256–260Google Scholar; and, for the content of white preaching and teaching directed toward Negroes, Asbury, , Journal and Letters, I, 222Google Scholar; Garrettson, , Experience and Travels, 76Google Scholar; and Yetman, , Slave Narratives, 91–92, 117, 151, 227.Google Scholar
26. Frazier, , Negro Church, 17–18Google Scholar; Howard W. Odum, Religious Folk-Songs of the Negroes (reprinted from American Journal of Religious Psychology and Education, III (07, 1909), 265–365Google Scholar; n.p., n.d.), 24–32, 43–44; “To the People of Color, by a Colored Lady,” The Liberator, August 27, 1831, quoted in Woodson, ed., Mind of the Negro, 230–232; and Martin Luther King's last speech: “I've been on the mountaintop … and I've seen the promised land,” discussed in Miller, William R., Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Life, Martyrdom, and Meaning for the World (New York, 1968), 287f.Google Scholar
27. Hatcher, William E., John Jasper, The Unmatched Negro Philosopher and Preacher (New York, 1908), 25Google Scholar. Compare Yetman, Life Under the “Peculiar Institution,” 64, 167. On religious ecstasy generally, see Frazier, , Negro Church, 13, 18Google Scholar; and for survivals, modern, Powdermaker, , After Freedom, 261–270.Google Scholar
28. Quoted in Yetman, Life Under the “Peculiar Institution,” 227–228. See also the same, 12–13.
29. Miller, , Sermon on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 14–16.Google Scholar Compare Pennington, , Fugitive Blacksmith, 77–78.Google Scholar
30. J. P. Campbell's sermon, combining Isaiah 61 and I Corinthians 13, is summarized in A.M.E. Church, North Georgia Conference, Minutes of the 10th Session … Washington, Georgia … 1883. See also Bowen, , Harvest, 36–41Google Scholar; a later sermon on “the salvation that came from a race of slaves,” in Henderson, George W., Sermon Studies: Studies Upon Important Themes in Religion and Expositions of Difficult Passages of the Scriptures (Philadelphia, 1917), 18Google Scholar; and Washington, , Politics of God, 155–177.Google Scholar
31. Tanner, Benjamin T., An Apology for African Methodism (Baltimore, 1867), 115–116Google Scholar; Easton, , Colored People of the United States, 5Google Scholar; Paul, “An Address … 1827,” loc. cit., 15–16; Woodson, , ed., Mind of the Negro, 232Google Scholar; Steward, , Twenty-Two Years A Slave, 21–22.Google Scholar
32. Tanner, Benjamin T., Theological Lectures (Nashville, 1894), 59–60Google Scholar, and, generally, 84–107. On lyricism in black folk religion generally, see Odum, , Religious Folk-Songs of the Negroes, 12–18.Google Scholar
33. Tanner, , Theological Lectures, 173–174Google Scholar, and passim. Compare the similar concept of Negro mission described on pp. 499–500 above and in Henderson, George W., Sermon Studies, 21–25, 36–39Google Scholar, all of which contradict the historical argument in Washington, , Politics of God, 155–158Google Scholar, though they constitute prototypes of his theological argument, pp. 160–172.
34. Allen, , Life, Experience, 15–41.Google Scholar Compare Lewis, Mary Agnes, “Slavery and Personality: A Further Comment,” The American Quarterly, XIX (Spring, 1967), 114–121.Google Scholar
35. Othello (pseud.), , “Negro Slavery,” Woodson, ed., Negro Orators, 15.Google Scholar Compare Peter Williams, “An Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Delivered in the African Church In the City of New York, Jan. 1, 1808,” Ibid., 38, for an “enlightenment” conception presented in a gospel setting; and, for such accuracy as it may display, Yetman, Life Under the “Peculiar Institution,” 11–13.
36. Allen, , Life, Experience, 70–71.Google Scholar
37. Easton, , Colored People, 39–40.Google Scholar Compare Johnson, James H. A., “Humanity and Its Good Effects,” in Tanner, Apology for African Methodism, 195.Google Scholar
38. Garnet, Henry H., An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America … (New York, 1969), 96.Google Scholar For a sketch of his life, see Woodson, , ed., Negro Orators (New York, 1969), 96, 149.Google Scholar
39. Garnet, , Address, 92–94.Google Scholar Compare Douglass, , My Bondage, 241–246, 423.Google Scholar
40. Garnet, Henry H., A Memorial Discourse, Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives, Washington City, D.C., on Sabbath, February 12, 1865 (Philadelphia, 1865), 74, 78.Google Scholar
41. Ibid., 85–87.
42. Quoted in Swint, , ed., Dear Ones at Home, 234.Google Scholar
43. Asbury, Journal and Letters, 260n; Jones, Hugh, The Present State of Virginia, ed. Morton, Richard L. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1956), 99.Google Scholar Compare Jones, Religious Instruction of the Negroes, 159–171.
44. Presbytery of Tombeckbee, The Religious Instruction of Our Colored Population. A Pastoral Letter … (Columbia, South Carolina, 1859) 5Google Scholar, and generally, 7–9, 13. See also Jones, Religious Instruction of the Negroes, 69–89; Jones, Charles C., Suggestions on the Religious Instructions of the Negroes in the Southern States … (Philadelphia, 1847), 12–16Google Scholar; and for a Protestant Episcopal view, Trapier, Paul, The Religious Instruction of the Black Population … A Sermon … [and] a Discussion on “The Religious Instruction of the Blacks” in The Charleston Mercury ([Charleston], [1847]), 4, 16–21.Google Scholar
45. Stevens, Charles E., Anthony Burns, A History (Boston, 1856), 282–283.Google Scholar Compare Woodson, , ed., Mind of the Negro, 230–235Google Scholar; Walker, , Walker's Appeal, 35–39.Google Scholar
46. Grimke, Francis J., The Negro: His Rights and Wrongs, The Forces For Him and Against Him (Washington, D.C., 1899), 22, 38–40.Google Scholar
47. The same, 16–17, 48–57. Compare the same author's The Afro-American Pulpit in Relation to Race Elevation (Washington, 1893), 2–6, 12.Google Scholar
48. Olmstead, , Journal, 449–450Google Scholar, and, generally, 26, 113, 117, 124, 461. Compare the observations of Mary Allan-Olney and James Bryce, quoted in Hornsby, , In The Cage, 171–173, 175–178;Google Scholar and expressions of both class and sectarian prejudices in 1882 by a Black Protestant Episcopal clergyman in Crummell, Alexander B., Africa and America; Addresses and Discourses (Miami, Florida, 1969), 91–94Google Scholar, and by a white one in Strange, Robert, Church Work Among the Negroes in the South (Chicago, 1907), 10.Google ScholarJones, , Religious Instruction of the Negroes, 101–106Google Scholar, contains a judicious estimate of antebellum moral conditions, recapitulated in a more prejudiced way on pp. 129–145, 153.
49. See earlier pp. 499, 504–05; Garnet, , Address to the Slaves, 157Google Scholar; Miller, , Sermon on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 10.Google Scholar
50. Liele, George, Kingston, Jamaica, December 18, 1791, to an unknown correspondent, and T. N. S., Kingston, Jamaica, May 1, 1802. to the editor, Baptist Annual Register [London].Google Scholar in “Letters Showing the Rise and Progress of the Early Negro Churches of Georgia and the West Indies …,” The Journal of Negro History, I (01. 1916), 73. 88.Google Scholar For African moral traditions, see Ball, , Slavery in the United States, 21–23.Google Scholar
51. Asbury, , Journal and Letters, I. 403,Google Scholar
52. “Sanctification. the Highest Form of the Christian Religion,” Repository of Religion and Literature [A.M.E. organ], IX (Baltimore. 04. 1862), 61Google Scholar; renrint of Weslev, John, Plain Account of Christian Perfection, concluded in the same, 64Google Scholar: “Report of the Committee on the State of the Church.” and “Pastoral Address.” African Methodist Episcopal Church, North Alahama Conference, Minutes of the Second Session … 1879 (Selma. Alabama, 1880).44–47Google Scholar: ordination sermon by Payne, Bishop Daniel, the same, Columbia. South Carolina. Conference. Minutes of the Third Session … 1880 (Philadelphia. 1881. 13–14Google Scholar: Thomas, William H., “The Ministry We Need,” The African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, I (07. 1884. 63–64.Google Scholar
53. Paul. “An Address … 1827.” loc. cit., 74–76: Walker, , Appeal, 30–31Google Scholar: MS “Hints on the History of Temple Street Church.” and Simeon S. Jocelvn, commission from the American Missionary Society for Amos G. Beman, 23 July 1859. in Beman, Amos G., “Serapbook, 1830–1859.” The Beman Collection. Yale University:Google Scholar Thomas. “The Ministry We Need.” loc. cit., 61–62: Minutes of a Convention of People of Color. for the Promotion of Temperance in New England … (Providence, B.I., 1836), 11–15Google Scholar; and Coppin, Levi, Unwritten History, (New York, 1968), 124–127.Google Scholar
54. Donglass, , My Bondage. 237.Google Scholar The idea of brotherly love was central in Negro preaching, early and late: see Bremer, Frederika. Homes in the New World. tr. Howitt, Mary. 2vols. (New York. 1853). I. 289–290Google Scholar; Powdermaker, , After Freedom. 247.Google Scholar
55. Odum, , Religious Folk-Songs of the Negroes, 39–40, 45–46, 90Google Scholar; Frazier, , Negro Church, 15–16Google Scholar; Hatcher, , John Jasper. 25–28.Google Scholar
56. Hatcher, , John Jasper, 51–56.Google Scholar Compare white Methodist preachers on this same theme, Douglass, , My Bondage, 166.Google Scholar
57. Sam R. Ward, Boston, April 3, 1850, to the Christian Anti-Slavery Convention, Woodson, , ed., Mind of the Negro, 491–493Google Scholar; “To the People of Color,” loc. cit., 231–232; Douglass, , My Bondage, 195–197, 200–201Google Scholar. Grimke, , Afro-American Pulpit, 12–13Google Scholar, defines “character” by reference to scriptural passages every one of which was central to the preachers of the Social Gospel.
58. Ephraim Jones and Richard Allen, “A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Colored People During the Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, in the Year 1793 …,” in Allen, , Life, Experience, 48–51, 55–56, 59–60.Google Scholar
59. See, for example, Brawley, , Early Negro American Writers, 97Google Scholar; Allen, Richard, “A Short Address to the Friend of Him Who Has No Other,” in Life, Experience, 77–88Google Scholar, passim; Handy, James A., The Apostolic Ministry: Annual Sermon Delivered in … Frederick, Md., Thursday, 04 89, 1869Google Scholar Before the Baltimore Annual Conference, African Methodist Episcopal Church (Baltimore, 1869), 5–6, 8.Google Scholar
60. Quoted in Brawley, , Early Negro American Writers, 26–30.Google Scholar Compare also Heartman, Charles F., ed., Jupiter Hammon, American Negro Poet; Selections from His Writings and a Bibliography (New York, 1915), 26.Google Scholar
61. Walker, , Appeal, 16.Google Scholar
62. Whipper, William, “Non-Resistance to Offensive Aggression,” The Colored American, 09 9, 16, 23 and 30, 1837,Google Scholar reprinted in Woodson, ed., Negro Orators, 110, 113, 115–116. Contrast Woodson's introduction to this work, the same, 103–104, with Washington's theological renunciation of the non-violent tradition, Black Religion, 7–25, and Politics of God, 160–168.
63. Bowen, , What Shall the Harvest Be?, 5, 7, 13, 17, 22–25, 59–62,Google Scholar the quotations being from pp. 17 and 59. Compare Douglass, Frederick, “What Are Colored People Doing for Themselves” reprinted from The North Star, 07 28, 1848, in The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Early Years, 1817–1849, ed. Foner, Philip S. (New York, 1950), 314–315, 318.Google Scholar
64. Bowen, , What Shall The Harvest Be?, 49, 51, 64–67Google Scholar, the quotations being from pp. 49 and 67.
65. A study of religious aspects of Black attitudes toward sex is sorely needed, as the thin evidence supporting Frazier's assertions in Negro Church, 31–34, makes plain. Compare Douglass, , My Bondage, 85–86Google Scholar; and suggestive comments in Powdermaker, , After Freedom, 272–273.Google Scholar
66. Mays, , The Negro's God, 23–25, 34–35Google Scholar, and passim.
67. See the excoriation of this preoccupation in Grimke, , Afro-American Pulpit, 11Google Scholar; and examples of it in sermons by African Methodist Episcopal Zion bishops and pastors in Hood, James W., ed., The Negro in the Christian Pulpit, or the Two Characters and Two Destinies (Baleigh, North Carolina, 1884), 29–32, 38–39, 56–57, 61ff.Google Scholar and passim.
68. Frazier, , Negro Church in America, 12–16Google Scholar; Thurman, Howard, The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death (New York, 1947).Google Scholar The songs in MrsArmstrong, M. F. and Ludlow, Helen W., Hampton and Its Students, With Fifty Cabin and Plantation Songs … (New York, 1874), 173–255Google Scholar, are all about heaven. Contrast Douglass, , My Bondage, 278–279Google Scholar, on the use of Methodist hymns with a double meaning. Interestingly, the sermons in Hood, Negro in The Christian Pulpit, all of them thoughtful expositions of a theme, rather than a text, and many of them concerned chiefly with heavenly rather than earthly hopes, quote no spirituals at all, but standard Methodist hymns.
69. See, again, my earlier study of this matter in Revivalism and Social Reform.
70. See, again, Mays' comments on Nathaniel Paul 's speech of 1827 in The Negro's God, 43–44; and compare Washington, , Politics of God, 156–157Google Scholar, rebuking as “pseudoeschatology” and “inauthentic” those passages of the spirituals which offer escape from this world.
71. James McCune Smith's introduction, written in 1865, to Garnet, , Memorial Discourse, 29Google Scholar, makes clear the spiritual basis of Wright's convictions expressed in “Race Prejudice Against the Colored Man,” Woodson, , ed., Negro Orators, 94–95.Google Scholar Compare the concern for the heavenly salvation of his New Haven congregation in Amos G. Beman, “Scrap Book, 1830–1858,” loose pages torn from Beman's notebooks during 1856 and 1857, years of his heightened abolitionist activity.
72. Wright, Theodore S., A Pastoral Letter, Addressed to the Colored Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, June 20, 1832 (pamphlet) (New York, 1832), 7–8.Google Scholar
73. Campbell, Jabez P., “A Scriptural View, or the Statement Concerning Paradise That Was Lost, Regained”, The African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, I (07, 1884), 13–15.Google Scholar Compare the summary of his millennial sermon in African Methodist Episcopal Church, North Georgia Annual Conference, Minutes of the 10th Session … 1883 (n.p., 1883), 18. See also Hunt, Christopher, Education of the Masses. An Education Sermon Preached Before the South Kansas Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church … (Kansas City, Mo., 1884), 19–20Google Scholar; Arnett, Benjamin W., Centennial Thanksgiving Sermon … (Urbana, Ohio, 1876), 43–46Google Scholar; and sermon by Baltimore Methodist pastor and educator, Lyon, Ernest, in Irvine Garland Penn, The United Negro: His Problems and His Progress, Containing the Addresses and Proceedings, the Young People's Christian and Educational Conference … (Atlanta, Georgia, 1902), 91.Google Scholar
74. Powdermaker, , After Freedom, 230–232, 245–246, 248Google Scholar, errs only in attributing a more narrow Fundamentalism to the earlier epochs. A volume of Baptist sermons intended to assure white missionaries that their educational labors in the South had not been in vain is the only proto-Fundamentalist work I found in nineteenth-century literature: Brawley, D. D., ed., The Negro Baptist Pulpit: A Collection of Sermons and Papers on Baptist Doctrine and Missionary and Educational Work … (Philadelphia, 1890), 9, 51–63, 104–112.Google Scholar
- 4
- Cited by