Exploring African American Christianity in the Gilded Age

From the Civil War to the Great Migration, 1865-1920

By Laurie Maffly-Kipp
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
©National Humanities Center

The Era of Emancipation posed distinctive religious challenges for northern and southern African Americans. When the Civil War finally brought freedom to previously enslaved peoples, the task of organizing religious communities was only one element of the larger need to create new lives—to reunite families, to find jobs, and to figure out what it would mean to live in the United States as citizens rather than property. Northern blacks, for their part, having already gained freedom, saw Emancipation as an enormous logistical challenge—how could black Protestants meet the many needs of newly freed slaves and truly welcome them into a Christian community? For both, Emancipation promised a meeting between two African American religious traditions that had moved far apart, in terms of both theology and ritual, in the previous seventy years.

In significant respects, the story of African American religion between Emancipation and the northern migration that began just before World War I is a tale of regionally distinctive communities that found several areas of common cause, not the least of which was the advent of Jim Crow and lynching as ominous new forms of racism. But an understanding of religious experience in this era must also be supplemented by the complexities of the many internal boundaries in African American life in both the north and south—class divisions, rural/urban differences, and gender issues that accompanied the dawn of freedom.

Class Divisions (Emancipation in the North and South)

A long history of antislavery and political activity among northern black Protestants had convinced them that they could play a major role in the adjustment of the four million freed slaves to American life. In a massive missionary effort, northern black churches established missions to their southern counterparts, resulting in the dynamic growth of independent black churches in the southern states between 1865 and 1900. Predominantly white denominations, such as the Presbyterian, Congregational, and Episcopal churches, also sponsored missions, opened schools for freed slaves, and aided the general welfare of southern blacks, but the majority of African-Americans chose to join the independent black denominations founded in the northern states during the antebellum era.

Within a decade the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) churches claimed southern membership in the hundreds of thousands, far outstripping that of any other organizations. They were quickly joined in 1870 by a new southern-based denomination, the Colored (now "Christian") Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by indigenous southern black leaders. Finally, in 1894 black Baptists formed the National Baptist Convention, an organization that is currently the largest black religious organization in the United States.

In many ways this missionary effort was enormously successful. It helped finance and build new churches and schools, it facilitated a remarkable increase in southern black literacy (from 5% in 1870 to approximately 70% by 1900), and, as had been the case in the north, it promoted the rise of many African American leaders who worked well outside the sphere of the church in politics, education, and other professions. But it also created many tensions between northerners, who saw themselves in many respects as the superiors and mentors of their less fortunate southern brethren, and southerners, who had their own ideas about how to worship, work, and live.

Not all ex-slaves welcomed the "help" of the northerners, black or white, particularly because most northern blacks (like whites) saw southern black worship as hopelessly "heathen." Missionaries like Daniel Payne, an AME bishop, took it as their task to educate southern blacks about what "true" Christianity looked like; they wanted to convince ex-slaves to give up any remnants of African practices (such as drumming, dancing, or moaning) and embrace a more sedate, intellectual style of religion. Educational differences played a role in this tension as well. Southern blacks, most of whom had been forbidden from learning to read, saw religion as a matter of oral tradition and immediate experience and emotion. Northerners, however, stressed that one could not truly be Christian unless one was able to read the Bible and understand the creeds and written literature that accompanied a more textually-oriented religious system.

Religious Variety and the Holiness/Pentecostal Movement

Freedom also brought with it opportunities for self-improvement and "getting ahead," and differences of class and location also fostered different kinds of religious practices and beliefs. Gradually, southern religious life became as variegated as that in the north, with Protestant churches to suit a variety of styles. Generally, poorer and more rural churches tended to cling more tenaciously to older customs, and to more experiential forms of worship, and since the vast majority of southern blacks remained in rural areas, many of the traditions inherited from the "hush harbors" of slavery—including root work, chanted preaching, and particularly musical styles—remained a part of church life. In southern cities, as the numbers of educated and middle-class African Americans grew, so too did the interest in a more rationalized and uniform religious experience like that of the north.

Several momentous religious developments emerged out of these changes in southern life by the 1880s. First was the emergence of a "holiness" movement, a trend that emphasized the possibility of Christian perfection through a series of religious experiences of "sanctification." Initially a biracial movement within Methodist churches, holiness ideals fit well with the emphasis on intense religious experience and separation from the world already practiced in southern African American churches. Eventually holiness advocates drew followers and adherents from within other denominations as well. At camp meetings and revivals throughout the south and midwest, black and white Christians met and sang, preached, and testified together in a spirit-filled style reminiscent of earlier African American patterns. Ultimately organized into "Holiness" churches, this development would, after World War I, find its way back to the north and would reinject a new religious style into African American urban worship.

By 1906, the loosely organized holiness movement gave birth to an offshoot, pentecostalism, that would become tremendously important in subsequent decades. That year, during a holiness revival at a Los Angeles church, worshippers were said to have received the gifts of the spirit (speaking and interpreting "tongues," among others) bestowed upon Christ’s followers at Pentecost. This feature came to be a hallmark of pentecostal worship. Although like holiness, pentecostalism began as a multiracial movement that emphasized equality before Christ, by World War I racial lines had formed, and separate black Pentecostal denominations had organized after being shut out by their white counterparts. By the late twentieth century, black Pentecostal denominations, led by the large and influential Church of God in Christ, would become an important component of black religious variety throughout the United States.

Urban Centers
Meanwhile, African American religion in urban areas of the north and south also changed dramatically, particularly after the 1880s. Here, issues of class predominated, as middle-class blacks began to build a religious life much like that of their white counterparts. The AME Church, in particular, was noted for its large, formal churches, its educational network of schools and colleges, and its vast publishing arm that included several publications by the end of the century. Black religious leaders became involved in some of the interdenominational institutions, such as the YMCA and the Sunday School movement, that were the bulwarks of evangelical life at the turn of the twentieth century. Yet unlike white evangelical leaders of the day, who were also engaged in theological battles about biblical history and interpretation, middle-class blacks kept their eyes trained toward the basic social injustices wrought by American racism. This battle, which had steadily worsened after the 1870s, promoted a degree of political unity among black Protestant groups that, at times, outweighed their many differences.

Yet there were some internal tensions. With the emergence of middle-class membership came issues about women's participation in the church, as some black women now had the relative leisure to look beyond the immediacies of life. Several female leaders in this era raised the issue of women's ordination, only to be rebuffed by the male hierarchy. Instead, women formed missionary societies to address all manner of local and international needs, from the support of job training in their communities to funding for African American missionaries to Africa. They worked on urban ills, established reading groups, and advocated for better living conditions. They also wrote for religious periodicals, promoting quite traditional ideals of Victorian womanhood, respectability, and racial uplift. Women also continued work among their less fortunate counterparts in the rural south, in what continued to be an uneasy alliance. Like male religious leaders, too, they protested the creeping effects of Jim Crow laws and the systematic violence of lynching.

In sum, the divisions between north and south that began the era had changed dramatically by the eve of World War I. Slavery was no longer the single point of contrast. Southern cities, by that time, looked much more like their northern counterparts, and instead rural/urban differences emerged. Class distinctions took hold as educational and professional opportunities for African Americans increased. And middle-class women were also challenging traditional patterns of male leadership. All of these issues were made manifest in—and were often encouraged by—organized religious life. Yet black Protestants also solidly stood against the growing tide of racism in America, using the church as a tool of protest and a harbor in the storm. Still at the center of black experience, the church embodied both the unity and the divisions among African Americans.

Guiding Student Discussion

This period presents a great challenge in the classroom, if only because the material follows no easy narrative. Scholars have reached little consensus, and in some cases, little research has been done that can shed light on the outlines of black church life in this era beyond the most general statements. For this reason, emphasizing issues of what unifies blacks, and what diversifies them, is a fruitful way of pointing out similarities and differences. I would also strongly urge a biographical approach to this period, if only because it is easier to see how some of these tensions get worked out in an individual life than to talk about them abstractly. A good place to begin, in this respect, might be with Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, or Ida B. Wells-Barnett, all of whom were involved with organized religion at points in their careers (see Primary Sources).

Three areas of discussion may be particularly fruitful.

Ohio Hist. Soc. Bishop Daniel A. Payne excerpt on "praying and singing bands" from Recollection of Seventy Years, 1888


· The conflicts that arose between black northern missionaries and southern blacks. It is useful to employ writings by participants here, particularly the work of Daniel Alexander Payne, who published several histories of the church in addition to memoirs that recount his experiences in the South (see Primary Sources). Hopefully, students can be coaxed into a discussion of these two very different understandings of what constitutes "real" religion—experience vs. education, rationality vs. emotional intensity, etc.—and can be made to see the internal logic of each. The danger is that they may come away seeing the northerners as "sell-outs" or simply traditional stick-in-the-muds who are trying to squelch honest religious experience, rather than understanding the context for the northern brand of piety. So you may need to work hard to point out that even people sitting quietly in their pews can have a "real" religious experience.

Apostolic Faith Church

Open-air revival of the Apostolic Faith Church, Portland, Oregon, 1907

• The emergence of the holiness-
pentecostal movement. Since this is a movement that cuts across denominations and reflects a religious style as much as a set of beliefs, it can be a bit abstract to talk about. It might be useful to discuss why the Pentecostals rather quickly break down into racially-based denominations after beginning in a very multiracial way. What does this say about racial divisions in our society? Why are they still divided, long after segregation in other places has been abolished? What might have attracted people in 1906 (at the height of lynching and Jim Crow) to a multiracial movement in the first place?

• The plight of middle-class black Protestants after the 1870s. This tends to be the great forgotten story of African American religious life, in part because they seem relatively conservative in our day and age (and thus haven't inspired many historians to recover their story). But they also blended a remarkable mixture of organizational strength and savvy with enduring political protest over segregation. Women in the movement are particularly notable as some of the first African American women to gain an organized social voice in our society. What did the church provide that allowed them to do this, and to sustain themselves in the face of continued oppression? In this regard, I find the autobiography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett to be particularly moving (see Primary Sources).

Historians Debate
There are a few comprehensive survey studies of the Reconstruction Era. On this period, see William E. Montgomery,Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 1865-1900(1993) for an overview. On Methodists, see Reginald Hildebrand,The Times Were Strange and Stirring: Methodist Preachers and the Crisis of Emancipation(1995). On Baptists, the best sources are James Washington,Frustrated Fellowship: The Black Baptist Quest for Social Power(1986), and Paul Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925(1997).

The Holiness-Pentecostal movement has been understudied, particularly the African American side of the story. For an overview, see Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (2001) and Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (1997/1971). For African-American Pentecostals, see Cheryl J. Sanders, Saints in Exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion and Culture (1996).

Although the full effects of the "Great Migration" of southern blacks to northern cities were not apparent until the 1920s, there are several excellent introductions available that cover the religious origins and spiritual dimensions of the move. See Milton C. Sernett, Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration (1997), and Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (1991).

Women noted in C. O. Booth, The Cyclopedia of the Colored Baptists of Alabama: Their Leaders and Their Work, 1895, full text

The most intriguing recent scholarship on African-American religions has dealt with the relatively neglected stories of northern free blacks and women in black churches. Since the mid-1980s, scholars have highlighted religion as one aspect of the many identities assumed by African Americans; they have helpfully focused attention on issues of class (middle-class versus poorer blacks), gender, and region within black churches, as well as shedding new light on issues of race. Recent research accordingly has dealt with the post-Civil War era as a time of tremendous strain and transformation within African-American culture, as well as between whites and blacks, with the church as a primary political and cultural meeting point for many types of people. While much remains to be uncovered in this area, the best starting points are Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church 1880-1920 (1993), and the essays in Judith Weisenfeld and Richard Newman, eds., This Far By Faith: Readings in African-American Women’s Religious Autobiography (1996).