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9. The AMA and the Black Church
- The University of Alabama Press
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,9, The AMA and the Black Church [3.236.111.234] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 03:43 GMT) ALTHOUGH intimately involved in black education, the ., I ~ American Missionary Association was equally concerned = about the freedmen's spiritual welfare. Duty "imperatively called" upon the AMA to furnish former slaves "with the Gospel of impartial love and with such instruction, as could enable them to read the precepts and understand its provisions of salvation." The association was determined not only to sunder the bonds of slavery but to free blacks from the fetters of superstition and sin and bring them "into the glorious liberty of the gospel."l The possibilities for influencing black religion seemed limitless. Long desiring religious freedom and repelled by discrimination in white churches, blacks after emancipation quickly began to renounce their old religious connections and form churches of their own. With few exceptions, association personnel perceived black ministers as ignorant and immoral and their congregations as loud, emotional, and sinful. "The people are a religious people," one teacher wrote, "they love to sing and pray and have their shouts, but practical religion they know little of." Teachers spoke disparagingly of the freedmen's emotional fervor, their dancing and rolling on the floor. A northern black teacher declared that meetings were "generally demonstrative, and often boisterous, as they seem to worship on the principle that the Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force." Or as an elderly slave said, "It don't seem as if we poor ignorant Africans can come to the Savior as you educated folks do. We have to worry it out." Most AMA workers never fathomed the slave's religion, which emphasized joy and collective hope rather than personal guilt and self-denial.2 Black ministers and services did not offend all AMA observers, however . Mary Burdick, a teacher in Norfolk, Virginia, was charmed by "a 143 144 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION genuine African 'down South' Methodist prayer meeting-a kind of national opera of feeling it was-the soul forgetful of worldly restraint ... a wild wa'il of the human spirit-unrestrained ... it was so impressive their rocking to and fro-their melodious response 'Oh Yes!' 'Oh Us!' to their speakers as they told them of the sorrows of the lost or the joys of the blessed." The service "affected me strangely," Burdick added. A Mississippi teacher heard "a rough uncultivated" but effective preacher. Another described a sermon as "simple, and part of it mere rant perhaps, but much of it seemed to me like genuine eloquence." Unfortunately more were appalled than charmed by black religion. They viewed services as "painful exhibitions of . . . barbarism " and unfairly branded black ministers as licentious, lazy clowns, forgetting "the many who toiled with stern morality and unremitting industry." The AMA concluded that a "serious religious reconstruction was in order."3 The association undertook to "raise" the level of southern black religion , to introduce a "pure" religion which imposed New Testament ethics on everyday life. Despite the tendency to condemn religious fervor , emotionalism was not at fault. Perhaps whites should take some lessons on that point. The danger of black religion was, in the association 's view, that it was without morality and that it had a "magical system of salvation divorced from ethical imperatives." The freedmen needed not more religious enthusiasm or preaching but more accurate ideals of Christian character. The association was confident that it knew what those ideals should be. American religious groups are commonly influenced by class and provincial considerations and so was the AMA. Its officers confused "pure" religion with the "social, economic and intellectual style" to which they subscribed, and it was with the greatest difficulty that they avoided regarding their "way" as the correct one. Uplifting black religion therefore meant bringing freedmen "to that level of intelligence, character, Christian personhood, emotional sobriety, and economical social self-sufficiency" in keeping with the AMA's ideal and image.4 The decision to reconstruct black religion did not at first include establishing denominational churches. Reconstruction required an extensive program of acculturation and education to modify the freedmen 's "peculiar" culture, religion, and past. Therefore, schools were temporarily more important than new churches. In 1865 the associa- The AMA and the Black Church 145 tion announced measures "looking to a more thorough and systematic prosecutioJil of our distinctively religious efforts." The plan embraced three classes of workers: the pious teacher, female family missionaries , and male missionaries. The teachers were to educate...