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Chapter 4 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? On October 4, 1883, Benjamin T. Tanner published the editorial “The Future Church,” which challenged the racial exclusivity found in congregations across the country and questioned the relevancy of keeping “African” in the denominational title of the AME Church. Tanner wrote that the church “must cease to be a church exclusively for colored people. As greatly as we revere the title ‘African,’ we must begin to get ready to put it aside, even as the old warrior puts aside his trusty sword after it shall have done its work. And who will say that the title ‘African’ has not almost, but entirely, done its work? It certainly has in so far as letting the great world know that this is purely and entirely a negro church. In these days of universal liberty, in these days of civil and political equality, the country and the people have no need for churches with a membership purely white nor for churches with a membership purely colored. What these days demand are churches ‘of the people, for the people, and by the people.’”1 While for Tanner the issues and solutions were clear, namely, integrating churches in the United States and retitling the denomination the American Methodist Episcopal Church, the debate over ecumenical mergers and the most appropriate referent for the race and denomination dominated the pages of the Christian Recorder in the final months of Tanner’s editorship. The transition from “African,” “people of color,” “colored people,” or “Colored American” to “Negro” from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century illustrates the growing consciousness about the importance of racial referents in American public discourse. The prominence of the term “African” in the early nineteenth century can be seen in the titles of benevolent societies, schools, educational organizations, and churches, including the AME Church. While the prevalence of the term “African” may have 64 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? reflected a continued cultural resonance with the continent of their ancestors , by the nineteenth century most African Americans had been in America for at least two generations, since the end of the Atlantic slave trade in 1808. Although white supporters often played a significant role in the establishment , financial support, and naming of early “African” institutions, naming practices in the nineteenth century reflected a conscious strategy to advance the race out of slavery and secure a brighter collective future. In the early nineteenth century, in many ways, “African” functioned as an ethnic marker much like those of other immigrant groups. The rise of the ACS in 1816 and the organization’s plans to repatriate blacks to Africa gave “African” an un-American and outsider connotation, a development that led to the rise of the term “Colored,” with its perceived respectability, and later to the rehabilitated term “Negro.”2 Yet if a consensus had been reached about the self-referent of “Colored American,” why would debate still be raging in the AME Church well into the late nineteenth century about the term “African” in their denominational title? The answer in part lies in the tradition of melding racial and sacred history in the AME Church. Not only were Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, Daniel Coker, and others cast in heroic terms in AME histories, but the narratives themselves became a type of sacred record and prescriptive literature upon which future leaders and members were to draw upon for future inspiration. To alter the past, even an adjustment in the title, marked an unacceptable departure for some from what bound them together as a denomination and a race. Even further, understandings of Christians as a “family” complicated black denominational identities, which both valorized the departure of African Methodism from white Christianity and troubled clergy and congregations over the lack of religious unity it represented. As concepts such as “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” made their way into the intellectual climate of America, black religious leaders and laity challenged the burgeoning field of textual analysis, which at times called into question the origins of sacred writings while employing many aspects of social Darwinism to measure the progress of the race and assess those churches that exhibited an “organic” connection to their denominations. Once again, the Christian Recorder was uniquely suited for the type of ongoing , staggered, multilayered historical construction necessary to wrestle with the seeming incongruity among social Darwinian thought, biblical authority , “African” identity, and denominational loyalty. These tensions were most apparent in the second half of the...

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