Around the Family Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1865-1900 (review)

The jacket cover of this 112-page historical study of the African Methodist Episcopal Church proclaims that the author, Julius H. Bailey, "presents a new understanding of family life in American religious history." I truly wish that this were true. Around the Family Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1865-1900, is not a completely lacking study of some aspects of the Church as written about by some few privileged individuals, mostly men. Indeed, Professor Bailey, on faculty at the University of the Redlands in California, has culled an arena of historical research previously not widely considered.

Within the few pages of this book, plus its notes to chapters, bibliography, and index, the reader will be introduced to writings in AME Church publications that engage the general discourse on issues of domesticity in the United States between 1865 and 1900. Bailey sets his sites specifically on "moments of intense interest in the family and the most outspoken (my emphasis) advocates and opponents of domestic ideology, especially those that invoked a particularly strong response in AME periodicals such as the Christian Recorder." Equally, Professor Bailey's self proclaimed concern is only in exploring "ways contributors to nineteenth century AME literature imagined and presented the ideal black family and home to advance causes large and small in the church and American society" (p. 7).

I admit that I thought Dr. Bailey's book would be a deep historical exploration of the AME Church and issues of domesticity. To my surprise, as early as page 15, he begins probing the larger, white U.S. society for ideas on the subject. To a certain extent this is necessary because African Americans are integral citizens and participating members of the nation. Bailey accepts this also but allows his conceptual focus to rely too heavily on positions, contentions, and visions from white America. Even when he encounters contesting ideals, images, and practices in the black community, Bailey refuses to give intentionality to that African American community.

For example, Bailey categorizes contestations about a universal white concept of womanhood as "Images of Black Victoria." He does not appear to read through his textual data to a reality of an alternative vision of womanhood contained in the ideal type of "race woman." As the author says, "Although employing the language of domesticity, post-Reconstruction witnessed a subtle shift from measuring black women against the images found in white domestic literature to an emphasis on the ways their attributes contributed to racial uplift." I kept wondering why this overt indication of African American distinctiveness in criteria and definition of womanhood could not have been the focal concept for exploring domesticity in AME Church literature? Advocates and proponents of "race woman" could have been equally explored. The results could even have been compared and contrasted to the white idea of domesticity. I'm certain there are data within the AME literature. Bailey himself states, "the exact characteristics of the ideal 'race woman' remained a contested notion in the AME Church" (p. 68). Instead, this author chose to forge ahead for forty-four more pages, insisting that an African American phenomenon belonged within a Euro-American concept; a round ball not fitting in a square hole?