What Was The Role Of The Church In African American Society

Church was extremely important to the black community in the 1930s. In this picture of the John Wesley Church congregation, you can observe how nicely everyone is dressed, due to how respected worship was.
Most early black churches were formed by freed slaves due to how important religion was to slaves. For example, Richard Allen, a former slave, founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E. for short) in 1787, where he was elected bishop. Allen lead a group of black methodists to leave the St. George Methodist Episcopal Church, located in Philadelphia, as a protest against segregation. In 1786, Richard Allen along with Absalom Jones, who was also a former slave, helped to form the Free African Society. The Free African Society split
into The Bethel African Methodist Church (lead by Allen) and the St. Thomas African Episcopal Church (lead by Jones) i 1794. Another prominent black church was the American Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which was founded by a group who left the John St. Methodist Episcopal Church i 1796. Many famous abolitionists belonged to this church, including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. After the Civil War, churches played a massive role in the education of the African American Community.
The church was the center of the black Community, and they were commonly used as schools, before schools could be built. Furthermore, preachers would have the congregation repeat them, especially in hymns, which helped black churchgoers memorize songs and bible verses (a preaching technique dubbed ‘call and response’). Several historic black colleges were founded by churches and church denominations. An example is Morehouse college in Atlanta, which was founded in 1867 by a baptist organization The church’s investment into education eventually paid off in the civil rights movement. The lawyers and activists who fought and overcame segregation were educated in church sponsored black
universities. Black churches were a crucial factor in the building of the black community and the civil rights movement. Before the civil rights movement really gained momentum in the 50s, many of its prominent leaders were ministers, pastors, and priests. Martin Luther King Junior was a Baptist minister, and many of his approaches to fighting for liberation were inspired by Christian teachings. He helped to establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC for short) IN 1957, which was a civil rights organization that also dealt with development problems in the black community. Vernon Johns and Leon Howard Sullivan were also both activists and ministers. My thesis is Black churches played a crucial role in the education, liberation, and building of a community for African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird presents this in her portrayal of the black church and community. Calpurnia’s church in the novel, First Purchase, is a prime example. When the kids attend a mass there, Reverend Sykes says in his sermon “You all know of Brother Tom Robinson’s trouble. He has been a faithful member of First Purchase since he was a boy. The collection taken up today and for the next three sundays will go to Helen, his wife, to help her at home.” In the 30s, African Americans faced many hardships, and these challenges brought them together, and strengthened the bonds within the black community. As I’ve said before, the Church was the center of the black community, and Zeebo’s words exhibit this. Like a family, the black church community watches out for each other, and helps their members who are facing challenges (Tom Robinson and his family in this case). Additionally, generosity is a core value of christianity, thus it became one of the black community as well, which contributed to the close bonds between all of its members, both in the novel and in
reality. Another moment from Scout and Jem’s trip to first purchase displays Call and Response in use. Lee writes “The congregation hesitated, Zeebo repeated the line carefully and it was sung. At the chorus Zeebo closed the book, a sign for the congregation to proceed without his help” (Lee 138). First Purchase, similarly to many real-life black churches, could not afford hymn books, and most of it’s members are illiterate, so they used the call and response style of preaching/ singing (or ‘lining’ as Calpurnia calls it). The use of call and response reflects on how community oriented black churches were, because it takes the high illiteracy rates into account and avoids making reading hymns or bible verses a necessary part of worship, like in white churches. This allowed for everyone to participate in the ceremony, and helped to avoid the exclusion of uneducated blacks from the community.
After the trial, where Atticus did his best to defend Tom, the church members all left various food items at the Finch family’s back door to show their appreciation. Calpurnia says “This was all around the back steps when I got here this morning. They-they ‘preciate what you did, Mr. Finch. They-they aren’t overstepping themselves, are they?” (Lee 249). The black church community was very tightknit, they cared deeply for all their members, including Tom. Although he was doomed to fail from the start, Atticus put an extraordinary amount of effort into trying to win the case, and they really appreciated it. With the little they had, all of the church community did what they could to show their thanks. Like I said earlier, generosity is a key belief of both the church and black community, so the members of First Purchase saw giving the Finch family several gifts as the most appropriate method of showing their gratitude.
In brief, Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird exhibits the role of churches in the black community and all aspects of life for african Americans.