An amalgamation of African and European forms of religious worship developed into the African American Baptist Church. The cosmologies and churches fashioned by blacks in the United States helped them survive and transcend the harsh realities of slavery in the South.
The religious
African Americans were particularly drawn to the Baptist faith, especially in the latter part of the eighteenth century. White Baptists, themselves often among the poorest in Southern society, actively recruited African Americans. Furthermore, Baptists did not require formal education as part of ministerial
One area where African American Baptists flourished was the Savannah River Valley, which connected the hinterlands around Augusta, Georgia, with the port city of Savannah. Here, evangelical revivals among whites and blacks bore organizational fruit among African Americans. Indeed, African Americans formed their own Baptist church at Silver Bluff, near Augusta, in 1773, following one such revival.
About that time, a slave named George Liele heard a sermon preached
Both George and Liele initially had become Baptists because of their own desire to go to heaven, but quickly they took it upon themselves to preach to their fellow slaves. Having found a sense of inner peace because of his religion, Liele wanted others to experience in themselves “the work which God had done for my soul.” Liele and George organized other churches, including the congregation at Yama Craw, outside Savannah, in 1777.
Among those who heard Liele preach at Yama Craw was Andrew Bryan. Bryan had been born in Goose Creek, South Carolina, and was baptized by Liele in 1782. Bryan eventually purchased his freedom and devoted himself to his ministry. It was a decision not without consequences, as whites who feared an unshackled black man whipped Bryan twice and imprisoned him once. Undeterred, he continued to preach to ever-larger congregations, which often contained both blacks and whites. In 1788, his congregation constituted itself into the Savannah Georgia First Colored Church, commonly called the
Liele, George, and Bryan stood at the forefront of an important movement among African Americans in the South. Their religious teachings fused the African concepts of a unitary universe where the sacred and profane are not segregated; the European mythologies of Heaven, Hell, and redemption; and their present reality of slavery. God would help Africans through their travail of slavery and would one day lead them out of bondage. In this melding process, certain African religious practices were proscribed. The church covenant of Liele’s
Liele, George, and Bryan founded churches and baptized ministers who started other churches. One man converted by George and Liele was
The careers of George Liele, David George, and Andrew Bryan also illustrate the protean political nature of evangelicalism. The formation of churches operated by African Americans reflects the capacity of blacks to avoid complete organizational enslavement as surely as the forming of a black theology kept African Americans from psychic enslavement. From these organizational and intellectual bases, African Americans could confront slavery in various ways.
Both Liele and George fled the South for the British Empire, seeking to continue their ministerial work without the specter of slavery hanging over them. Liele went to Jamaica, establishing the first Baptist churches there. George went to Canada, where he worked with both blacks and whites before organizing a
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Bellew, Christopher Brent. The Impact of African-American Antecedents on the Baptist Foreign Missionary Movement, 1782-1825. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004. Describes the missionary work of Liele and George at the close of the Revolutionary War. George established missions in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, while Liele founded a mission in Jamaica, where he worked with Moses Baker, another black Baptist. -
Fitts, LeRoy. A History of Black Baptists. Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman Press, 1985. A sympathetic and readable account of black Baptist leaders and churches. -
Lincoln, C. Eric, and Lawrence H. Mamiya. The Black Church in the African American Experience. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990. A well-written survey of African American churches since their earliest times and their meaning in the African American struggle in the United States. -
Sernett, Milton C. Afro-American Religious History: A Documentary Witness. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1985. Contains letters from Bryan and Liele and many other representative documents of the African American religious experience. -
Sobel, Mechal. Trablin’ On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. Emphasizes the hybrid quality of the African American Baptist Church. -
Washington, James Melvin. Frustrated Fellowship: The Black Quest for Social Power. Mercer, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2004. History of the African American Baptist Church originally published in 1986. Washington explains how the church enabled African Americans to achieve a “peculiar and precarious religious freedom,” as well as a sense of identity, community, and social power. Paperback edition with a new preface by Quentin H. Dixie and a new foreword by Cornell West. -
Wilmore, Gayraud S., ed. African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989. A series of essays interpreting the fragmentary documentary record of early African American religious life.
Settlement of Georgia
First Great Awakening
Methodist Church Is Established in Colonial America
Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty
Episcopal Church Is Established
Second Great Awakening
Francis Asbury; Isaac Backus; Charles Carroll; Jonathan Edwards; Ann Lee; Cotton Mather; Increase Mather; Samuel Sewall; Granville Sharp; Charles Wesley; John Wesley; George Whitefield; William Wilberforce.