Dark Salvation: Methodism Comes to America

As I spoke to my mother on the telephone this week, I shared with her some of the history of the Methodist circuit riders. She told me of a time when I was just a small child when Stroudsburg United Methodist Church had celebrated an anniversary of the denomination with an historical visit by a circuit rider.

What made you want to research the church's history, she asked.

Being raised in the United Methodist Church, I had never been taught the history of Methodism . . . not even in Confirmation classes. So, what would make me want to search for its formation in America when my research is focused on African American family and local history?

On our last visit with my husband's cousins following the 2009 George Family Reunion, Cousin Hattie said,

We were always Methodists. . . .

 Hattie is gone now. . . and I honor her memory by keeping my promise to tell the story.

CHAPTER III: Methodism Comes to America


When early local church histories are sketchy due to a lack of documents and living witnesses, we must go back further, to the origins in America. From this we can gain insight from well-documented narratives and diaries of ministers and lay leaders, and imagine how it might have played out in our particular locality.

The time frame is approximately one hundred years prior to the founding of the African American Episcopal Zion Church South of the County.

In 1760 a group of persons from Ireland arrived in New York City. They were of German descent, their ancestors having fled Germany a century before to escape religious persecution . . . . In the group . . . were two persons who were to play a large part in planting Methodism in America. One was Philip Embury, who had been a Methodist class leader and local preacher in Ireland, and the other was Barabara Heck, Embury's cousin . . . . Embury's home soon became too small for the numbers that attended. A room was rented, but after a year they undertook to build a "meeting house." Contributions were solicited. In the list of contributors there are the names of several Negro slaves . . . . The Society started in Embury's house eventually became the John Street Church in New York City, known as the mother church of Methodism. By 1795 there were 155 black members . . . . it was from this group of blacks that some members withdrew in 1801 to organize the African Chapel which eventually became the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion denomination (Richardson, pp. 36-37).

When missionary Francis Asbury arrived in America there were 600 Methodists in the colonies. Two years later there were 1,600. Three years after this in 1776, at the outbreak of the American Revolution, there were 4,921; in 1786, 20,689; and in 1800 there were 63,958. In 1771 there were ten traveling preachers; in 1800 there were nearly two hundred. The growth was neither automatic nor easy. It was due to tireless, sacrificial labors of the preachers . . . . These men at first were ordinary laymen, some of them poorly educated . . . . They preached in homes and churches, "meeting houses" or open fields. They preached on crowded streets or by country lanes; on jailhouse steps or, as in the case of Asbury, from a hangman's gallows after a public hanging. They preached to receptive crowds or in spite of attacks by brutal, violent mobs. They did this with little thought of personal safety or reward (pp. 37-38).

The chapter borrows freely from Abel Stevens' histories of the MEC, and the dramatic first-hand accounts of inter-racial worship illustrate the true spirit of Galatians 3:28: 

There is neither Jew nor Greek, 

there is neither bond nor free, 

there is neither male nor female: 

for ye are all one in Christ Jesus (KJV).

It was not until nearly a century later, following the invention of the cotton gin at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when the severe Negro Codes began to deepen and broaden the racial dividing line in places of worship. The discontent which arose in the souls of blacks was largely what caused them to desire an end to segregation in the House of God, and to establish separate places of worship.

For additional reading:
Abel Stevens, History of the Religious Movement of the 18th Century (1858).
Abel Stevens, History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America (1866).
W. J. Walls, The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1974).

Dark Salvation: Faith in Chains

While the Carter and George families were free people of color since the 1730s, living in a community made up of a majority of free people of color, I have at times wondered how they must have felt--beyond the obvious--about their enslaved brethren.

As we learned in the series entitled, Ministers & Preachers of Township 5, black preachers recorded in the Census did not show up until 1880. This was mainly due to laws of segregation which made it necessary for ordained white ministers to oversee unordained black preachers. In addition, following Emancipation, many illiterate preachers joining organized denominations were required to seek education at a theological seminary which would prepare them for ordination.

The following chapter in Dark Salvation examines how the origins of enslaved people affected their spiritual identity in the New World.

Dr. Neil A. Frankel's,
The Atlantic Slave Trade and
Slavery in America

Part I: Background
Chapter II: The Slave and His Religion: Faith in Chains


Richardson states that:

Most of the Negroes who were brought into the Western Hemisphere came from the west coastal regions of central or sub-Saharan Africa, roughly the section that extends from Senegal (Dakar) in the north to Angola in the south. . . . The people of West Africa had well-developed religions (p. 14).

 Professor Gayraud Wilmore stated

. . . that the African religions. . . . are mature, enlightened beliefs and practices common to many religions and similar in many ways to contemporary Christian faith. . . . It is a continent comprising many nations and multiplicity of tribes large and small, each with its own language or dialect, its own culture and its own history. . . .  Even today in the city of Accra, a five-minute radio news broadcast takes thirty minutes. It must be given in five tribal languages in addition to English. Only in the broadest sense can one speak of anything as commonly or uniformly "African" (p. 15).

As a multi-culturalist, this has been my understanding for years; although, to some is is taken as an offense. The French professor and African scholar, Roger Bastide, warns that

care must be taken not to write ideas and phenomena of our own time into the history of three centuries ago, and not to arrange such knowledge as we do have to suit contemporary interests and biases (p. 15-16).

With this concept in mind, we must understand that from the African perspective, there was no separation between the secular and the sacred. Life was viewed as a whole...in unity. Their religions included elaborate moral and ethical systems, just as we find of the Hebrews in the book of Leviticus; and they understood that a creative God gave life and order to the natural world. Some accounts bore striking similarities or at least were compatible with the Genesis account.

I have heard it said many times that some feel that just as Africans' family identity, language, culture and religion were stripped from them in a repressive society, that Christianity--"the religion of white Europeans"--was forced upon them. Throughout my research I have seen a dichotomy in this respect. The planters were afraid that if a slave became baptized and given a Christian name that he would learn to read, giving him more power than they desired him to obtain.

It was in this system that black people, some originally from Africa, but many more born in America, tried to find meaning and purpose in existence. It was in this system that some slaves tried to find God (p. 23).

For this reason, Methodist ministers had to teach orally. Upon conversion, blacks participated in segregated white churches, sitting in the balcony or in the back, and taking communion after the whites.

It was this faith in the ultimate righteousness of God that enabled the slave to bridge the contradiction between the good god as taught by the missionaries and the god who would let His black children suffer. They believed in heaven and hell. Heaven let them look to a good end to this painful life, if not here, then at least hereafter. Hell let them believe in the ultimate righting of wrongs (p. 28).

Dark Salvation: The Story of Methodism as It Developed Among Blacks in America, by Harry V. Richardson (1976)

This is the first post in a new series about the development of post-Emancipation African-American Methodist Churches. When the direct approach toward research yields small fruits, than a broader, more generalized approach must be taken.

This is the most recent book I've read on the subject, and since it has offered much, I now share with you my gleanings.  There may be many points that I do not address which might interest you; but, I will be focusing on those aspects which will help me to recreate how things might have been for my husband's ancestors in their small, timber and farming community in coastal North Carolina.

PART I: Background
Chapter I: The Beginnings of Methodism


Since the most basic origins of the Methodist Church are commonly known, i.e. its founders, the beginnings of  The Holy Club at Christ Church College, and the derisive nickname attributed toward them, I will gloss over these. What I found interesting was that their initial missions proved unsuccessful. Both John and Charles Wesley came to the colony of Georgia in 1735,

John to serve as a missionary to the Indians and chaplain to the settlement at Savannah, and Charles to serve as secretary to General Oglethorpe and chaplain to the settlers at Frederica (p. 5).

Because Georgia had been settled as a debtors' colony, it was thought that the introduction of slaves would prove counterproductive. Those newly settled in the colony had been largely city-dwellers, inexperienced as farmers, and unaccustomed to working the types of crops that could grow in that soil and climate. The only "Negroes" found within the colony were runaways from neighboring colonies; and for this reason, the Wesleys had little contact with them. Yet John Wesley wrote his opinion of them in his antislavery pamphlet, Thoughts Upon Slavery.

Following the Wesleys' conversion experience,

They preached with such vigor, and aroused such "excessive" emotional response in the hearers, that they were soon excluded from the churches. Undaunted, they took to the open fields, and to the streets, anywhere a crowd could come together. Great numbers flocked to hear them, expressing their feelings with cries, tears, prostrations, and "fits." Many were converted (p.11).

In order to understand the episcopacy of the African-American offshoots of the Methodist Episcopal Church, we must first understand the method John Wesley used to organize the body of converts. First they were divided into Societies, and those were divided into classes headed by leaders. Unordained lay preachers were appointed to instruct and inspire the Societies. As the groups spread out across a region, itinerant preachers, or circuit riders who were ordained ministers, traveled between churches within a district and oversaw the preaching and instruction of Society members. Even today, it is common for most UMC ministers to remain in one location for no more than 3-4 years.

In a letter to Francis Asbury of September 30, 1785, he said: "Were I to preach three years together in one place, both the people and myself would grow as dead as stones (p. 12). 

Because the lay preachers were unordained, they were unable to serve communion, and thus the need arose to have ordained preachers within each church.

One item of notes gave clarity to the phrase, "annual conference."

Note: "The term 'annual conference' has three meanings as it is used within Methodism. In the first sense it refers to the administrative body which has jurisdiction over two or more district conferences. In the second sense it refers to the geographical territory administered by the conference. In the third sense, the term is used to refer to the meeting itself which is held once a year by this body for the purpose of regulating the affairs of all the churches located within the territory."  From an unpublished manuscript by Yorke S. Allen, Jr. (p. 13).

For additional reading:
John Wesley, Thoughts Upon Slavery, 1774, a pamphlet, printed in The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., John Emory, ed., (1835).