The Haitian Revolution (1791-1803) and the accompanying slave revolt transplanted many refugees from the revolution into North America. Both former slaves and free people of color began to arrive in cities like Baltimore and New Orleans in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. The Maryland Gazette published an announcement of “six ships [one a Guineaman, with negroes] four brigs, and four schooners, being part of the fleet which sailed from Cape Francois on the 23d ultimo. The passengers and crews amount to 619 persons…” The blacks on board the Guineaman would become the center of the black religious community that was established in the “chapelle basse” or lower chapel of St. Mary’s Seminary. It was this black community that would later become the first black Catholic parish in the United States when St. Francis Xavier Church was established by the Jesuits, in 1864, as the parish for all black Catholics in Baltimore. Evidence shows that almost a decade before this ship arrived there were three thousand Catholic slaves in Maryland. By the year 1800 there were communities of black Catholics in southern Maryland, southern Louisiana, southern Missouri and western Kentucky.
Theologian Jaime Phelps believes that the “spiritual traditions of the Catholic Church were transmitted to the sons and daughter of Africa without any conciseness of the cultural specific ways- Spanish, Irish, German, English, French or Italian- in which they were being transmitted” The intentions of the church and the crown were implied in the second article of the Code Noir, which required slaveholders to baptize all slaves and instruct them in the Catholic faith. It was believed that this was the only way “true faith” would be brought to...
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...storian, Vol. 12, No. 1, African American Catholics and Their Church. (Winter 1994) pp. 31-48
Morrow, Diane Batts. Outsiders Within: The Oblate Sisters of Providence in 1830’s Church and Society. U.S. Catholic Historian Vol. 15, No. 2, Catholics in a Non-Catholic World, Part One (Spring 1997): pp. 35-54
Morrow, Diane Batts. Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence 1828-1860. (University of North Carolina Press, 2002)
Gould, Virginia Meachum. Henriette Delille, Free Women of Color and Catholicism (pg 271-287) David Gaspar, Darlene Clark-Hine (Ed) Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas
Posey, O.F.M., Cap., Thaddeus. Praying in the Shadows: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, a look at Nineteenth-Century Black Catholic Spirituality. U.S. Catholics Historian, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Winter 1994): pp 11-30
This book is considered an American Classic due to its longevity in popular literature. It also provides the important historical background on the Catholic Church and its impact on the American Southwest. Willa emphasizes, through her writings, the hardships of the people involved in making this part of America what it is today. It points out the influence of the earliest Spanish missionaries of the 16th century through the latter part of the 19th century involving French missionaries and exposes the corruptness as well as the dedication of the missionaries of the church. The book’s main setting is in the 19th century, during the settlement of New Mexico and Colorado and recalls the journeys that a priest undertook and the hardships overcame in order to meet his and the churches goal of bringing the Catholic faith to Mexicans and native Indians. Through his travels and the spiritual work in the beautiful, yet rough environment he was radically transformed. He was especially influenced by the experiences of the westward movement of the agricultural frontier because of the impact of the native people.
Dutto, Rev. L. A. The Life of Bartolomé de Las Casas and the First Leaves of American Ecclesiastical History St. Louis, MO: B. Herder 1902
Hopkins, Dwight N. "Columbus, the Church, and slave religion." Journal of Religious Thought, Winter 92/ Spring 93, Volume 49, Issue 2, p25.
Kroll, P. (2006). The African-American Church in America. Grace Communion International. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from http://www.gci.org/history/african
James H. Cone is the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Cone probably is best known for his book, A Black Theology of Liberation, though he has authored several other books. Dr. Cone wrote that the lack of relevant and “risky” theology suggests that theologians are not able to free themselves from being oppressive structures of society and suggested an alternative. He believes it is evident that the main difficulty most whites have with Black Power and its compatible relationship to the Christian gospel stemmed from their own inability to translate non-traditional theology into the history of black people. The black man’s response to God’s act in Christ must be different from the whites because his life experiences are different, Dr. Cone believes. In the “black experience,” the author suggested that a powerful message of biblical theology is liberation from oppression.
Author of “The Negro Family”, E. Franklin Frazier believed that the centrality of the bible, structure of Black worship, and notion of God that evolved from the invisible institution to the Black Church was confirmation of the power of white influence . These tactics and different developments were merely adaptive methods used by slaves in order to worship freely in a confined space. Frazier’s beliefs were undermined by author Gayraud S. Wilmore’s description of Vodun in his book Black Religion and Black Radicalism. Frazier’s contention that black religion was evidence of white influence assumes a blank and passive slate. While Vodun in West Africa did have organization that was probably “infiltrated by Roman Catholicism” the goal of New World Africans was to adapt and understand their lives (Wilmore 43). Although white influence was forced upon New World Africans, slaves did not accept this influence but rather interpreted it to create a new, place-based Vodun religion. Vodun adapted to New World conditions, functioned as a coping mechanism, and possessed evolutionary qualities.
Black caucuses developed in the Catholic, Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches. "The central thrust of these new groups was to redefine the meaning and role of the church and religion in the lives of black people. Out of this reexamination has come what some have called Black Theology.... ... middle of paper ...
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic order that is still doing good work today around the world. During the age of encounters—especially during the colonization of the Americas—the Society of Jesus, also known as Jesuits, played an important role in documenting Native Americans, converting them and helping them adapt to their newly changing environment. The practice of first establishing respect, then influence, and eventually working for religious conversion proved effective at converting Native Americans in North America. Their extensive ethnographic documentation as well as everyday letters to one another have proved useful to scholars trying to understand early Native American and French encounters in North America.
The primary function of the Negro spirituals was to serve as communal song in a religious gathering, performed in a call and response pattern reminiscent of West African traditional religious practices. During these ceremonies, one person would begin to create a song by singing about his or her own sorrow or joy. That individual experience was brought to the community and through the call and response structure of the singing, that individual’s sorrow or joy became the sorrow or joy of the community. In this way, the spiritual became truly affirming, for it provided communal support for individual experiences. Slaves used the characters of the bible, particularly the Old Testament,...
The African Methodist Episcopal Church also known as the AME Church, represents a long history of people going from struggles to success, from embarrassment to pride, from slaves to free. It is my intention to prove that the name African Methodist Episcopal represents equality and freedom to worship God, no matter what color skin a person was blessed to be born with. The thesis is this: While both Whites and Africans believed in the worship of God, whites believed in the oppression of the Africans’ freedom to serve God in their own way, blacks defended their own right to worship by the development of their own church. According to Andrew White, a well- known author for the AME denomination, “The word African means that our church was organized by people of African descent Heritage, The word “Methodist” means that our church is a member of the family of Methodist Churches, The word “Episcopal refers to the form of government under which our church operates.”
Catherine of Siena. The Dialogue of the Divine Providence . Trans. Algar Thorold. 1907. 25 Feb. 2004 .
Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Print. The. 2003 Roberts, Deotis J. Black Theology in Dialogue. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press. Print.
August is the eldest Boatwright sister, and she is the most successful at dealing with grief. She experienced the suicides of two sisters, but she managed to retain her optimism and perspective, unlike June or May. One way August relinquishes grief is through religion. She is the leader of a group called the Daughters of Mary – a group of African-American women who worship Our Lady of Chains. August “manifests the Madonna’s wisdom and protection, balancing out June’s excessive intellectual qualities and May’s excessive emotional qualitie...
C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 352. Lindsay A. Arscott, "Black Theology," Evangelical Review of Theology 10 (April-June 1986):137. James H. Cone, "Black Theology in American Religion," Theology Today 43 (April 1986):13. James H. Cone, "Black Theology and Black Liberation," in Black Theology: The South African Voice, ed. Basil Moore (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1973), 92, 96.
Saynor, James. Rev. of The Black Album, by Hanif Kureishi. The New Statesman & Society, March 3, 1995, p. 40(2).