Concept

The Black Church

Also known as: Black church tradition, African American Christianity, Black Protestantism

The continuing African American Christian tradition — encompassing the historic Black denominations (the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the National Baptist Convention USA, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the Church of God in Christ, and others), the Black congregations in predominantly white denominations, and the broader cultural-religious tradition that connects them. Emerged from the encounter of enslaved Africans with American Protestantism, found independent institutional form during the late 18th and 19th centuries with the founding of the AME Church (1816, by Richard Allen) and others, and developed across two centuries into one of the most consequential religious traditions in American life. Has been the substantial institutional substrate of African American resistance to slavery, of Reconstruction-era Black political organizing, of the late-19th-century work of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, of the Great Migration's urban Black religious life, of the civil rights movement (substantially organized through Black churches), and of continuing Black political-cultural life into the present. The contemplative tradition within it — long minimized in standard surveys — has been substantially recovered through Barbara Holmes's *Joy Unspeakable* (2004) and continuing work by Lerita Coleman Brown, Howard Thurman scholars, and others.

The “Black Church” is a category that encompasses substantial diversity. There is no single Black denomination, no single theology, no single liturgical practice. The category names something like a continuing Black American Christian tradition that runs across multiple denominations, congregations, and cultural-religious forms — and that has been continuously distinct from and continuous with the white American Christianity around it.

The historic denominations

Several principal historically-Black denominations:

African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Founded in 1816 by Richard Allen in Philadelphia, after Allen and other Black congregants were forcibly removed from the segregated white pews of St. George’s Methodist Church. The first independent Black denomination in the United States. Continues today with substantial international presence.
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion). Founded in [[beacon-ny|New York]] in 1821 from similar circumstances. Sometimes called the Freedom Church for its prominent Underground Railroad activity (Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth were all AME Zion members).
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME). Founded 1870 in the South.
National Baptist Convention, USA (NBC). Largest historically-Black denomination, founded 1895.
Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC). Founded 1961, in part to support Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights leadership when the larger NBC under Joseph H. Jackson did not.
Church of God in Christ (COGIC). The largest historically-Black Pentecostal denomination, founded 1907.

In addition, substantial African American congregations exist within predominantly-white denominations (Episcopal, Catholic, United Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.), maintaining many distinctive Black-tradition practices while operating within the broader denominational structure.

What unites the tradition

Across this institutional diversity, several recurring features mark the Black church tradition:

The spirituals and gospel — sustained musical traditions running from the spirituals through the gospel music of Thomas Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, James Cleveland, Aretha Franklin’s church work, and continuing into the contemporary gospel of Kirk Franklin, Yolanda Adams, and many others.
Embodied worship — the distinctive style of Black Protestant worship including substantial congregational participation, call-and-response between preacher and congregation, ecstatic possession-like experiences (getting happy, catching the spirit), the bodily presence of the spirit in worship.
The preaching tradition — the distinctive Black preaching style descending from the spirituals through the great pulpit traditions (Vernon Johns, Mordecai Johnson, [[howard-thurman|Howard Thurman]], Martin Luther King Jr., Gardner C. Taylor, [[james-cone|James Cone]], Charles Adams, T.D. Jakes, Otis Moss III, William Barber II, Jacqui Lewis, others). Recognizable across denominations.
The liberation-theological substrate — the recognition (which long predates the formal [[liberation-theology|liberation theology]] of the 1960s) that the Hebrew Bible’s exodus and the Gospel’s preferential attention to the poor and oppressed are direct teaching for the African American situation. The God of the spirituals is the liberating God.
The institutional centrality. For most of American history, the Black church has been the primary institution actually controlled by African American communities — substantially shaping education, politics, economic [[mutual-aid|mutual aid]], civil rights organizing, and continuing community life.
The contemplative current. Less recognized but substantial: the prayer tradition, the spirituals as contemplative music, the long line of Black mystics (Jarena Lee, Sojourner Truth, [[howard-thurman|Howard Thurman]], Lerita Coleman Brown, Barbara Holmes), the contemplative dimension of Black worship.

The contemplative recovery

The contemplative current within the Black church tradition has been substantially under-recognized in standard surveys of [[christian-mysticism|Christian mysticism]]. The recovery began with [[howard-thurman|Howard Thurman]]‘s mid-20th-century work and has accelerated with Barbara A. Holmes’s Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church (2004) — the first major scholarly treatment of Black contemplative practice as such. Holmes identifies several distinctive forms:

Contemplation in the cotton fields — the moments of inwardness that enslaved people preserved within forced labor.
The hush harbors — the secret religious gatherings out of white observation, where Black religious life was conducted with relative freedom.
Contemplative dimensions of the spirituals — the songs as carriers of contemplative attention, not only as protest or lament.
The ring shout — the distinctive ecstatic dance-prayer that descended from West African ceremonial practice and continues in some Sea Island and Gullah communities.
Activist contemplation — the integration of contemplative practice with civil rights organizing in figures like Thurman, [[pauli-murray|Pauli Murray]], John Lewis, Vincent Harding.

Lerita Coleman Brown’s What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with [[howard-thurman|Howard Thurman]] (2023) and other contemporary work continues the recovery.

Honest framing

A few notes for clarity:

Internal diversity. The Black church tradition is not monolithic. There are substantial theological and political differences across denominations, congregations, and individual practitioners. Generalizations about “the Black church” should be made carefully.
Contemporary changes. The historic Black denominations have been losing membership, especially among younger generations, in the 21st century — paralleling broader American religious decline but with its own distinctive features. Pentecostal and non-denominational congregations have been growing; substantial Black religious life now happens outside the historic denominational structures. The picture is genuinely changing.
The civil rights movement. While substantially organized through the Black church, the movement was not the church’s project alone — substantial figures (Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer’s complicated relation to her local church) were not principally church-organized. The narrative that places the civil rights movement entirely within the Black church oversimplifies.

Sources

C. Eric Lincoln & Lawrence H. Mamiya. The Black Church in the African American Experience. Duke, 1990. Source class: book / definitive scholarly survey.
Barbara A. Holmes. Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church. Fortress, 2004 (rev. 2017). Source class: book / foundational contemplative recovery.
[[james-cone|James H. Cone]]. The Spirituals and the Blues. Seabury, 1972 (rev. Orbis, 1991). Source class: book / theological study.
Albert J. Raboteau. Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South. Oxford, 1978. Source class: book / definitive historical study.
Lerita Coleman Brown. What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with [[howard-thurman|Howard Thurman]]. Broadleaf, 2023. Source class: book / contemporary engagement.
W.E.B. Du Bois. The Negro Church. Atlanta University Press, 1903. Source class: book / foundational sociological study.

Lenses still to grow

The historic Black denominations each in their own right.
The hush harbor tradition in detail.
The ring shout as a continuing ceremonial practice.
Black [[liberation-theology|liberation theology]] ([[james-cone|James Cone]], J. Deotis Roberts, Cornel West) as a 20th-c. articulation.
The 21st-century changes in Black American religious life.
Womanist theology (Katie Geneva Cannon, Delores Williams, Kelly Brown Douglas) as a sustained theological development.

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Spiritual

subset of

James Cone the founding theologian of Black liberation theology; the figure who systematically articulated the theological position implicit in the spirituals, the prayer tradition, and the Black church's long resistance to American racism
Pauli Murray 20th-century African American Episcopal priest whose life integrated civil rights legal work, poetry, theology, and contemplative practice in ways that have only recently been adequately recognized

2 inbound links · 3 outbound