Literary Representations of the Black Church

At Issue

The black church has been described as the single greatest institution in the black community. It has traditionally served the spiritual, social, cultural, educational, and political needs of its clientele. The black church is distinctive in a number of ways, owing to the early intermixing of African religious beliefs and practices with Christian influences. Although Christianity has historically been the form of religion most frequently practiced in African American communities, it did not eradicate all traditional thoughts and practices of the slave societies into which it was introduced. From the rhetorical style of ministers to its music, the black church has influenced the cultural life of America in general, and the black church has shaped the content and form of African American literature in specific ways.

History

The black church evolved out of the contradiction of white slave owners' treating Africans and African Americans as soulless and nonhuman while encouraging them to seek Christian salvation. During the time of the American Revolution white church officials suspended their attention to the religious education of blacks. Many blacks in turn responded to their incomplete indoctrination by turning white religious ideas in the direction of surviving African traditions, thereby conceiving their own vision of Christianity. Free blacks began to establish their own churches as early as 1776.

Representation in Literature

African Americans have traditionally written from a religious perspective. Jupiter Hammon's poem "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries" (1761) is reported to be the first poem published by a black man in America. It reflects a strong influence of Methodism and the Wesleyan Revival present in America during the mid-eighteenth century. Phillis Wheatley's volume Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) treats, among other things, recognition of the African's possession of a soul. Similarly, spiritual and secular narratives written during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reflect a strong religious influence. The spiritual narratives of Julia Foote, Jarena Lee, Zelpha Elaw, and Amanda Barry Smith, among others, suggest a spiritual authority that overtly challenges traditional female roles.

As the black church gained in prominence, writers turned to it as a feature of black life to complement historical and sociological accounts. W. E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk (1903) outlines the characteristics of the black church with observations on preachers, music, and spiritual, social, and political concerns. Carter G. Woodson's History of the Negro Church (1921) posits the church as central to all enterprises—economic, education, and political—in the black community. Benjamin E. Mays'sThe Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature (1938) challenges stereotypes, asserting that "the Negro's ideas of God grow out of the social situation in which he finds himself."

Creative works depicting the black church are numerous and varied. In such works, the church may be used as central organizing feature or as backdrop to black community life. Charles Waddell Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901) features the character Sandy, who is censured by the Methodist church for having participated in a cakewalk. James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927) provides a tribute to the rhetorical skills and poetic impulses of the preacher's sermon. Zora Neale Hurston's first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), depicts the religious life of a small Southern community. Its central character, John Buddy, is a preacher who is something of a heroic figure in the black community. Later, in her award-winning autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Hurston depicts a rivalry between Methodist and Baptist members of the famed community of Eatonville, Florida.

The important novel Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (1953) is the story of a black religious tradition. The novel explores the religious conversion of John Grimes, a youth who, on his fourteenth birthday, accepts his family's faith in a Harlem storefront church. Maya Angelou's comic treatment of the visiting preacher at the dinner table in her I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) also enhances the black church's representation in African American literature.

Although the black church remained an important cultural institution, in many ways supporting the literary and other aspects of the civil rights movement, in general literature grew more secular through the late twentieth century. In addition, the growing influence of the Nation of Islam in African American communities in the second half of the twentieth century often shifted literary attention away from the traditional black church. However, many major African American writers continued to often reference religion—and especially the unique attributes of faith in the black community—in both fiction and nonfiction. Perhaps the most notable figure was Nobel Prize–winning writer Toni Morrison, who often featured the black church in her novels as well as her essays and other writing, whether overtly or in subtle ways. For example, her 2019 collection The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, containing pieces from throughout her career, she included an entire section called "God's Language," after the essay of the same title in which she discusses the deep impact of religion on African Americans.

Implications for Identity

Woodson asserted in his 1939 article "The Negro Church, an All-Comprehending Institution":

The Negro church touches almost every ramification of the life of the Negro. . . . All efforts of the Negro in things economic, educational and political have branched out of or connected in some way with the rise and development of the Negro church.

Woodson's observation extends to the creative enterprise of literature. The presence of the black preacher, the rivalry between Methodists and Baptists, the struggle of women to hold leadership positions in the church, the spirituality engendered by Fundamentalist sects, and the church as social stabilizing force or social outlet are all accounted for in the literature from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first.

In addition to full-blown treatments of religious life, central to fiction and histories, such works as Jean Toomer's Cane (1923), James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963), and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977) evoke the spiritual power derived from Scripture.

Bibliography

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. 1903. Reprint. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1961.

Jordan, Meagan. "The Religious Dimensions of Toni Morrison's Literature." Sojourners, 23 Aug. 2019, sojo.net/articles/religious-dimensions-toni-morrisons-literature. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019.

Mays, Benjamin E. The Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature. Boston: Chapman & Grimes, 1938.

Simpson, George Eaton. Black Religions in the New World. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.

Spiritual Narratives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.