Im a third year student of Moscow State University, faculty of foreign languages, department of Regional Explorations and International Relationship with regions of the USA and Canada. My group number is A-301 and Im always available at nastya3124@yandex.ru.
My part of the paper is devoted to the problem of racism in religion. Ive made some investigation and found out some really important and sometimes even shocking data. Ive also drawn a conclusion which is that the problem is obvious to be addressed since any church is losing an enormous number of believers by admitting any sort of racism in its walls. I hope Ive succeeded in making my report sound interesting.
Introduction.
The problem of racism is being wildly recognized and addressed in the USA. The religion aspect seems to be one of the most interesting issues since it remains to be the area with the most passionate defenders and opponents pro and contra loyal attitude towards African Americans in the White church. So in my part of the work on racism there has been made an effort to look deeply in the problem, to get an idea what is going on nowadays and what the roots of it are.
First, the attention is focused on the Christianity in general. This religion seems to be a good one to be taken a close look at as its the first religion to have been brought to the continent of North America and the most widespread one. Thats why it embraces the whole country and many centuries of history.
Then the investigation of the problem deals with Mormonism. This particular branch of religion is interesting to look at because of its uniqueness it is the only religion that came into being on the territory of the States.
Thus, there are represented various points of view and comments by practitioners, which can be correlated with the present situation. Some of the data obtained can appear just shocking, but thats just whats going today.
Christianity.
Many of the black ancestors turned to the Bible during the agonizing years of racism. It became their most important source of coping with hatred and bondage
According to www.keithboykin.com, emerging from the "invisible institution" of slave religion, the first known black churches arose before the American Revolution (1775-1783), with the African Baptist or "Bluestone" Church on the William Byrd plantation near the Bluestone River in Mecklenburg, Virginia, in 1758, and the Silver Bluff Baptist Church on the South Carolina bank of the Savannah River, founded sometime between 1750 and 1775. These first churches were of Baptist origin, which meant that they believed that only adult baptism and baptism by total immersion in water were doctrinally correct. They also supported a congregational polity that asserted the autonomy of a congregation to choose its own pastor and to make its decisions independent of any larger association. Early Baptist preachers George Liele, Andrew Bryan, and Jesse Peters (also called Jesse Galphin) were instrumental in founding the Springfield Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia, and the First African Baptist and First Bryan Baptist churches of Savannah, Georgia. Liele went to Jamaica in 1782 with the British troops from Savannah who pulled out at the end of the Revolutionary War, and he established the first Baptist churches there.
While the Baptists founded the first black churches, it was the Methodists who organized the first black denominations, which also became the first national associations for African Americans. In 1787 former slaves Richard Allen and Absalom Jones established the Free African Society of Philadelphia, a mutual aid and benevolent society that assumed both secular and religious functions.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church has a unique and glorious history (www.ame-today.net). It is unique in that it is the first major religious denomination in the Western world that had its origin over sociological rather than theological beliefs and differences. The immediate cause of the organization of the A.M.E.Church was the fact that members of the St. George''s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia Pa., in 1787 segrated its colored members from its white communicants. The Blacks were sent to the gallery of the Church, to use the venerable Richard Allen''s own words. One Sunday as the Africans, as they were called, knelt to pray outside of their segrated area they were actually pulled from their knees and told to go to a place which had been designated for them. In protest, "All went out of the church in a body," according to Allen, "and they were no more plagued with [us] in that church. This added insult to injury and upon completing their prayer, they went out and formed the Free African Society, and from this Society came two groups: The Episcopalians and the Methodists. The leader of the Methodist group was Richard Allen. Richard Allen desired to implement his conception of freedom of worship and desired to be rid of the humiliation of segregation, especially in church.
Richard Allen learned that other groups were suffering under the same conditions. After study and consultation, five churches came together in a General Convention which met in Philadelphia, Pa., April 9-11, 1816, and formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The name African Methodist came naturally, as Negroes at that time were called Africans and they followed the teaching of the Methodist Church as founded by John Wesley. The young Church accepted the Methodist doctrine and Discipline almost in its entirety.
In New York City, similar incidents of racism and segregation during worship, where blacks were forced to sit in the upper galleries or in back pews, led black members to withdraw from the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church near Wall Street. Peter Williams Sr. and Francis Jacobs of New York City, and James Varick of Newburgh, New York, helped to establish a new African church. Jealousy and competition for new members resulted in the inability of both black Methodist movements on the East Coast to unite in one body. Methodists adhered to a connectional polity where a bishop appointed pastors to churches, and they also believed in a symbolic baptism of sprinkling water on the head rather than full immersion
The African American churches have been the backbone of the black communities for decades. God/Religion has been the most important life support system for blacks back in the earlier days. Without God/religion, suicide rates among blacks would shoot up sky high (www.keithboykin.com).
Bishop Richard Allen and others were forced out of St. George''s Methodist Episcopal Church (a White church) in Philadelphia in 1787 and went on to build the first A.M.E. Church (Bethel). In the latter part of the 20th century Black Catholics following Father George Stallings, withdrew from the Roman Catholic hierarchy and started their own church, Imani Temple in Washington, D.C. The Black church came into existence because African Americans were not allowed to participate fully in American institutions. Blacks saw that the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended our Revolutionary War in 1783, did not free them from the tyranny of the slave master, especially in the South. They therefore set out to build their own organizations, and the church became the bedrock of all the institutions.
Though the church has historically served many purposes for African Americans and continues to do so, I will just point to a few in this brief survey. First of all, it allowed Black people to maintain some of their African culture through a style of worship that incorporated ideas and expressions that Africans brought with them from the mother continent. This can be seen in the songs, drums, dances, and various emotional expressions used during worship service. The late writer James Baldwin said some time ago on public radio that "The church is the only place where a Black man can be free."( parentseyes.arizona.edu)
Secondly, the church has been a training ground for several professions: orators and leaders developed their skills in the church. Some of the greatest Black leaders the nation or the world has known came out of the Black church. The preacher Nat Turner; Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the greatest of all the Black American leaders; Rev. Jesse Jackson; Minister Malcom (X); and Minister Louis Farrakhan are but a few of the giants that the Black church influenced. Professional singers such as Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, and the Rev. Al Green, are just a few of those who fine-tuned their talents in the Black church. The church provided training in other area such as business. The first insurance companies and banks grew out of savings from the church. African Americans are proud to own the buildings they worship in. Some of the earliest Black schools were founded through the church. For example, Bishop Richard Allen started a day school for children and an evening school for adults at the first A.M.E. church in the world, Bethel, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Bible was often the book that Blacks first learned to read from; It was their primer.
Finally, according to Bennett (1987, p. 287), the Black churches "... provided the myths [religion] that made it possible for [B]lacks to survive in a situation that could not be changed ... but which could not be borne without either myth or philosophy or strong drink.
One issue that the subjects did not address, is the identity issue which is being discussed nationally as it relates to images such as paintings in the church. The issue concerns the color of God and His Son. If it is true that God created man (and woman) in His own image (Genesis 1: 27), then the curious person asks the question: "What color is God?" As African Americans become more in tune with their Africanity and their blackness, many are demanding that the places where they worship adorn themselves with images that are reflective of their natural being.
And still there some sources that prove theres a firm point of view where the church is considered to be all that good towards the blacks. Like at www.frontline.org.za, we read that the Bible provides the only effective foundation for eradicating racism. They even criticize some "a devout atheists" claiming that racism was caused by religion and that the Christian church was to blame for slavery because it had taught "that blacks were not created in Gods image and were therefore sub-human Black Africans were simply of no consequence to the powerful Christian empires".
This kind of blind prejudice, they say, and ignorance of the facts of history was unfortunately not exceptional at the WCAR. Why did so many Christian missionaries give their lives for Black people if they thought them "of no consequence"? Far from Christianity causing slavery, it was only Christianity which brought an end to the slave trade.
Before the coming of Christ, the heathen nations despised honest work and consigned it to slaves. When Christ was born, half of the population of the Roman Empire was slaves. Three-fourths of the population of Athens were slaves.
But Jesus revolutionized labor. By taking up the axe, the saw, the hammer and the plane, our Lord imbued labor with a new dignity. Christianity undercut slavery by giving dignity to work. So they are people who are really sure that it was thanks to Christianity that slavery was over.
Mormonism.
As far as Mormons are concerned, the situation seems to be even worse. They call their church LDS (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). And there are some quotes (at www.exmormon.org) from the speech of one of their leaders that appear just shocking: "Now we are generous with the Negro. We are willing that the Negro have the highest kind of education. I would be willing to let every Negro drive a Cadillac if they could afford it. I would be willing that they have all the advantages they can get out of life in the world. But let them enjoy these things among themselves." LDS "Apostle" Mark E. Petersen, "Race Problems - As They Affect The Church," Address delivered at Brigham Young University, August 27, 1954, as quoted in Jerald and Sandra Tanner''s book entitled, "The Changing World of Mormonism," p. 307. Or some other quotes: "The Negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings is concerned ...but this inequality is not of man''s origin. Its the lords doing, is based on his eternal laws of justice, and grows out of the lack of spiritual valiance of those concerned in their first estate [the Mormon pre-existence]." LDS "Apostle" Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p. 527 - 528, 1966 edition.
Fortunately, there are people who do realize the problem and they try to address it. Natalie Sheppard (www.rickross.com), for example, a black American who joined the church 20 years ago, said she feels the church has never done a good job of encouraging black membership. When she moved from Ohio to a Salt Lake City suburb, ''''I experienced the rudest awakening of my life,'''' Sheppard said.
She recalled storming into church headquarters and demanding to speak to Mormon leaders on a cold day in 1982 when her 6-year-old son -- waiting for her to pick him up -- was made to stand outside the home of another church member because he was black. ''''I''m not saying that people need to apologize,'''' Sheppard said, ''''but we lose a lot of black members.''''
So the policy of Mormons prevents any kind of interaction between blacks and whites. The reason that one would lose his blessings by marrying a Negro (www.lds-mormon.com), they say in one of the sources () is due to the restriction placed upon them. "No person having the least particle of Negro blood can hold the Priesthood" (Brigham Young). Negro seeks absorption with the white race. He will not be satisfied until he achieves it by intermarriage.
Conclusion.
So its pretty obvious that the problem of racism in religion is still of great importance. Most African Americans go to their own black churches, have their own very specific services at which white people do not feel at ease. And due to sometimes just subconscious but defiance the black people are usually looked down upon in white churches. The Mormons seem to be even more radical about it as far as we can see it from the speeches of their leaders. So churches are constantly losing lots of believers by not taking enough care of getting rid of such a thing as racism.
|
