African American Religion - Reflection Essay #1

Jon Jones

My experience with Christianity has been rather limited. While I have attended many different types of churches, I did not attend them regularly. Most of my attendance was during a single summer, in which I was curious to see what the different churches had to offer. However, I did not find a church I wanted to attend on a regular basis.

Since all the churches I attended were all in Michigan, they were primarily “white” churches, in that the vast majority of the people there were Caucasian. There were, of course, some people of other ethnic background there, but they were a definite minority. My experience with primarily “black” churches is non-existent.

To be honest, there doesn’t seem to be a large difference between the two types of churches; “white” and “black” churches doesn’t have to do much with structure. In that I mean, in the examples we’ve looked at of African American Christianity, outward appearances present similar views to any other type of Christianity. The buildings are the same, the style is generally the same, although perhaps a bit more lively in the African American churches. Southern Baptists become possessed by the Spirit whether white or black, speak out during sermons in emotion whether white or black, sing and yell and rejoice whether white or black. So, in that way, it seems that the branch of Christianity, rather than the color, determines most of the outward appearances.

What, then, if anything, is different? First of all, the messages in the sermons, and especially in the songs, are different. “Black” churches tend to mix more of the spirituals in with the more traditional songs. Most of these spirituals were written, or at least sung by, black slaves in America. They bring a message of hope for Heaven and freedom, and focus much more on rewards in the afterlife, since obviously life seemed very terrible at the time. The slaves’ one hope seemed to be that, when they died, they would finally experience freedom and everything else they lacked. “White” churches, on the other hand, tend to use primarily the traditional songs, or perhaps some contemporary songs that send the same message in a different style.

In the same way, the sermons reflected this focus on the afterlife. The sermons said similar things as the songs, and had the view that, since the slaves had to endure such hardship during the life, they must be going to heaven. Of course, this is an example of the view that the physical body and the spirit are not only completely different, but at odds with one another. In other words, as the body was denied, the soul was strengthened. This seems to be a very logical balancing of nature. Regardless, they had terrible lives, and so their souls, at least in their minds, would be very much strengthened. Of course, by the same note, this would many times also be sharply contrasted to their masters, who had wealth and power and food and overall good lives. This “good life” could be seen as a corrupter of the soul, making it unlikely that the masters would be going to heaven.

Obviously, traditional “white” churches would not share this view. Whereas the African American churches have many karmic, “works” views on getting into heaven, Caucasian churches focus more on faith and the grace of God allowing them into heaven. In this view, it doesn’t really matter what you did in life, because we all sin regardless. We can never earn our way into heaven, but can only accept God’s gift of grace to get in. Some people neglect to accept this gift, and theirs is the fate to be shut out of heaven forever. Obviously, this would be a good view to have if you were a white “master” of a plantation, doubting the morality of the situation. This, then, would be the major separating point between “black” and “white” churches.