The Church in the Southern Black Community, 1780-1925

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• Learn more about African Americans, American history, and religion.

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This compilation of printed texts from the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill traces how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life. Coverage begins with white churches’ conversion efforts, especially in the post-Revolutionary period, and depicts the tensions and contradictions between the egalitarian potential of evangelical Christianity and the realities of slavery. It focuses, through slave narratives and observations by other African American authors, on how the black community adapted evangelical Christianity, making it a metaphor for freedom, community, and personal survival.

Also included is the article, “An Introduction to the Church in the Southern Black Community”, written by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The article discusses the collection of documents which begin to tell the story of the growth of Protestant religion among African Americans during the nineteenth century, and of the birth of what came to be known as the “Black Church” in the United States. The story of the black church is a tale of variety and struggle in the midst of constant racism and oppression. It is also a story of constant change, and of the coincidence of cultural cohesion among enslaved Africans and the introduction of Protestant evangelicalism to their communities.