Although the Black Church has dominated the religious landscape of Black America, other traditions are nonetheless present and have played roles in Black life. As historian of religions Charles Long states in an often-quoted passage, “The Christian faith provided a language for the meaning of religion, but not all the religious meanings of the black communities were encompassed by the Christian forms of religion.”1 In other words, while the Black Church has held a prominent place, it is only one of many available modes of religious expression. The Nation of Islam and other traditions add a richness to the religious sensibilities of Black Americans. In other works, I have outlined the content of some forms of religion that thrive within Black communities. However, my objective here is to locate in the four-hundred-year odyssey of Black people in America and in the variety of their religious expressions and practices and institutions2 a common core—the heart and soul of Black religious life.
Drawing from a number of disciplines, in this volume, I seek to articulate a vision of Black religion’s nature and meaning in terms of both its primary structure and its historical manifestations in institutions and movements that typically come to mind when Black religion is mentioned. But I must note at this point that attention to the historical manifestation of religion is here focused on the Black Church and the Nation of Islam. This should not be taken as an explicit (or even implicit) suggestion that only these two forms merit attention or that only these two modes of religious expression really count. I believe my earlier work demonstrates my interest in a full range of experiences of religion in Black communities. However, in pointing to these two traditions, and by extension the presence of Christianity and Islam in more general terms, I am able to give attention to the forms of religious experience that, in terms of popular imagination and memorable rhetoric, for good or ill, dominate the Black American landscape.3
To provide a description of Black religion, it is necessary to set the stage in sociohistorical terms. This first chapter does so through a brief discussion of the initial rationale for the African presence in North America, with a particular focus on the United States.4 Attention to the images, language, and attitudes that served to define the nature of the African as an object of history is important. It surfaces the underlying philosophical and ideological workings that inform the slave trade. Although there are other ways to develop such a discussion, I frame it in terms of white supremacy and its ramifications. The primary concern here is the description of ideas, ideals, and an aesthetic that constitute the workings of white supremacy as well as a description of this process with respect to the creation of the “negro” within what becomes the United States.5
Framing the Initial Contact
Cornel West has argued that a “normative gaze” or ideal of beauty, exhibited in the human form depicted in classical Greek art, came to be seen as superior during the age of exploration. By the 1600s, this theory of ideal form was applied in natural history as a way of categorizing and ranking races. The closer a race was in appearance to the Greek body, the nearer that race was to the ideal. It takes little imagination to realize that Africans, depicted as dark skinned, having typically thicker lips, broader noses, and more coarse hair, were far from this ideal form. By implication, Africans were inferior in beauty to Europeans, who more closely resembled this subjective ideal. The discipline of physiognomy connected physical attributes and character by arguing that “a beautiful face, beautiful body, beautiful nature, beautiful character, and beautiful soul were inseparable.”6 During the eighteenth century, phrenology (the reading of skull shapes) argued for a connection between the size of the skull and the depth of character. Although these disciplines said more about the likes and dislikes, idiosyncrasies and biases, of investigators than about humanity, they held sway over popular and academic attitudes. What is more, pseudosciences like phrenology gave these assessments legitimacy, an ontological and biological grounding, and thereby provided authority for racist depictions of Africans as by nature less than fully human.7
While the genealogy of racism offered by Cornel West is insightful, a more historically detailed account of the development of racism is given by Winthrop Jordan. And while West and Jordan may disagree on some points, they both understand racism as a modern invention. According to Jordan, ocean voyages underway at the dawn of the modern period brought the differences between groups of people into full view and fueled increased interest in making sense of the differences. With respect to the English in particular, recognition of Africans was made first in soft ways through literature that referred to Ethiopians. Later, following the sixteenth century, after the English broke the Venetian monopoly on foreign trade, direct and rapid contact with Africans began to occur.8 English settlements in Africa beginning in 1631 and the activities of the Royal African Company, chartered in the 1670s, brought the English and Africans into close and sustained contact. But this contact did not entail the proscription of Africans as inferior.9 While travelers noted differences in color, they did not frame them in terms of problematic sensibilities and assumptions. Concerning this, Jordan says, “Englishmen actually described Negroes as black—an exaggerated term which in itself suggests that negros’ complexion had powerful impact upon their perceptions. Even the peoples of northern Africa seemed so dark that Englishmen tended to call them ‘black’ and let further refinements go by the board. Blackness became so generally associated with Africa that every African seemed a black man.”10 When cultural and geographic distinctions were made between North Africans and West Africans, the overwhelming preoccupation remained skin. While differing shades could be noted, Africans remained defined by color.
The African as a “Problem”: Phase One
This nonjudgmental response to the African’s Blackness was not to be sustained. The English popular imagination was too loaded with negative color symbolism for nonprejudiced difference to remain the norm. In other words, the color black was associated with “baseness and evil, a sign of danger and repulsion. . . . White and black connoted purity and filthiness, virginity and sin, virtue and baseness, beauty and ugliness, beneficence and evil, God and the devil.”11 Related to this negative color symbolism, Jordan concludes that, as of the eighteenth century, the African’s different color was connected to a different nature that rendered the African ugly and flawed in character. And so for the English, whose idea of beauty depended on paleness, Africans represented a people unattractive and odd in their practices. Differentiated from the English, Africans became the “Other.” Africans during this period were often used as a measuring stick by which the English assessed themselves and their society, in both religious and mundane terms.12 At its worst, differences in appearance, social habits, and cultural production were interpreted in ways that painted Africans as barbaric and of less value. The African as a scientific, social, cultural, philosophical, and physical problem persisted and intensified as English involvement in the slave trade grew during the eighteenth century.
A desire emerged to understand the African’s place in the created order in keeping with the scriptural depiction of one source or one creation. In Genesis 1:25–27, we find the following words:
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.13
Also in Genesis, however, is a second account of creation. Genesis 2:7–8, 18–25, reads,
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. . . . And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.14
This story suggested the theological framework or parameter for defining the nature and character of Africans. In short, Scripture required that English Christians begin their thinking on Africans with an understanding that Africans had the same creator. Yet they were at least physically and culturally different, and this difference had to be accounted for. As we shall see, a sense of shared creation did not prohibit a ranking within the created order, one in which Africans were much lower than Europeans.15 Contained in this assertion is the ground for a theory of white supremacy that would take various forms but, according to historian George Fredrickson, always include at least the following assertions: “Blacks are physically, intellectually, and temperamentally different from whites. Blacks are also inferior to whites in at least some of the fundamental qualities wherein the races differ, especially in intelligence and in the temperamental basis of enterprise or initiative. Such differences and differentials are either permanent or subject to change only by a very slow process of development or evolution.”16 Theorizing further, some argued that the color of the African was a consequence of close proximity to the sun. Yet this notion did not hold, since Europeans moved into similar areas without permanent change in pigment. Furthermore, based on this argument, one would assume that taking Africans out of the sun would eventually result in a permanent shift in skin color from dark to white, the assumed natural color of humanity. But this did not happen. Such naturalistic explanations proved faulty.
Others seeking an explanation of the African’s Blackness turned to Scripture and found what seemed both a theologically and a philosophically reasonable argument, one that buttressed the physical evidence provided by the scientific community. Genesis 9:20–22, 24–25, contained the answer within the story of Noah and the cursing of Ham and his son: “Noah was the first tiller of the soil. He planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and became drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. . . . When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son [Ham] had done to him, he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brother.’”17
The failure of Africans to be beautiful, Christian, and English, or in more general terms, civilized, had to be explained, and this biblical story tendered an acceptable explanation. One can raise questions concerning why a biblical text addressing a labor arrangement (and one not based on physiological ranking), as opposed to physiological distinctions between races, was found so useful in attempting to understand the differences between Europeans and Africans. Still, regardless of how faulty one may find the logic, this passage held sway, and it has been massively influential since then.
It is possible, but unlikely, that a hierarchy of being could develop without the intent of degrading certain groups. But as we shall see, degradation is exactly what took place, and this spectrum of status was used to map out social relationships. As England’s role in the “New World” increased, and a slave trade was devised to meet its labor demands, theological rationales offered useful justification for growing economic and social arrangements in the colonies.
It is true that an effort was initially made to use European servants and Native Americans as a labor force. Indentured servants actually provided an important labor pool for colonists, although the financial benefits for servants were minor and the ability to progress socially was limited. While distinctions were made between free colonists and servants, the differences resided primarily in cultural, social, and economic opportunity and access. In some cases, freed servants left with a trade and perhaps a bit of land, and one might assume servants would be exposed to the workings of the Christian faith. More importantly, free colonists and servants might have different levels of “refinement,” but they were considered ontologically of the same substance as their employers. For example, servants were not Indians. The latter were assumed barbaric and prone to all types of despicable activities. The New World was considered a new Canaan set aside for colonists, yet it was not without its perils, including the “heathen” who called it home. Prior to the war of the late seventeenth century, there was a general interest on the part of New England colonies to avoid harming Indians. In fact, colonists who did harm them often suffered legal recourse.18 Colonists of course assumed that their laws, based on the word of the Christian God, superseded any laws and customs of the Indians.19 Furthermore, regulations that on the surface protected Indians did not entail strong positive feelings toward them. Various wars waged between the Puritans and the Indians testify to that. It was not uncommon for Indian prisoners of war and debtors to fall into the existing system of indentured servitude.20 Still, in the long run, indentured servitude was an unreliable and costly form of labor. And when European servants and Indians were problematic, hope was held out for the African slave trade as a source of an easily distinguished and capable labor force.21
