This article is excerpted from the book Free At Last: The U.S. Civil Rights Movement, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. View the entire book (PDF, 3.6 MB).

By: Michael Battle
Ordained a priest by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Very Rev. Michael Battle is Provost and Canon Theologian of the Cathedral Center of St. Paul in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. His books include The Black Church in America: African American Spirituality.

African-American religious communities have contributed immensely to American society, not least by supplying

much of the moral, political, and organizational foundation of the 20th-century civil rights movement and by shaping the thought of its leaders, Rosa Parks and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. among them.

Enslaved and free African-Americans formed their own congregations as early as the mid- to late 18th century. After emancipation, fully fledged denominations emerged. What we today call the “black church” encompasses seven major historic black denominations: African Methodist Episcopal (AME); African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ); Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME); the National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated; the National Baptist Convention of America, Unincorporated; the Progressive National Baptist Convention; and the Church of God in Christ.

These denominations emerged after the emancipation of the African-American slaves. They drew mainly on Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal traditions, but often featured ties to American Catholicism, Anglicanism, the United Methodist Church, and a host of other traditions.

The great gift, indeed genius, of African-American religious sensibility is its drive to forge a common identity. Black slaves from different parts of Africa were transported to America by means of the “middle passage” across the Atlantic. As slaves, they endured massive oppression. Against this background of diversity and social deprivation, African-American religious belief and practice afforded solace and the intellectual foundation for a successful means of solving deep-seated conflict: the techniques of civil disobedience and nonviolence. The black church also supplied black political activists with a powerful philosophy: to focus upon an ultimate solution for all rather than palliatives for a select few. The civil rights movement would adopt this policy — never to allow systemic oppression of any human identity. Its genius, then, was a natural overflow from African-American religious communities that sought to make sense of a tragic history and move toward a future, not just for themselves, but also for their nation and the world.

In short, while some form of resistance to slavery and then Jim Crow segregation probably was inevitable, the communal spirituality of the black church in the face of repression helped spawn a civil rights movement that sought its objectives by peaceful means.

Many of the powerful voices of the civil rights movement — King, of course, but also such powerful and significant figures as U.S. Representatives Barbara Jordan and John Lewis, the political activist and Baptist minister Jesse Jackson, and the gospel legend Mahalia Jackson — all were formed from their worship life in the black church. Indeed, King’s role as chief articulator of civil rights reflects the direct relationship between African-American religious communities and the struggle for racial and social justice in the United States. The spiritual influence of African-American religious practice spread beyond this nation’s shores, as global leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu learned from King how to embody a loving, inclusive African and Christian identity.

Today’s African-American communal spirituality is as strong and engaged as ever. Black churches work to craft responses to contemporary challenges such as the spread of HIV/AIDS, the need to ameliorate poverty, and the disproportionate recidivism of imprisoned African Americans. The search toward common identity remains the foundation of such a spirituality, however. Through the election of the first African-American president and the increase of minorities in higher education, the journey toward common identity remains on course.

In sum, the black church helped African Americans survive the harshest forms of oppression and developed a revolutionary appeal for universal communal spirituality. The black church didn’t just theorize about democracy, it practiced democracy. From its roots there flowered the civil rights movement — creative, inclusive, and nonviolent.