Some of Us Were Always in the Negative World: The First Amendment, Religious Liberty and Black History
Some stories are complicated.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Black Americans have never had Christian privilege.
The First Amendment works in conjunction with Article VI, Clause 3 of the Constitution that says “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” to make the United States a religiously neutral state rather than a “secular” one. The United States government officially has very little opinion on the religion of the people. But the United States was founded with a Protestant cultural majority which was reflected in the manners and thinking of the government: the civic religion and national culture. However, this “Christian privilege” did not extend to African Americans free or enslaved.
This is why the United States has never been a Christian state in theory or in practice; being a Protestant or a Christian did not make African Americans into citizens of the republic. Neither did speaking English.
Europeans–categorized as ‘free white persons’ under the Naturalization Act of 1790–could be Jewish, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or atheists, and they could cross the ocean and immigrate to America and become citizens, voters, jury members, and marry White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Most of the Black population was born in America, Protestant, and kept as slaves.
Non-Protestant Christian, Jewish, and atheist European immigrants could move South and enslave native-born American Protestant Blacks. Consider Judah Philip Benjamin: a Jewish man born in the Caribbean who became a U.S. Senator from Louisiana, and a slaveholder. He went on to serve as the rebel Confederacy’s Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State. He held the keys to the treasonous Confederate government, while Black Christians remained in chains. That is the reality, that is the history. When race trumps religion and language, it is hard to think of a worse candidate for any claim of Christian nationalism.
When you take Black history out of American history, the story is not only incomplete, but also generally wrong. At the founding of the country, Africans were around 19-20 percent of the country. That is simply too many people to exclude from a national history and get a clear picture. Slavery and racism consistently impacted the trajectory of American economics and politics before the Civil War, for example: before Abraham Lincoln’s reelection in 1864, no non-slaveholder was ever reelected president of the United States.
The nature of this system led to the development of the independent Black American Protestant tradition. However, this was a choice forced on Black Christians because WASP Americans rejected the equality of Blacks within the Church. So Black Episcopalians were rejected and suppressed by White Episcopalians, Black Presbyterians were rejected and suppressed by White Presbyterians, Black Methodists were rejected and suppressed by White Methodists, and so forth. They could agree on all theological points except one: the supremacy of the Whites, and because the European Americans insisted on this, it became an issue of doctrine and practices. The consequences have damaged American Protestantism ever since, leading to two and a half centuries of separation. But it was always a choice of the WASPs.
The indignity is best captured in how Richard Allen described an incident in 1792 at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia that led to the founding of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church congregation in 1794 and African Methodist Episcopal Church (the AME) in 1816, the nation’s first Black Protestant denomination.
Just before a Sunday service, the Black worshipers were asked to move from their seats on the main floor. On this particular Sunday, the sexton told the group to move to the gallery balcony. They did so and knelt for the prayers. After the prayers began, Richard Allen was surprised to hear “considerable scuffling and low talking.” He turned and saw a White church trustee physically pulling another Black worshiper, the Reverend Absalom Jones, off his knees while he was praying in the segregated gallery. The trustee told Jones he could not kneel there. When Jones asked to be allowed to at least finish praying, the trustee called for another White trustee who came and grabbed another Black man praying, and they began to haul both men from their knees. By the time this altercation was over, so were the prayers. The group of Black Christians stood and walked out of the church in a body. This became known as The Great Walkout. Allen would eventually be ordained by Francis Asbury himself in 1799, and would become the first bishop of the AME Church in 1816.
It is a complicated thing to argue that a nation is founded on Christian principles when it grants more rights to a White atheist than a Black believer.
More stories on religion and Black history to come. Thanks for reading.
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That is interesting history about which I know very little. Curious about the folks named, I checked Wikipedia on Richard Allen and Francis Asbury (understanding the limitations of that site)......two very interesting and long reads on those men. On Asbury, there is a reference "Asbury taught that “slavery was a crime against the laws of God, man, and nature”.[17]". I am wondering if part of the reason he held and preached this clearly correct viewpoint is because he was English and a circuit preacher before traveling from Bristol to the Philadelphia in 1771, and thus his biblical worldview on the subject of slavery and race was different from many of those in the colonies who were culturally influenced otherwise and selectively "cherry picked" biblical text to support their positions.