Of the 16 Black men elected to Congress during Reconstruction, 3 were ministers. The Black Church has been the heart of our political life going back to the abolitionist movement, and then during Reconstruction, and then fighting against the rollbacks of Reconstruction. You also say that the Black Church is one of the parents of the civil rights movement and Black Lives Matter one of its heirs. attend the Statue of Liberty Museum opening celebration on at Ellis Island. I wanted to get that out of my system because that guy, he really flipped everybody out, saying, "Well, you people just came here with nothing." We came here with a lot of SOMETHING. And out of that stew through the embracing, refashioning of Christianity, came the identity of the cultural identity of our people and a form of religion that we think of collectively as the Black Church.
So two of the three Abrahamic religions were represented in the slave population- Catholics, Muslims, and people who practiced traditional African ancestral worship, all thrown in together in the new world. So John Thornton, the Boston University historian, estimates that about 20% of our ancestors had been baptized Congolese Catholics. Islam came to West Africa in the 10th century, and by the 12th century was widely practiced in Senegal and Gambia, and the King of Congo converted to Roman Catholicism in 1491. This man said, "Well, how do you feel about the fact that your people took over a white religion, that they learned it, they didn't bring it with them on the slave ship." And I said, "One of the points of the film, one of the big surprises, is that between 8 and 20% of our enslaved ancestors were practicing Muslims by the time they got here. We recently did a press conference with the TCA, the Television Critics Association-John Legend, one of the executive producers of the series, and Yolanda Adams, the great gospel singer, and me. The Black Church in America really had its origins way, way back on a different continent, right? O’s Books Editor, Leigh Haber, sat down with Professor Gates to find out more about how the story of the Black Church became his latest passion project.
It also features a collection of portraits and photos of some of the many preachers, evangelists, and missionaries who have been shaping the Black Church since its beginnings in the eighteenth century. In addition to an exploration of the role of the Black Church in America and its origins, the account also contains personal anecdotes from a host of prominent politicians, entertainers, and Church leaders, and recollections from the author about, for example, the first time he witnessed a church-goer speaking in tongues. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play
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