Page 158 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

african-american and caribbean religions 43

You have two qualities which God, the Most Exalted, likes and loves.
One is mildness and the other is toleration. • Muhammad (570–632)

many migrants established and joined storefront established large congregations in New York, Los Ange-
churches. In addition, recent migrants became attracted les, Miami, and other urban centers, attracting Caribbean
to a wide array of Holiness-Pentecostal Churches, Sanc- migrants and American blacks, as well as a small number
tified Churches, and Spiritual Churches, as well as vari- of white converts. Cuban Santeria is perhaps the most
ous Islamic and Jewish sects. Other independent groups, racially mixed and widespread of these religions.
with such names as “Father Divine’s Peace Mission” and
“Daddy Grace’s United House of Prayer for All People” An African-American
also gained prominence. Today, approximately 90 per- Aesthetic
cent of churchgoing African-Americans belong to black- African and African-American peoples do not conceptu-
controlled religious bodies. The remaining 10 percent alize religion as something separate from the rest of their
belong to white-controlled religious bodies. African- culture. Art, dance, and literature are understood as inte-
Americans are also to be found within the memberships gral to the religious experience.This is aptly illustrated by
of liberal Protestant denominations, the Mormon church, musician B.B. King’s comment that he feels closest to
the Southern Baptist Convention, and various groups God when he is singing the blues. Spirituals, the blues,
such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unity, and the Seventh- gospel, rhythm and blues, bebop,Afro-Latin, and hip-hop
day Adventists. There are more than 2 million black are all rooted in West African sacred and secular music
Roman Catholics in the United States, many of them traditions.West Africans understand music as a means of
recent migrants from the Caribbean. propagating wisdom. In the Yoruba tradition, music stirs
A number of prominent African-American religions in things up, it incites. West African music and art begin
the United States are based on the teachings of Islam. with God, the ideal. For example,Afro-Cuban music con-
Noble Drew Ali established the first of these, the Moor- tinues the African tradition of dispersing and expounding
ish Science Temple, in Newark, New Jersey, in the early upon fixed and recurring God-generated themes that
twentieth century.The main teachings of the Moorish Sci- embody cultural ideals and values.
ence Temple were incorporated into the Nation of Islam, While African-American music is derived from a vari-
founded by Wallace D. Fard during the early 1930s in ety of sources, religion has historically served as one of its
Detroit. Later, the Nation of Islam came under the lead- major inspirations. As Lincoln and Mamiya (1990, 347)
ership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.The Nation observe, “In the Black Church singing together is not so
of Islam grew rapidly, in part due to the militant preach- much an effort to find, or to establish, a transitory com-
ing of Malcolm X during the early 1960s. Rapid growth munity as it is the affirmation of a common bond that,
did not check schismatic tendencies that led to the while inviolate, has suffered the pain of separation since
appearance of numerous splinter groups, including the the last occasion of physical togetherness.”
Ahmadiyya Muslim movement of Chicago, the Hanafis Eileen Southern (1983) traced African-American spir-
of Washington, D.C., and the Ansaru Allah community ituals to the camp meetings of the Second Awakening,
of Brooklyn. Following the assassination of Malcolm X where blacks continued singing in their segregated
and the death of Elijah Muhammad, Elijah’s son,Wallace quarters after the whites had retired for the night.Accord-
D. Muhammad, transformed the Nation of Islam into the ing to Lincoln and Mamiya (1990, 348), black spirituals
more orthodox group known as the American Muslim also appear to have had their roots in the preacher’s
Mission. To counter the Mission’s shift to orthodox chanted declamation and the intervening congregational
Islam, Louis Farrakhan established a reconstituted Nation responses.
of Islam. The“ring shout,” in which“shouters” danced in a circle
Caribbean-based religions are among the fastest- to the accompaniment of a favorite spiritual sung by spec-
growing religions in the United States. As noted above, tators standing on the sidelines, was a common practice
Vodun, Rastafarianism, and the Spiritual Baptists have in many nineteenth-century black churches. By 1830,