When did the African-American population become Christian?

Pretty much the classic study of the African-American Church in America is E. Franklin Frazier's 1964 The History of the Negro Church in America. Indeed, its popularity can be evidenced by another book, The History of the Black Church since Frazier.

In a nutshell, the history of the black church in the United States is what you'd expect:

1. Slaves were brought over

2. They were taught Christianity

   What was unexpected was what happened next:

3. During the Great Awakening, the church grew
4. Blacks made the church their own
5. Christians, seeing other Christians not being treated Christian, changed the culture at large.

The interesting part of the story is the motivation and whether the movement was "forced" upon Blacks or whether it was a blessing coopted by them.

Ever since 1619, when African slaves were imported to Jamestown, the slaves were the nucleus of Christian training and education. The cynical will say it was a means of controlling the population, and the sociologist may argue that the church was written onto the cultural tabula rasa that arose in the absence of any other common tradition or language. (Per Frazier, the American slave population was drawn from the vastly different regions of the slave coast, and thus there was no single common identity from the Old World.) And, to be sure, there were "purer" motives of "saving the heathens" - both paternalistic and out of genuine concern.

A modern missiologist, however, would most likely argue that the history of the black church is the history of Joseph - what [we] intended for evil, God used to work for good. Indeed, Frazier argues the church rose as much for economic motives (replacing the tribal cultural an massing the strength of the African American community) as religious ones.

But to merely ascribe the rise of the church to "population control" motives misses out on the fact that the black population truly made the church their own is to do African Americans a major disservice. The story of Richard Allen, Absalom Jones and the rise of the AME church, for example, shows that it was not something "forced" upon them. In the 1780s's, Jones and Allen led a black congregation that met in St. George's Church in Philadelphia in the early morning. Jealous of the success of that church, the white vestry that owned the building made life progressively more difficult, culminating in an episode in which Allen, in the midst of leading prayer, was savagely beaten at the altar. His congregation moved out and later helped nurse Philadelphia through an outbreak of yellow fever - in spite of the opposition of the establishment.

As to the amazing rise of the church, it should be remembered that much of the slave trade - muchly stopped by the British who made it illegal to transport slaves across the Atlantic in 1808 - coincided with the First and Second Great Awakenings of the 1700s. The fact that most African Americans today are Methodist and Baptist is indicative of that fact. (Remember, they were imported into a colony - my own Virginia - that was strictly Episcopalian, and the "E" in AME is Episcopalian, but that "M" is Methodist). The overall rise in religiousity in American culture simply spilled over across racial lines.

I have no argument that slavery was anything less than unmitigated evil. That it was even justified in theological terms (Cursed be Caanan / Gen 10) is reprehensible. And indeed, if you look at how segregation in churches was the response to the loss of the Civil War, I think it difficult to justify. But, in the same way that God used the sins of Joseph's brothers to glorify Himself, so to the rise the church that was introduced at the lash of the whip came to change the consciousness of the slave owner. From the Christian Abolitionist movement of the early 1800s to the Civil Rights era of the 1950s (note, there is a reason Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr called it the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the issue of the "black man" was radically redefined when understood in the light of Jesus. To call the church "forced" upon blacks may have been true for a very short period, but they truly made it their own.