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| ames united church of christ: The Living Theological Heritage of the United Church of Christ: Reformation Roots , 1995 |
| ames united church of christ: The Gospel Truth Clinton Bezan, 2023-01-05 Where does a new believer turn to find truth? The Christian narrative today has morphed into a fluid and philosophical commentary centered around social injustices and motivational messages that rarely align with the gospel that Jesus preached. Sin is ignored and repentance is avoided by those who over exaggerate grace and diminish the holiness of God by suggesting he accepts us whether we are faithful to him or not. In a knee jerk response to the strict religious shackles of the early church many of today’s preachers bask in the hyper-sensitivity that accompanies the “cancel culture” that proclaims it will not be judged. In The Gospel Truth, Bezan has endeavored to dissect prominent Christian religious denominations in order to expose their internal theologies and scrutinize the details of their doctrine under the litmus test of scripture. He offers legitimate discernment to differentiate between truth and almost truth and conveys an intelligible recognition of the genuine vs the counterfeit in a detailed and comprehensive assessment that leaves the reader judiciously satisfied. We have an opportunity in this life to sincerely contemplate the things of God. We are provided with a window in time to question the hidden mysteries of scripture and truly discover who God is. The good news is that God has provided a path to salvation through Jesus Christ and the gospel contains the truths that solve the mysteries that have eluded men for millennia. |
| ames united church of christ: Spirituality That Makes a Difference Charles R. Kniker, 2022-04-07 Want to make your life more meaning-FULL? Most of us do. This book is a guide offering ways to do just that. Charles Kniker brings fifty-plus years of listening as a teacher, preacher, observer, and writer to a conversation with you. With questions and real-life stories and solutions, he'll support you; it won't be a one-way model. The many forms of spirituality will help explore life's big questions and ultimate mysteries. With tomorrow's climate changes, pandemics, political extremism, and battered moral boundaries, we need a transformational spirituality, a spirituality deeper than a few dusty rituals, more reliable than snappy slogans from a smart phone. This book is for young adults searching for answers to major questions; mid-life seekers, thankful for family, friends, and faith, but needing more; and seniors whose traditional communities seem irrelevant. Chapters in Part One are on home, self, voices of influence, and healthy spiritual communities. Chapters in Part Two offer a YESS to life, through various ways of joyous Yearning, truth-seeking Education, Soul care (for yourself and others), and Service to a world of neighbors. Kniker passionately believes human DNA wires us to be spiritual--transforming dreams to become deeds. |
| ames united church of christ: Bridges Franklin Sherman, 2011 |
| ames united church of christ: THE JOURNEY CONTINUES Dr. Ron Hansen, 2014-12-16 The Journey Continues: Ministry Facing Challenge and Change will travel though the mountain and plains states. The quest for meaning that began in Journey to God will be expanded through the challenges and changes of raising a family, facing the ever changing expectations of ministers, church, and faith in God. Our young family is now a family with teenagers, driver licenses, cars, and dating. The one-salaried family becomes a two-salaried family with positive and negative reactions. Maintaining a Christian presence in the face of negative comments and ridicule is part of the experience of serving God in our world. During the doctoral program, some role reversal takes place as teenagers ask dad to see his report card along with, Have you done your homework yet? The teens and dad take over cooking duties as Mom's work schedule changes. A new experience of burnt offerings at the dinner table becomes frequent. The ministry will face questions that challenge the role of ministers, campus ministers, and chaplains in the face of a fast growing improvement in health care, technological advances in communication, information, and office equipment. The computer age opens the doors to the inexperienced to enter the job market ahead of or replacing of older, experienced workers. As change continues, values are modified or set aside. The bottom line and compliance issues take the place of hard work and customer service. The idea of being kind to others changes to a get yours before they get theirs attitude. Attempting to serve when the church was moved from the mainstream to the sidelines is part of the challenge change brings. Having to prove something that once was taken for granted is part of regaining an awareness of the value of the Christian Faith. |
| ames united church of christ: Seeking Truth Clinton Bezan, 2020-12-11 Today people are searching for truth in a world embroiled by contradiction, misinformation and blatant lies that have created confusion, division and mistrust in society. The fear generated through terrorism and the handling of the global covid 19 pandemic have many questioning the future of mankind and turning to God for answers. For those genuinely seeking redemption through Jesus Christ, the tarnished reputation of the established Christian church offers little clarity in the path to salvation and serves as a living testimony to the fallen state of man. Where does one begin to sort through the soupy mess that religion has become and discover the true meaning of Christianity? In a revealing and illuminating examination of scripture, history and the authentic Christian message, Clinton Bezan dispels the fallacies and half truths propagated through Christian history by errant religious dogma and traditions. There is a distinct paradox that organized religion fails to recognize in its efforts to maintain growth and influence in a civilization that is increasingly devoid of moral legitimacy and is struggling to maintain its sense of purpose amid the volatile and fluid post truth culture. It is only by returning to the basic premise of faith in Christ that there is hope for peace and purpose in the Christian life. |
| ames united church of christ: Reformation Roots: Barbara Brown Zikmund, John B. Payne, 1997-02-21 Reformation Roots studies the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in European Christianity, including theological and political undercurrents of the Reformation. Edited by John B. Payne. Series editor Barbara Brown Zikmund. |
| ames united church of christ: Family Handbook Iowa State University Parents Association, 2011 |
| ames united church of christ: Beyond Apathy Elisabeth T. Vasko, 2015-01-01 Theological conversations about violence have typically framed the discussion in terms of victim and perpetrator. Such work, while important, only addresses part of the problem. Comprehensive theological and pastoral responses to violence must also address the role of collective passivity in the face of human denigration. Given the pervasiveness of inaction—whether in the form of denial, willful ignorance, or silent complicity—a theological reflection on violence that holds bystanders accountable, especially those who occupy social sites of privilege, is long overdue. In Beyond Apathy, Elisabeth T. Vasko utilizes resources within the Christian tradition to examine the theological significance of bystander participation in patterns of violence and violation within contemporary Western culture, giving particular attention to the social issues of bullying, white racism, and sexual violence. In doing so, she constructs a theology of redeeming grace for bystanders to violence that foregrounds the significance of social action in bringing about God’s basileia. |
| ames united church of christ: Evolution of a Ucc Style: Randi J. Walker, 2005-06-01 The Evolution of a UCC Style: Essays in the History, Ecclesiology, and Culture of the United Church of Christ focuses on the development of themes that define the United Church of Christ (UCC). Randi Walker examines the ethos and culture of the UCC rather than simply describing its structures, and addresses the themes of inclusiveness; diversity of theological heritage (Reformation, Enlightenment, and Pietism); congregational polity (the one and the many); liberal theological approach; and ecumenical spirit. Walker also takes a look at the tensions and boundaries contained within each theme. |
| ames united church of christ: Cumulative List of Organizations Described in Section 170 (c) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 , 2004 |
| ames united church of christ: Queer Clergy R. W. Holmen, 2014-01-15 Attorney, historian, and novelist R. W. Holmen brings a unique voice to the conversation of gay clergy in the pulpits. Queer Clergy: A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism provides a detailed history of the ways in which the following denominations have dealt with the issue of ordaining gay clergy: United Church of Christ; Episcopal Church; Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; United Methodist Church; and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) It provides an important historical reference for continuing dialogue. |
| ames united church of christ: Year Book United Church of Christ, 1980 |
| ames united church of christ: Cumulative List of Organizations Described in Section 170 (c) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 United States. Internal Revenue Service, 1989 |
| ames united church of christ: The Living Church , 1980-07 |
| ames united church of christ: Cumulative List of Organizations Described in Section 170 (c) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 , 1987 |
| ames united church of christ: Balm in Gilead Timothy Larsen, Keith L. Johnson, 2019-04-02 Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Marilynne Robinson is one of the most eminent public intellectuals in America today, and her writing offers probing meditations on the Christian faith. Based on the 2018 Wheaton Theology Conference, this volume brings together the thoughts of leading theologians, historians, literary scholars, and church leaders who engaged in theological dialogue with Robinson's work—and with the author herself. |
| ames united church of christ: Federal Register , 1976-07 |
| ames united church of christ: Grant Us Courage Randall Herbert Balmer, 1996 Balmer, the author and host of PBS's Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, offers a vivid, first-hand look at mainline Protestantism at the close of the century. He crisscrossed America to visit 12 churches that represent important strands of Christianity in America, resulting in a remarkable narrative of our nation. |
| ames united church of christ: Encyclopedia of African American Religions Larry G. Murphy, J. Gordon Melton, Gary L. Ward, 2013-11-20 Preceded by three introductory essays and a chronology of major events in black religious history from 1618 to 1991, this A-Z encyclopedia includes three types of entries: * Biographical sketches of 773 African American religious leaders * 341 entries on African American denominations and religious organizations (including white churches with significant black memberships and educational institutions) * Topical articles on important aspects of African American religious life (e.g., African American Christians during the Colonial Era, Music in the African American Church) |
| ames united church of christ: History and Program (Revised) Margaret Rowland Post, 2007-06-01 Our world is very different from the world our founders sought to address, in ways our forebears in the 1950s could have hardly imagined. Yet we remain what we have always been at our best, a people bearing witness to a grand moral vision rooted in the Bible and the person of the crucified and risen Christ, and a people of spiritual audacity prepared to risk old assumptions for the sake of new possibilities. - John H. Thomas, former General Minister, and President, United Church of Christ This best-selling, newly revised and updated book shares the: History of the United Church of Christ; Background on its predecessor bodies; Information on its Covenanted Ministries; Explanation of its emblem; and Statement of Faith. |
| ames united church of christ: United and Uniting Louis H. Gunnemann, 2007-10-01 United and Uniting continues the ongoing story of the United Church of Christ that Gunnemann began in The Shaping of the United Church of Christ. The book provides an invitation to readers to join in a recovery of the original vision of the United Church of Christ and, at the same time, to allow it to correct, through historical perspective, their own understanding of the United Church of Christ. |
| ames united church of christ: The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement Douglas A. Foster, 2004 Over ten years in the making, The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement offers for the first time a sweeping historical and theological treatment of this complex, vibrant global communion. Written by more than 300 contributors, this major reference work contains over 700 original articles covering all of the significant individuals, events, places, and theological tenets that have shaped the Movement. Much more than simply a historical dictionary, this volume also constitutes an interpretive work reflecting historical consensus among Stone-Campbell scholars, even as it attempts to present a fair, representative picture of the rich heritage that is the Stone-Campbell Movement.--BOOK JACKET. |
| ames united church of christ: Divinings: Religion at Harvard Rodney L. Petersen, 2014-09-17 Harvard has often been referred to as godless Harvard. This is far from the truth. Fact is that Harvard is and always has been concerned about religion. This volume addresses the reasons for this. The story of religion at Harvard in many ways is the story of religion in the United States. This edition will clarify this relationship. Furthermore, the question of religion is central not only to the religious history of Harvard but to its very corporate structure and institutional evolution. The volume is divided into three parts and deals withthe Formation of Harvard College in 1636 and Evolution of a Republic of Letters in Cambridge (First Light, Chapters 1–5); Religion in the University, the Foundations of a Learned Ministry and the Development of the Divinity School (The Augustan Age, Chapters 6–9); and the Contours of Religion and Commitment in an Age of Upheaval and Globalization (Calm Rising Through Change and Through Storm, Chapters 10–12).The story of the central role played by religion in the development of Harvard is a neglected factor in Harvard's history only touched upon in a most cursory fashion by previous publications. For the first time George H. Williamstells that story as embedded in American culture and subject to intense and continuing academic study throughout the history of the University to this day.Replete with extensive footnotes, this edition will be a treasure to future historians, persons interested in religious history and in the development of theology, at first clearly Reformed and Protestant, later ecumenical and interfaith. |
| ames united church of christ: Publication , 1987 |
| ames united church of christ: Exploring Protestant Traditions W. David Buschart, 2009-09-20 Protestant is shorthand for a spreading family tree of church and theological traditions. Each tradition embodies a historically shaped perspective on the beliefs, practices and priorities that make up a Christian community. Whether you are an insider to one tradition, a hybrid of two or three, or--as many Christians today--an outsider to all, Exploring Protestant Traditions is a richly informative field guide to eight prominent Protestant theological traditions: Lutheran, Anabaptist, Reformed, Anglican, Baptist, Wesleyan, Dispensational and Pentecostal. Clearly and evenhandedly, W. David Buschart traces the histories of each tradition, explains their interpretive approaches to Scripture and identifies their salient beliefs. As a result, you will gain a sense of what it is to believe and worship as a Reformed or Pentecostal Christian, who the traditions' heroes are and where the theological accents are placed. Charts displaying the denominational representatives of each tradition and bibliographies mapping the path for further explorations add to the value of this guide. This is a book that seeks to receive rather than evaluate, to listen and understand rather than judge or correct. His is a model of theological hospitality that encourages you to open your doors to the varied ways in which Protestantism has taken root in history and human society. Some things take time, like coming to know a religious tradition. But Exploring Protestant Traditions is an excellent place to start. |
| ames united church of christ: Unto a Good Land David Edwin Harrell, Edwin S. Gaustad, John B. Boles, Sally Foreman Griffith, 2005-08-23 Introducing a New U.S. History Text That Takes Religion Seriously Unto a Good Land offers a distinctive narrative history of the American people -- from the first contacts between Europeans and North America's native inhabitants, through the creation of a modern nation, to the 2004 presidential election. Written by a team of highly regarded historians, this textbook shows how grasping the uniqueness of the American experiment depends on understanding not only social, cultural, political, and economic factors but also the role that religion has played in shaping U. S. history. While most United States history textbooks in recent decades have expanded their coverage of social and cultural history, they still tend to shortchange the role of religious ideas, practices, and movements in the American past. Unto a Good Land restores the balance by giving religion its appropriate place in the story. This readable and teachable text also features a full complement of maps, historical illustrations, and In Their Own Words sidebars with excerpts from primary source documents. |
| ames united church of christ: Bay City Telephone Directories , 1989 |
| ames united church of christ: The Living Church Annual , 1943 |
| ames united church of christ: Description of Films and Filmstrips Shown , 1961 |
| ames united church of christ: Encyclopedia of Religion in the South Samuel S. Hill, Charles H. Lippy, Charles Reagan Wilson, 2005 The publication of the Encyclopedia of Religion in the South in 1984 signaled the rise in the scholarly interest in the study of Religion in the South. Religion has always been part of the cultural heritage of that region, but scholarly investigation had been sporadic. Since the original publication of the ERS, however, the South has changed significantly in that Christianity is no longer the primary religion observed. Other religions like Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism have begun to have very important voices in Southern life. This one-volume reference, the only one of its kind, takes this expansion into consideration by updating older relevant articles and by adding new ones. After more than 20 years, the only reference book in the field of the Religion in the South has been totally revised and updated. Each article has been updated and bibliography has been expanded. The ERS has also been expanded to include more than sixty new articles on Religion in the South. New articles have been added on such topics as Elvis Presley, Appalachian Music, Buddhism, Bill Clinton, Jerry Falwell, Fannie Lou Hamer, Zora Neale Hurston, Stonewall Jackson, Popular Religion, Pat Robertson, the PTL, Sports and Religion in the South, theme parks, and much more. This is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the South, religion, or cultural history. |
| ames united church of christ: Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans James B. Bennett, 2016-06-28 Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans examines a difficult chapter in American religious history: the story of race prejudice in American Christianity. Focusing on the largest city in the late-nineteenth-century South, it explores the relationship between churches--black and white, Protestant and Catholic--and the emergence of the Jim Crow laws, statutes that created a racial caste system in the American South. The book fills a gap in the scholarship on religion and race in the crucial decades between the end of Reconstruction and the eve of the Civil Rights movement. Drawing on a range of local and personal accounts from the post-Reconstruction period, newspapers, and church records, Bennett's analysis challenges the assumption that churches fell into fixed patterns of segregation without a fight. In sacred no less than secular spheres, establishing Jim Crow constituted a long, slow, and complicated journey that extended well into the twentieth century. Churches remained a source of hope and a means of resistance against segregation, rather than a retreat from racial oppression. Especially in the decade after Reconstruction, churches offered the possibility of creating a common identity that privileged religious over racial status, a pattern that black church members hoped would transfer to a national American identity transcending racial differences. Religion thus becomes a lens to reconsider patterns for racial interaction throughout Southern society. By tracing the contours of that hopeful yet ultimately tragic journey, this book reveals the complex and mutually influential relationship between church and society in the American South, placing churches at the center of the nation's racial struggles. |
| ames united church of christ: The Chicago Theological Seminary Register Chicago Theological Seminary, 1964 Alumni directory issue, 1859-1951: v. 44, no. 4/v. 45, no. 1. |
| ames united church of christ: Year Book of the Michigan Conference of the United Church of Christ United Church of Christ. Michigan Conference, 1974 |
| ames united church of christ: Handbook of Denominations in the United States Frank Spencer Mead, 1961 This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. |
| ames united church of christ: Making Higher Education Christian Joel A. Carpenter, Kenneth W. Shipps, 2019-04-29 This book takes stock of an important but often hidden aspect of American Protestant evangelicalism: its efforts in higher education. The many liberal arts colleges, graduate theological seminaries, and Bible colleges nationwide that serve evangelical traditions and movements have remained nearly invisible to the academic establishment until recently. The essays presented here reflect a maturing community of scholarship focused on the unfinished business of developing a thoroughly Christian approach to contemporary higher education. They offer new theoretical perspectives on the aims and bases of educating, candid assessments of shortcomings in evangelical scholarship, and concrete suggestion for effective approaches to contemporary problems. |
| ames united church of christ: Together Let Us Sweetly Live Jonathan C. David, 2007 Together Let Us Sweetly Live THE SINGING AND PRAYING BANDS By Jonathan C. David UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS Copyright © 2007 the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-252-07419-6 List of Hymn Notations...............................................................................ix Preface..............................................................................................xi Map..................................................................................................xxi Introduction.........................................................................................1 1. Alfred Green (1908-2003)..........................................................................43 2. Mary Allen (b. 1925)..............................................................................59 3. Samuel Jerry Colbert (b. 1950)....................................................................75 4. Gertrude Stanley (b. 1926)........................................................................100 5. Rev. Edward Johnson (1905-91).....................................................................128 6. Cordonsal Walters (b. 1913).......................................................................149 7. Susanna Watkins (1905-99).........................................................................164 8. Benjamin Harrison Beckett (1927-2005) and George Washington Beckett (b. 1929).....................176 9. Gus Bivens (1913-96)..............................................................................197 Sources..............................................................................................209 A Note on the Recording..............................................................................215 Index................................................................................................221 Introduction IN THE EARLY YEARS of the twentieth century, according to the older people of today, many African American residents of tidewater Maryland and Delaware would, in late summer, set aside their tools, leave their cornfields just when the tassels on each stalk turned golden and the tips of each blade changed from green to brown, abandon their tomatoes when a soft blush of red appeared on the hard green fruit, allow, for a time, their beans and sweet potatoes and melons to mature on their own, and make their way by horse and wagon, by car, or by bus to a Methodist camp meeting to attend to their sacred work. Those who had moved to the nearby cities of Baltimore, Wilmington, or Philadelphia in search of the higher wages and the excitement that urban life seemed to offer returned home by land or by water, traveling perhaps on one of the ferries that plied the Chesapeake or Delaware bays from city to town, from shore to shore, and back again. If the camp meeting was nearby, some individuals, families, or groups of unrelated church members might attend nightly services and return home to sleep, to work the next day perhaps, but then steadfastly to make their way right back to that same camp meeting for the next night's service, and the next, until that camp meeting's final, cathartic day. During several of the old-time country camp meetings, however, many would unhitch their horses, arrange all the separate wagons into a circle around a wooden-roofed tabernacle, arch a sheet of canvas over each wagon, and stay right there on the church ground for the duration of the meeting. Women would bring baskets and cheese boxes filled to the brim with fried chicken, home-smoked ham, biscuits, cabbage, and green beans. Men and boys would dig up old pine stumps and pile them high on the campgrounds, to be placed on fire stands and set ablaze to give light to each evening's spectacle. In the heat of the summer, when the ground might be parched and dust might billow-when you couldn't even walk across the ground barefoot, it was so hot-everyone lived in the shade, and everyone had a good time, as one person recounted later. For two weeks, an intense but relaxed, joyful, communal laboring in the Spirit manifested itself in a day-after-day pattern of an exuberant testimony service, followed by a rousing preaching service, followed at last by a climactic, regionally distinct Singing and Praying Band service. During this latter service, in a maneuver that scholars might refer to as a ring shout, participants formed a circle with a leader in the center; singing and clapping their hands, stamping their feet, and swaying their bodies all the while, they slowly raised several hymns and spirituals to a raucous, rejoicing, shouting crescendo, concluding the meeting with an ebullient march around the entire encampment. Although these bands shocked some outsiders and reminded other observers of Africa, committed participants considered them to be the foundation of the church. Camp meetings were not unique to this area or to that time at the dawn of the twentieth century. Drawn by the heady combination of religious salvation and spiritual democracy advocated in these festivals, Americans of various backgrounds had been making such yearly treks to camp meetings for over a hundred years. Those early meetings gave form to a religious movement attuned to the ethos of the new nation. In the frontier areas of Tennessee and Kentucky where they began, camp meetings sponsored by various Protestant denominations became temporary sacred cities, places of equality of souls and social solidarity that tempered the struggle to survive in the wilderness. In the states of the upper South and in Pennsylvania, these meetings also thrived. Here, where the camp meetings were predominantly organized by Methodists, both free and enslaved African Americans participated in large numbers along with English- and German-speaking European Americans. Perhaps because of Methodism's original antislavery witness, in Maryland, for example, this denomination received most of the black converts, while in 1800, approximately one-fifth of the Methodists in Virginia were black. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, white and black people alike frequently attended the same religious services, though often in segregated and unequal seating arrangements. Yet that century witnessed a complex and powerful movement to establish separate religious institutions for black Methodists. First came the effort to set up separate churches for Africans. Eventually the Methodist Episcopal Church organized a separate conference for all black churches within its denomination. A related movement led to the founding of independent, African Methodist denominations. Finally, beginning before Emancipation but accelerating after freedom, a similar but less-remarked effort saw African American Methodists starting camp meetings of their own. In the mid-Atlantic region in particular, these large, outdoor, African American religious events were the meetings that the grandparents and great-grandparents of today's participants built and today's older people witnessed when young. These camp meetings continue even in the twenty-first century. The camp meetings that the old soldiers of today recall were not unique; they were merely one echo of the religious festivals that became a new secular democracy's first religious mass movement. Yet the old-timers of today recall, above all other things, those aspects of their camps that were unique. That is, they speak mostly about the Singing and Praying Bands, for whom the camp meetings in this area became the primary regional showcases; these bands made these meetings special. They tell of the prayer meetings from which the camp meetings originated. They speak also of the march around Jericho, in which the Singing and Praying Bands led those at the camp meeting in a grand march around the entire campground on the final day of the meeting. * * * The Singing and Praying Bands of this area were special not just for the generations of participants in the African American camp meetings of the Atlantic coast states of the upper South. The antecedents of the twentieth-century bands seem to have played a clandestine but significant role in the development of African American culture in general. Therefore, the bands can stake a claim as important forces in the cultural and social history of America as a whole. Here is how it happened. At the end of the eighteenth century, when enslaved Africans in this area began to take to Methodism in a big way, the process of culture building by which Africans of various ethnic backgrounds began to transform themselves into one people was well underway. Yet that process was still incomplete. The new African American identity became consolidated throughout the South only during the first half of the nineteenth century, when hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were traumatically sold from the states of the upper South to cotton-growing areas of the Deep South. In the eighteenth century, prior to this mass transfer of human property, there had been two primary centers of slavery on the Atlantic coast of North America: coastal South Carolina and the Chesapeake Bay area. The ethnic mix of Africans imported into the two areas differed somewhat, leading to the possibility that the emerging African American cultures of these areas might also have differed. Of these two centers, the Chesapeake area had the larger number of slaves. In 1790, of all thirteen states, Virginia had the largest population of Africans, with 305,493 people. Maryland was second, with 111,079. Virginia also had the largest number of enslaved Africans-292,627-while Maryland's enslaved population of 103,036 was third largest. These two states also had the largest population of non-slave Africans at the time. In 1790, nearly 53 percent of the African population and 58 percent of the enslaved Africans in the country were in the upper South, in the states of Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The nearby black populations of southeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern New Jersey had extensive cultural ties to their brethren in the upper South. This area where the upper South meets the mid-Atlantic states seems to have been one of several areas central to the formation of African American culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among the Africans in America of that time, for example, those who lived in the mid-Atlantic region and upper South were pioneers in building specifically black institutions. In 1787, Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others founded a mutual aid organization in Philadelphia called the Free African Society, initiating, in the words of W. E. B. DuBois, the first wavering step of a people toward organized social life. Numerous other grassroots benevolent and mutual aid organizations sprouted up at this time, aiming to provide members financial assistance in case of sickness or death in the family. Under the leadership of Richard Allen in Philadelphia, a group of black Methodists established the Bethel African Church in that city in 1794. In 1816, Bethel joined ranks with other independent black Methodist churches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Baltimore to form the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) denomination. In Wilmington, the denomination called the Union Church of Africans was established just prior to the founding of the A.M.E. Church. Along with new institutions, a distinctly African American expressive culture was emerging in the upper South and mid-Atlantic region at the dawn of the nineteenth century. In 1819, for example, a white minister named John Fanning Watson, who lambasted many Methodists for what he saw as excesses in their worship, gave us one of the earliest reports of a specifically black religious song tradition, writing that the coloured people get together, and sing for hours together, short scraps of disjointed affirmations, pledges, or prayers, lengthened out with long repetition choruses. In the same paragraph, Watson's description of these sacred performances by black worshippers is strikingly evocative of outdoor singing circles that the Singing and Praying Bands continue to this day. This account predates by over twenty-five years the earliest known description of a ring shout from the Atlantic coast area of the Deep South. Another writer, a Quaker schoolboy from Westtown School outside Philadelphia, described black worshippers at an outdoor camp meeting in 1817 marching around an outdoor tabernacle, singing a spiritual chorus and blowing a trumpet, in a reenactment of the march around Jericho by Joshua and the Israelites that is similar to the march that the Singing and Praying Bands continue to do today. If we look at these historical references with minds informed by the bands of today, we can project the current tradition to have been already thriving two hundred years ago, in the early years of the nineteenth century. This nascent African American expressive culture articulated new belief systems that were forming among Africans in this area, also to a certain extent in the context of Protestant evangelism. Africans in America developed a variant of this branch of Protestantism that expressed protonationalist African American identity. According to this theology of resistance, African American Christians began to associate their experience in America with that of the Israelites in Egypt, and the person of Jesus took on some of the qualities of Moses, who would not fail to liberate the enslaved. It was to some extent in the religious meetings of the upper South and in the language of this distinctive African American perspective that Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner situated their rebellions in Virginia. (Continues...) Excerpted from Together Let Us Sweetly Live by Jonathan C. David Copyright © 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. |
| ames united church of christ: The Living Theological Heritage of the United Church of Christ: United and uniting Barbara Brown Zikmund, 1995 The United Church of Christ has developed its distinctive theological identity since 1957, having drawn upon the four mainstream traditions and various hidden histories that came together at its birth. It has been profoundly shaped by movements for racial and social justice, the organizational thrust of old-line Protestantism, the changing role of women, new patterns of immigration, and ongoing ecumenical efforts to embody the unity of the Christian church. This seventh volume showcases the theological work of the United Church of Christ from 1957 to 2000 and invites its leaders and members to become more theologically self-conscious. |
| ames united church of christ: United Church Herald , 1968 |
| ames united church of christ: American Denominational History Keith Harper, 2008-09-24 This work brings various important topics and groups in American religious history the rigor of scholarly assessment of the current literature. The fruitful questions that are posed by the positions and experiences of the various groups are carefully examined. American Denominational History points the way for the next decade of scholarly effort. Contents Roman Catholics by Amy Koehlinger Congregationalists by Margaret Bendroth Presbyterians by Sean Michael Lucas American Baptists by Keith Harper Methodists by Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait Black Protestants by Paul Harvey Mormons by David J. Whittaker Pentecostals by Randall J. Stephens Evangelicals by Barry Hankins |
Ames United Church of Christ
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Ames UCC worshippers are truly a diverse crowd: children, high school and college students, adults, and seniors worship at Ames United Church of Christ. More than half the congregants …
ABOUT Ames UCC - Ames United Church of Christ
Ames UCC is a theologically progressive church in historic downtown Ames, Iowa. We are a member of the 5,000 strong United Church of Christ , in the Central Association of the Iowa Conference .
Order of Worship - Ames United Church of Christ
Children are very important to our church. Each service they come forward for a special lesson just for them. We want all children to know they are welcome everywhere in our sanctuary, …
Our History - Ames United Church of Christ
After the 1957 merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches nationally, the Ames UCC adopted the name United Church of Christ - Congregational, …
Open and Affirming and Just Peace - Ames United Church of Christ
In 1985 the United Church of Christ's 15th General Synod, held in Ames, passed a Just Peace Pronouncement calling upon all settings of the UCC to be a Just Peace Church. The General …
Calendar of events - Ames United Church of Christ
Ames UCC follows the Ames School District in closing our campus for inclement weather. Most staff remain available via email and phone when working from home.
Ames United Church of Christ
Nov 1, 2015 · In keeping with the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, we joyfully and unconditionally welcome all people of any age, gender, race, culture, ability, sexual orientation, or gender …
2024 Proclamation Supporting DEI and the LGBTQ+ Community
Ames UCC recognizes the burden that the pain and hardship of this intolerable targeting creates on your ability to study and learn, to feel safe, and to feel loved. Please know that you are loved. …
Ames United Church of Christ
We are a theologically progressive church located in downtown Ames, Iowa. You are welcome here!
Ames UCC staff - Ames United Church of Christ
Whether you are new to this community or have been part of us for a lifetime, Betsy invites you to drop her a note to grab a cup of hot chocolate and chat about how we can co-create God's …
Worship With Us - Ames United Church of Christ
Ames UCC worshippers are truly a diverse crowd: children, high school and college students, adults, and seniors worship at Ames United Church of Christ. More than half the …
ABOUT Ames UCC - Ames United Church of Christ
Ames UCC is a theologically progressive church in historic downtown Ames, Iowa. We are a member of the 5,000 strong United Church of Christ , in the Central Association of the Iowa …
Order of Worship - Ames United Church of Christ
Children are very important to our church. Each service they come forward for a special lesson just for them. We want all children to know they are welcome everywhere in our …
