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Under
God
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Bethany House
Released: October 2004
ISBN 0764200098
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'UNDER GOD'
Lifting a People: Richard Allen
(1760-1831)
By tobyMac and Michael Tait
CBN.com –
Stokeley Sturgis, a Delaware farmer, called out to the young black
man, "Richard, come here."
Richard put down his rake and trotted over to the porch of the
"big house" where his master stood. "Yes, sir?"
he asked.
"It's Thursday. Isn't this the night you and your brother
go to that church meeting?" Stokeley asked.
"Yes, sir," Richard replied. "But we wanted to
finish raking the vegetable patch first. We're almost finished—I
think we can still make the meeting on time."
Stokeley smiled and shook his head. "You have worked enough
for today, Richard. Go on to your meeting—you can finish
the rest in the morning."
"Thank you, sir, but we would rather stay and get our crops
ahead." Richard hurried back to join his brother. Before
long they finished and hurried off down the dirt road to their
meeting at a nearby farm.
Stokeley remembered how his white neighbors had warned him not
to let his slaves attend the church meetings because "religion
promotes discontent and laziness among slaves."
Stokeley smiled. If anything, Richard worked harder than ever!
He decided to ask Richard about it in the morning.
Richard Allen had become a Christian in his late teens, when
a white itinerant Methodist preacher named Freeborn Garretson
preached to a group of slaves in a clearing in the woods. Richard
had just lost his mother and three younger siblings—sold
to a plantation so far away that he had no hope of seeing them
again. As he heard the Gospel, he experienced the love of God
in a way that changed his life forever. Here was a love—God's
love—that could never be cut off.
After this powerful spiritual experience, Richard began going
from house to house, telling other slaves about Christ. As Richard
continued to grow in Christian character, his master became more
and more impressed with the genuineness of his faith and let him
conduct prayer services for the slaves.
Stokeley also started asking Richard questions. When asked about
working harder, Richard replied, "God's Word says to obey
our masters from the heart, the same way we would serve the Lord
Jesus himself. When we do that, God makes sure we are rewarded—even
if we are slaves."
Richard paused, then added, "Sir, I could ask Rev. Garretson
to come and preach right here at your house. He can answer your
questions much better than I can."
Stokeley cheerfully agreed. Soon afterward, Rev. Garretson came
and preached. When Stokeley heard the Gospel, he, too, became
a Christian. A few months later Garretson preached that the sin
of owning slaves was so offensive to God that on Judgment Day,
slaveholders would be "weighed in the balances, and found
wanting" (Daniel 5:27 NKJV).
The next day, Stokeley told Richard, "I can see in the Bible
that owning slaves is wrong. Yet I am too deep in debt to just
give you your freedom. I believe God has given me an idea: You
can leave the farm, go to work for other people, and earn money
to buy your freedom from me."
Richard jumped at the chance, believing that God had made a way
for him to fulfill this lifelong dream. They agreed on the amount—two
thousand Continental dollars.
Richard immediately faced a problem that abolitionists would
work on for years to come: Finding a job was not easy for a young
black man. "When I left my master's house, I didn't know
what to do. . . . I wondered what business I should follow to
pay my master and get my living."
His first job was to cut firewood, and sometime later he took
a job making bricks. Then, during the Revolutionary War, he got
a job he enjoyed: driving a wagon and delivering salt. Along the
way, Richard would stop and preach. "I had my regular stops
and preaching places on the road. I enjoyed many happy seasons
in meditation and prayer while in this employment." Wherever
he went, Richard would preach to anyone who would listen, just
as he had seen Freeborn Garretson do.
Once peace was declared in 1783, Richard became a "licensed
exhorter" and began to travel and preach the Gospel extensively.
His anointed, fiery delivery greatly appealed to his listeners,
many of whom had never heard the simple Gospel message that Richard
brought. He started in Delaware, then went to New Jersey. He preached
the Gospel in the evenings and on Sundays; by day, he cut wood
for a living.
In Pennsylvania he had several weeks of glorious meetings. He
recalls, "Many souls were awakened, and cried aloud to the
Lord to have mercy upon them. It was a time of visitation from
above—many were slain of the Lord. Some said, 'This man
must be a man of God; I never heard such preaching before.'"
For the next six years Allen traveled the Methodist circuit throughout
New York, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, preaching to black
and white congregations alike. Meanwhile, he worked at a variety
of jobs, saving every extra penny until he was able to pay his
master in full. Finally he was a free man!
In 1785 Richard's preaching and Holy Spirit–fueled services
caught the attention of Francis Asbury, the first American Methodist
Bishop. Asbury asked him to travel and preach with him, and although
Richard considered it a great honor to be asked, he felt God had
other plans for him.
About this time Allen was asked to preach to the black congregation
at Saint George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia. This city
had become a haven for free blacks and escaped slaves from neighboring
slave states. Most of these new residents were uneducated and
did not attend church regularly. Richard saw "a large field
open in seeking and instructing my African brethren, who had been
a long forgotten people."
His constant prayer was, "Lord, how do I lift my people?"
Richard began preaching to African Americans whenever and wherever
he could. He was given the 5:00 AM services at Saint George's
and also preached four or five times a day in parks near where
black families lived.
Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, one of the prominent black members
at Saint George's, often discussed how to best help their community.
"It is one thing to be free from slavery. It is another thing
to find your place in society," Richard observed. "These
people are like sheep without a shepherd."
Absalom agreed: "The slave system has kept them ignorant.
But look what God is doing! The Methodists are taking the Gospel
to the slaves on the plantations."
Richard concurred, "I remember how God's love transformed
me as I learned His commandments and His ways. Forgiveness, diligence,
honesty all became part of my life."
"God's power transformed my life," Absalom said.
"That is the key to lifting our people. It is done one heart
at a time."
The number of blacks attending Saint George's increased rapidly
as word spread of a church that ministered powerfully to African
Americans. Richard's style of preaching was simple, practical,
and often spontaneously delivered as the Holy Spirit instructed
him. His Spirit-directed approach was a great contrast to the
carefully constructed, scholarly orations of other ministers of
his day.
In time the large number of African Americans joining the church
caused overcrowding—and interracial tensions. The church
began a building program and constructed a new balcony to accommodate
their new members. No one had told the black members of the congregation,
but it had been decided that blacks would no longer be allowed
to sit next to white church members on the main floor as they
had been doing. From now on, they were to sit only in the new
balcony. Segregated seating was now mandatory in the house of
God.
In November 1787, on the first Sunday service after the balcony
was finished, an usher pointed Richard, Absalom, and William White,
another prominent black church member, to seats in the new balcony.
But as the three men were a little late, they instead took seats
on the lower level, near where they always sat. The service started
and the congregation dropped to their knees in prayer.
During the prayer a church trustee grabbed Absalom and tried
to pull him to his feet. Absalom did not know what was going on
but was shocked to be disturbed during the prayer. He said to
the trustee, "Wait until the prayer is over, and I will get
up and trouble you no more."
Another trustee came and tried to pull William White from his
knees.
When the prayer was over, Richard, Absalom, and William stood
up and left the building, followed by every black person at the
service. "We all went out of the church in a body,"
Richard wrote in his memoirs. "They were no more plagued
by us in the church." Richard realized his people must have
a place of their own to worship, a place where they would be honored
and lifted up, not pressed down and degraded.
Already a gifted preacher and teacher, Richard now had a chance
to develop yet another gift from God—that of pastor. He
soon started to build Bethel Methodist Church. Bethel grew quickly.
In its first two years, membership grew to 121; a decade later
it had grown to 457, and by 1813 it had reached 1,272.
Bethel's rapid expansion showed that the unique spiritual needs
of African Americans were being met. "The plain and simple
Gospel suits best for the people—for the unlearned can understand
and the learned are sure to understand."
Newly freed blacks welcomed the spontaneity and exuberant atmosphere
of the Methodist services. They were attracted as well by the
church's strict system of discipline—its sanctions against
drinking, gambling, and infidelity—which helped them bring
order to their lives.
Allen's preaching also played a role. Sensitive to the Holy Spirit,
he could exhort the people with passionate preaching or, with
equal ease, carefully teach from the Scriptures, line upon line,
showing them how to live godly, peaceful, fruitful lives. The
excellence of his sermons was recognized in 1799, when Bishop
Asbury ordained him as the first black deacon of the Methodist
Church.
From the start Allen recognized the importance of education to
the future of the African-American community. In 1795 he opened
a day school for sixty children and in 1804 founded the "Society
of Free People of Colour for Promoting the Instruction and School
Education of Children of African Descent." By 1811 there
were no fewer than eleven black schools in the city.
By 1816 Allen realized that to fully meet the needs of his people
and lift them up to the place where God wanted them to be, he
would need to break with the white establishment and start a new
denomination. Representatives from four other black Methodist
congregations met with Bethel to organize the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, the first fully independent black denomination
in America. Allen was named the first bishop.
At the core of Allen's beliefs was his trust that as the lives
of church members were transformed by God, they would forge a
new identity for their people and would lift the prospects for
all blacks. Throughout his life, Richard exhorted all freed blacks
to help their enslaved brethren by being exemplary citizens:
If we are lazy and idle, the enemies of freedom plead it as
a cause why we ought not to be free, and that giving us our liberty
would be an injury to us. By such conduct we strengthen the bands
of oppression, and keep many in bondage. Will our friends excuse—will
God pardon us—for the part we act in making strong the hands
of the enemies of our color?
As Richard sought God for a way to bring his people out of poverty
and shame, God guided him through a process that made a tremendous
difference in many lives—not only of the citizens of Philadelphia
in the 1790s and early 1800s, but also of many black heroes to
come. Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and
Biddy Mason all attended the AME church.
*****
But this is a people plundered and despoiled . . . a prey with
none to deliver them . . . none to say, "Give them back!"
Who among you will give ear to this? ISAIAH 42:22–23 NASB
The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion
of Christ and His apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and
benevolence; which acknowledges in every person a brother, or
a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity,
and to this we owe our free Constitutions of Government.
—NOAH WEBSTER
Negro Spirituals
Slaves sang for many reasons—to cheer one another, establish
a common rhythm to coordinate efforts in a strenuous task, pass
along coded instructions on how to escape, spread word about a
secret prayer meeting . . . or simply to pour out to God their
deepest emotions. Out of these often spontaneous expressions grew
our country's first uniquely American music—the Negro spiritual.
The Gospel of Christ was embraced by slaves, who identified with
the sufferings of Jesus and of the ancient Jews. Though Christianity
was usually modeled quite hypocritically by their masters, slaves
saw past the dichotomy to the redeeming power found in a life
of faith. Still, the hypocrisy was not overlooked in spirituals:
Everybody talkin' about
Heaven ain't goin' there . . .
The sophisticated structure and melodies of Negro spirituals'
belied the composers' lack of education. Most were drawn from
the rhythms that had been passed down from the first generations
to be brought in chains from Africa. The popular call-and-response
format encouraged exuberant participation by all.
Some songs served as musical roadmaps for the Underground Railroad.
For example, the lyric "Follow the drinking gourd" instructs
a slave to follow the Big Dipper north to freedom. Other spirituals
like "Wade in the Water," "The Gospel Train,"
and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" directly refer to the
Underground Railroad.
The original composers of African-American spirituals are unknown,
so they have assumed a collective ownership by the whole community.
Many spirituals have found their way into today's hymnals, including
"Go Tell It on the Mountain," "Amen," "He's
Got the Whole World in His Hands," "There is a Balm
in Gilead," and "Lord, I Want to Be a Christian."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from:
Under God by tobyMac and Michael
Tait (with WallBuilders)
Copyright © 2004; ISBN 0764200098
Published by Bethany
House Publishers
Used by permission. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
For more information on this book, visit the Under
God Web site.
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History Section on CBN.com
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