The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity

Day Twenty-Eight: Founding Fathers of the Black Church

Welcome to day twenty-eight of our forty-day intercultural journey. From Martin Luther King Day to the end of Black History Month we are focusing on The Journey: Forty Days of Promise—Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity.

Day Twenty-Eight: Founding Fathers of the Black Church[1]

Historians of American history frequently emphasize our “founding fathers.” Politically speaking, they highlight white males like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and James Madison. Spiritually speaking, they feature white males such as Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, John Winthrop, Jonathan Edwards, and Isaac Backus.

Sadly, they have often left African American founding fathers missing in action. In particular, the spiritual founding fathers of independent African American church life have been neglected, relegated to the back seat of the historical bus. We now seek to recover something of the lost legacy of loving leadership bequeathed to us by African American spiritual forefathers.

Walking the Talk: Modeling Christian Manliness

Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne was an early leader in and the official historian of the AMEC. Payne experienced numerous opportunities to live out his Christian manhood. His manliness remaining strong in the twilight years of his life. When he was in his seventies, Payne refused to stay on a train where he would have been seated in Jim Crow conditions. Standing his ground and confronting the white authorities on the train, he said to them:

“Before I’ll dishonor my manhood by going into that car, stop your train and put me off.”

After Payne left the train, “the guilty conductor looked out and said, ‘Old man, you can get on the platform at the back of the car.’ I replied only by contemptuous silence.” Payne then carried his own luggage, walking a great distance over “a heavy bed of sand” to his next speaking engagement in the deep South. Payne literally walked the talk.

Dare to Be a Daniel

How did such Christian manhood develop? Payne credits his father who started him on his purposeful life.

“I was the child of many prayers. My father dedicated me to the service of God before I was born, declaring that if the Lord would give him a son that son should be consecrated to him, and named after the Prophet Daniel.”

Imagine the sense of self, the sense of biblical masculinity that Payne’s father passed to his son.

He did so not only by naming, but also by modeling. Of his father, Payne testifies:

“He was an earnest Christian and a class leader, having two classes under him—what used to be called the Seekers’ Class and the Members’ Class. He was a faithful observer of family worship; and often his morning prayers and hymns aroused me, breaking my infant sleep and slumbers.”

Learning Together From Our Great Cloud of Witnesses

1. What impact could knowledge of an African American leader like Daniel Alexander Payne have upon Americans? African Americans? African American males?

2. Why do you think that the history of African American leaders like Payne is so infrequently highlighted? What could be done to reverse this pattern?

[1]Excerpted from, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement” according to the U.S. Congress. On December 1, 1955, Parks became famous for refusing to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a White passenger.

Her actions started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was one of our nation’s largest movements against racial segregation. In addition, it helped to launch Martin Luther King, Jr., who was involved with the boycott, to prominence in the Civil Rights movement. Rosa Parks has had a lasting worldwide legacy.

Seventy years earlier, Daniel Alexander Payne (1811-1893) engaged in a similar, but lesser-known act of civil disobedience. Had his actions been more widely reported, Payne might today be known as the “Father of the Former-Day Civil Rights Movement.”

Born to free Black parents in Charleston, South Carolina, Payne was an early leader in and the official historian for the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC). Leaving the South in 1834, Payne studied at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, PA, and then ministered for over fifty years as a pastor, educator, and influential bishop.

Payne’s ministry returned him to the South in the twilight years of his life. When he was in his seventies, he refused to stay on a train where he would have been seated in Jim Crow conditions. Standing his ground and confronting the White authorities on the train, he said to them, “Before I’ll dishonor my manhood by going into that car, stop your train and put me off.”

Payne describes the scene after he left the train. “The guilty conductor looked out and said, ‘Old man, you can get on the platform at the back of the car.’ I replied only by contemptuous silence.”

Payne then carried his own luggage, walking a great distance over “a heavy bed of sand” to his next speaking engagement in the deep South. Payne literally walked the talk. By doing so, he was the predecessor of later-day Civil Rights leaders such as Parks.

How did such courage develop in Payne’s life? Where did such conviction emanate from in his background?

Payne himself credits two men in his life, the one his biological father and the other his spiritual mentor. Payne’s father started him on his purposeful life. “I was the child of many prayers. My father dedicated me to the service of God before I was born, declaring that if the Lord would give him a son that son should be consecrated to him, and named after the Prophet Daniel.” Payne marveled at the sense of self, the sense of masculinity, that his father conveyed to him.

His father did so not only by naming, but also by modeling. Of his father, Payne testifies, “He was an earnest Christian and a class leader, having two classes under him—what used to be called the Seekers’ Class and the Members’ Class. He was a faithful observer of family worship; and often his morning prayers and hymns aroused me, breaking my infant sleep and slumbers.”

Though empowered by such spiritual fatherly nurture, Payne felt the wound of fatherlessness when his father died when Payne was four. After his mother passed away when he was nine, Payne’s great aunt raised him. Seeing his need for a father figure, he joined a church and was “assigned to the class of Mr. Samuel Weston, who from that time became the chief religious guide of my youth.”

As valuable as these two male mentors were in Payne’s life, he credited another Male (the God-Man) with being his essential model. “The glorious manhood of Jesus Christ is the only true type of real manhood. . . . Study him, study him as your model; study the perfect model of manhood until he shall be conformed in you.” Payne copied the Apostle Paul’s male mentoring model. “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).

Similarly, Rosa Parks’ courage was embedded in her through her upbringing in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she was mentored during her lifelong active membership. Here she heard of the inspiring exploits of AMEC Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne. In 1995, she published her memoirs, Quiet Strength, which focused on the role that her faith played in her life. Parks also noted the impact on her life of her mother, a teacher, who home-schooled her until she was eleven.

Rosa Parks and Daniel Alexander Payne—both lived courageous, exemplary lives of racial reconciliation. Both were inspired by empowering spiritual mentors. Both are African American heroes of the faith whose lives are worthy of emulation. Both deserve their place among that “great cloud of witnesses” in God’s hall of faith.

[1]Excerpted with permission of Baker Books from Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction.

Tags: Biblical Counseling, Christian Counseling, Church, Discipleship, Equipping, Kellemen, Ministry, Pastors, RPM Ministries, Soul Care, Spiritual Direction, Spiritual Formation

Founding Fathers, Part I[i]

Historians of American history frequently emphasize our “founding fathers.” Politically speaking, they highlight white males like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and James Madison. Spiritually speaking, they feature white males such as Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, John Winthrop, Jonathan Edwards, and Isaac Backus.

Sadly, they have often left African American founding fathers missing in action. In particular, the spiritual founding fathers of independent African American church life have been neglected, relegated to the back seat of the historical bus.

Walking the Talk: Modeling Christian Manliness

Throughout church history, developing and displaying the character of a soul physician was the absolute prerequisite before focusing upon competence in soul care and spiritual direction. This has certainly been the case with African American founding fathers as they strove to practice what they preached. In particular, we learn from them that we sustain, heal, reconcile, and guide as much by our actions (our model) as by our interactions (our message). People listened to their words of counsel because they witnessed them heeding their own counsel.

E. Franklin Frazier contends that the historic Black Church was somewhat passive due to its other-worldly focus.[ii] However, firsthand accounts draw a different portrait altogether. Traditionally, manhood has been a central theme in the independent Black Church.[iii] Bishop B. W. Arnett described the organizing conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC) in 1816 as “the Convention of the friends of Manhood Christianity.”[iv]

Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, an early leader in and the official historian of the AMEC, believed that the separation of the AME from the white Methodist Episcopal Church was “beneficial to the man of color” in two ways. “First: it has thrown us upon our own resources and made us tax our own mental powers both for government and support.” Secondly, it gave the black man “an independence of character which he could neither hope for nor attain unto, if he had remained as the ecclesiastical vassal of his white brethren.” It produced “independent thought,” “independent action,” and an “independent hierarchy,” and the latter “has made us feel and recognize our individuality and our heaven-created manhood.”[v]

Personally, Payne experienced numerous opportunities to live out his Christian manhood. Payne was devastated when a new law forced him to stop teaching his fellow African Americans. Wavering on the precipice of doubt, he girds up the loins of his mind with the solemn words, “‘With God one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. Trust in him, and he will bring slavery and all its outrages to an end.’ These words from the spirit world acted on my troubled soul like water on a burning fire, and my aching heart was soothed from its burden of woes.”[vi] Payne engages in a spiritual conversation with himself in which he exhorted himself to see life from God’s eternal perspective.

Payne then pens a lengthy poem expressing both his feelings and theological reflections. Of this spiritual exercise, he concludes, “The writing of this poem was the safety-valve which let out the superabundant grief that would otherwise have broken my heart and sent me headlong to an untimely grave.”[vii] Some males decry poetry or journaling as less-than-masculine. However, Payne, like King David before him, understands the manly value of candid “psalming.”

Other males disparage depending on others during times of spiritual despondency. Not Payne. In response to his internal battle with his external situation, he received letters of spiritual consolation from the poetess, Miss Mary S. Palmer, and her sister Miss Jane Keith Palmer. He reflects in response to these letters, “At a time when my heart seemed ready to burst with grief and my lips ready to deny the existence of God, or to blaspheme his holy name for permitting one race to grind another to powder, such white friends were exceedingly dear and precious to me. I looked on them then, and regard them now, as God’s angels sent to strengthen me when the powers of darkness seemed to be let loose against me and against the race which I was so earnestly serving. I can never cease to remember them without emotions of gratitude and love.”[viii]

Given Payne’s circumstances and the culture of the day, we find here triple humility. He models the humility to dependently receive help, to gladly receive help from females, and to non-judgmentally and non-defensively receive help from whites.

[i]Excerpted from Kellemen, Beyond the Suffering, Baker Books, 2007.
[ii] Frazier, The Negro Church in America.
[iii] Becker, “The Black Church,” in Fulop, African-American Religion, p. 180.
[iv] Arnett, Proceedings of the Quarto-Centennial Conference of the A.M.E Church, p. 384.
[v] Payne, A History of the A.M.E. Church, I, pp. 9-12.
[vi] Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years, p. 28.
[vii] Ibid., p. 34.
[viii] Ibid., p. 39.

Tags: Biblical Counseling, Christian Counseling, Church, Discipleship, Equipping, Kellemen, Ministry, Pastors, RPM Ministries, Soul Care, Spiritual Direction, Spiritual Formation