Will African Methodism Rise Again?

George Pratt, Contributing Writer

During moments of political turmoil and social upheaval, it is imperative that African and Afrodiasporic people employ a Sankofa approach to the struggle for liberation. This method of survival requires the reclamation of our rich history and heritage as a means to inform the present work of creating and cultivating free Black futures. In this vein, the task of liberation is both a political and theological act. In an anti-black world and white supremacist society, there is no separation between the political and theological. For Black existence is evidence of G*d’s incarnational presence in human form as the oppressed. When forcibly converted and or coerced into colonial Christianity in North America, our Ancestors made meaning out of this revelation through radical political and theological movements—spiritual strivings. 

These spiritual strivings materialized as radical egalitarian and Pan-Africanist visions during the early 19th century through Bishop-elect Daniel Coker and Bishop Richard Allen. Their emancipationist energies led them to utilize the Methodist framework as a political vehicle to develop free Black Trans-Atlantic communities and to resist Euro-American imperialism. When considering the current state of Afro-Protestantism and African Methodism, it appears that we have lost our way and are failing both our ancestors and progeny. Subsequently, the Church has died and is in its afterlife. 

Scholar Eddie Glaude’s autopsy of the “Black Church” helps us to contemplate our responsibility in our demise. In his groundbreaking article, “The Black Church is Dead,” he contends that historically, African American mainline denominations have ceased to function as “venerable” social institutions once “central to black life” because they no longer serve as America’s repositories for moral conscience. Citing the storied “routinization of Black prophetic witness” as the primary reason for the institution’s decline, Glaude posits that the Black Church’s reliance on a “currency” of memory, alienating itself from the present moment, has caused it to lose its political power. He further suggests that this death is signified by institutional Black churches whose liturgies and services “entertain,” lacking a “spirit that transforms.”

While the Church has always struggled with transformation, currently, the “social justice and liberating faith” devastatingly misses the mark in its various challenges with moral integrity and intellectual dishonesty. African Methodism, in its ecclesiology and theology, is plagued by what Bell Hooks calls “imperialist white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy.” Individuals and schemas within the tradition that possess power often abuse it, utilizing the institution as a technology of domination, exploitation, and surveillance to maintain oppressive and hegemonic systems for personal benefit. Moreover, it seems the Church refuses to evolve in many ways to effectively serve the present age. 

It is not that the Church itself is problematic, for Black people have brilliantly managed to retain African cultural, economic, psycho-social, and spiritual practices while fashioning new formations into Christianity through Protestant religious organization. The problem is that we have forgotten that our resilience and self-determining qualities as a people are rooted in abilities of adaptability and flexibility—like the spirit. If we are to truly confess what Howard Thurman considers the “theological and metaphysical interpretation of the Christian doctrine of salvation,” African Methodism would radically rethink its economic, ecclesial, political, and theological commitments as a religious culture. The Church desperately needs to revitalize itself as a Pan-Africanist political network of mutual aid organizations that meets the material and spiritual needs of Black people globally. There are those who will attempt to do this work through the project of decolonization, breathing new life into the treasured tradition. However, if African Methodism fails to decolonize, it will not resurrect.