146 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the PresentGardner Taylor, L. V. Booth, Martin Luther King Jr., and
others withdrew and formed the Progressive National Bap-
tist Convention (PNBC) in 1961. But this was not the last
Baptist split. In 1988, another group left the NBCA because
of diff erences over the governance of the NBPB. Th e new
split called itself the National Missionary Baptist Conven-
tion of America.
Holiness organizations arose in late 19th century
against what was perceived as the worldliness of the main-
line denominations. Th e holiness movement fi rst entered
the white Methodist Episcopal Church before the Civil War
and spread widely during the postbellum era. Basically, the
holiness movement claimed that sanctifi cation, another di-
vine work, must take place in the life of the believer aft er
conversion/salvation. Scores of Baptists and Methodists
chose to associate themselves with “holiness” and thus were
excommunicated from their home churches or chose to
leave on their own. In 1886, Isaac Cheshier pioneered the
United Holy Church of America (UHCA), the earliest black
holiness group, in Method, North Carolina. Eleven years
later, Charles Price Jones, a prominent Baptist preacher,
founded a holiness convention in Jackson, Mississippi.
Jones’s convention was informally organized as the Church
of God of in Christ in 1897. In 1920, Jones reorganized
his group as the Church of Christ (Holiness) USA. Most
holiness churches have granted much freedom to women
to work as evangelists and ordained pastors and have not
required educational achievements as a requirement for
ordination.
Charles Parham and William Seymour were the major
promoters of what has become the Pentecostal movement.
Th ey promoted another work of grace, the Baptism of the
Holy Spirit, which they claimed was subsequent to salva-
tion and evidenced by speaking in tongues. Parham, a
white preacher, founded the Pentecostal movement in 1901,
and Seymour, a black pastor, led the Azusa Revival (1906–
1922), an international revival based in Los Angeles. Many
black organizations added the Baptism of the Holy Spirit
to their list of doctrines. Th e Pentecostal Assemblies of the
World (PAW) was organized as an interracial group in 1907,
but issues of power and racism forced most white minis-
ters to leave, thus making the PAW a predominantly black
Pentecostal denomination. In late 1907, Charles Mason,
a holiness leader who had endorsed speaking in tongues,
left Jones’s organization and legally retained the name “the
Church of God in Christ” (COGIC) for his new PentecostalEpiscopal Zion Church (AMEZ), a new denomination, in
New York City in 1796. In the South, blacks remained in the
white Methodist fold until 1870, when they left to form
the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (CME). In 1954,
the word “colored” was removed, and the CME became the
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
From the very beginning, black churches refl ected
black political thought. For example, Bethel AME, pas-
tored by Richard Allen, was a center of black emigration to
Haiti. Denmark Vesey, Rev. Morris Brown, and Nat Turner
all used religion in planning armed slave revolts. Th e abo-
litionist movement was also deeply connected to the black
church; it was in the basement of a black church that the
New England Antislavery Society, the fi rst such society, was
organized in Boston in 1832. In 1843, black Ohio Baptists
organized the Union Antislavery Baptist Society, the fi rst
black abolitionist society. Harriet Tubman and Sojourner
Truth, two Christian women among others, also partici-
pated in the abolitionist movement.
During and aft er Reconstruction (1866–1877), blacks
founded many schools to help freed people get a higher
level of literacy and education. American blacks also de-
veloped a sense of responsibility toward foreign missions
in Africa. In 1897, the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Conven-
tion was founded as an independent organization whose
aim was to focus on missions in Africa. Black missionaries
built numerous churches, schools, and orphanages in Af-
rica with African American donations. Concern for Afri-
can missions, however, did not diminish the black Church’s
prophetic voice. Frederick Douglass, Rev. Henry Garnet,
and Bishop Henry Turner made clarion calls for justice as
segregation continued aft er emancipation.
Black Baptists tried several forms of organization be-
fore forming a single convention. By 1894, most black
Baptists were concentrated in the Baptist Foreign Mission
Convention, the American National Baptist Convention,
and the National Baptist Educational Convention. In 1895,
these conventions consolidated into the National Baptist
Convention of the United States (NBCUSA). Twenty years
later, the leaders of the National Baptist Publishing Board
(NBPB) severed their connections with the NBCUSA
and formed the National Baptist Convention of America
(NBCA). During the Civil Rights movement, some clergy
disagreed with Dr. Joseph Jackson over his long tenure as
president of the NBCUSA and his gradual approach to civil
rights. Because Jackson was not willing to change his views,