The Great awakening Essay Example for Free

The Great awakening EssayThe Great Awakening as a marker for a cultural and religious upheaval did not appear immediately, but in pedant research on religion in the eighteenth century, the time reflects the complexity of attitudes toward, and consequences of, religious activity in the African American communities. Taken in total, the landscape of Black Christian images presented a vast picture, until now incompletely realized, from the earlier and persistent view of a monolithic vision accepted by many. perchance only to save a few rationalists or extremists could see a different scenario. After his give birth religious conversion, Richard joined the Methodist Society, began attending classes, and evangelized his friends and neighbors. Richard and his brothers attended classes every week and meetings every other Thurs sidereal day. A. M. E. leading began to use both written biographical materials and public commemorations of Allens life to instill a sense of bill and tradit ion among the largely illiterate masses.Their complementary use of public commemorations and written accounts of Allens life during this period call forth a more general attempt among Black leaders to bridge the overlapping worlds of morality and literacy in order to establish a sense of tradition, an empowering historical memory, and a pantheon of Black heroes who might one day gain their rightful place in the national pantheon. (Conyers, 1999) Notwithstanding its name, the AME Church was clearly the most goodish and orthodox of black American independent churches.While some recognizably African elements surfaced in services, AME leaders tended to disdain if not actively to suppress those beliefs and practices that scholars today celebrate as signs of Africas persistence in the brand-new World. The whole point of racial vindication was to demonstrate blacks capacity to uphold recognized standards in their private and collective lives and thereby to hasten abolition and full inc lusion in American society.Surely wad interested in connections between black America and Africa should look elsewhere than the AME Church. Historically, the first separate denominations to be formed by African Americans in the United States were Methodist. The early black Methodist churches, conferences, and denominations were organized by free black people in the North in response to stultifying and demeaning conditions attending social rank in the white-controlled Methodist Episcopal churches.This independent church movement of black Christians was the first effective stride toward freedom by African Americans. Unlike most sectarian movements, the initial impetus for black ghostly and ecclesiastical independence was not grounded in religious doctrine or polity, but in the nauseatingness of racial segregation in the churches and the alarming inconsistencies between the teachings and the expressions of the faith.It was readily apparent that the white church had suit a princip al instrument of the political and social policies under girding slavery and the attendant degradation of the homo spirit. In all fairness, without exception, Richard Allen embodied the assertive free-black culture that was maturing in the North by the 1830s. Despite criticisms of his compulsive manner and personal ambition, Allen had attained by the time of his death in 1831, a position of paying attention among his people that was rivaled by very few of his contemporaries.