second baptist church 1717 benson avenue evanston, … · 2016-10-12 · second baptist church 1717...

History of the Church | Second Baptist Church Bible Study 10.12.16 P a g e | 1

Second Baptist Church 1717 Benson Avenue Evanston, IL 60201

HISTORY OF THE CHURCH

(Focus on the Reformation to the 21st Century & The African American Church) “Thou art Peter. And upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail

against it.”

In 1517 the German priest- theology professor, Martin Luther, felt compelled to speak against one of the abuses of the church- indulgences. The Church created a system where indulgence meant the remission of a temporal punishment brought about by sin. The punishment was either, earthly suffering or time spent after death in Purgatory. In Luther’s time, leaders in the church were “selling” indulgences and promising their members a reduction in punishment, at the right price. People were frightened about punishment, both temporal and eternal in nature. As a result the practice became completely associated with money. Luther was outraged and felt that poor people were being misled by the church as it became more focused on money than salvation. When he wrote his 95 Theses, he was almost completely focused on this habit that had become part of the church. He wondered aloud why the church needed to accumulate money when the Pope could free everyone from purgatory with just a simple word? The church did not react kindly to a local priest standing against papal authority. The movement that was launched was completely unexpected by Luther. Many scholars (Tetzel, Wimpina and Maier) all joined in the dialogue. There was a major disruption and Luther was condemned to heresy. He defended his position by preaching a sermon, “Indulgence on Grace.” Soon after Luther was ordered to appear before his order at Heidelberg where he argued his point points, becoming clearer and more elaborate. He did not intend to start a quarrel with the Pope (Leo X). He was soon summonsed to Rome by the Pope with a edict that read in part, “He who says the Roman Church cannot do what it actually does regarding indulgences is a heretic.” He was ordered to desist from his arguments about indulgences and he refused. Soon after he fled, fear for his safety and life. It is very important to understand that the church, for the most part, had become a monolithic institution with unbridled power; political, social, economic and of course, religious. While there had been constant disagreements that resulted in accusations of heresy, the church continued to plod along, growing stronger and more influential with each century. The arrival of Luther on the scene during the first decades of the 16th century, was accompanied by a number of other unfolding events. Most of these could fall under the category of the Renaissance. Europe was exploding with knowledge and information, at a pace that the world had never seen. Science, math, logic, the arts, philosophy and theology were academic arenas that were receiving new life in the world of ideas. In one sense- these arenas (which had all been under the umbrella of the church) were now bursting at the seams. As large and powerful as the church was, it could not contain these developments, went often went against the teachings of the church. Most scholars would argue that the Renaissance began in 1485 when the War of the Roses ended and the Tudor Dynasty was inaugurated. The high point of the Renaissance would have occurred nearly one hundred years later during the Elizabethan era. Literature and music began to dominate this time period, in a way that both disciplines had never done. Poetry and stories unrelated to biblical themes came to life and were circulated among working class people. Hans Holbein became


one of the eminent artists who produced work that was related to the Reformation. Later, the age would produce Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, and Milton. Science would also play a major role in addressing the authority of the church. When Galileo proved the movement of the universe (De revolutionibus orbium celestium) and the theory of gravity, he was brought before the church to renounce his discoveries. They went against the teaching of the church. Four years after Luther began his argument against indulgences in the church, he was brought before the Emperor in Worms. He was guaranteed protection of an imperial safe-conduct. His books were placed before him and he was asked if he would recant them or not. He asked for a day to reflect. The next day he said that in the heat of the moment he may have spoken to harshly against individuals, but the substances of his books, he would not disavow. “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.” He spent the rest of his life under imperial condemnation. What Luther may have never realized was the powerful genesis of revolt created in his actions. Less than one hundred years later, The Protestant Reformation created an outmigration of millions of people from the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time, it spurred a significant internal reformation within the church. Noticing the number of people who were leaving, church authorities convened councils to work on ways to increase their effectiveness and outreach to the people. The Swiss Reformation, led by Zwingli created a groundswell of support for people who believed differently from the doctrines of the church. Zwingli believed the ultimate authority was the Christian community (not the church) and that exercise of the authority was through the civil government. He concluded that the gospel derived no authority from the church. Rather salvation by faith is the standard for every single child of God. At once he dismissed intercessors, monastic vows and the existence of purgatory. He declared that only Christ was the head of the church and argued that clergy could marry. He and Luther were among the most powerful of the Reformers. However they disagreed greatly on the issue of The Lord’s Supper. Zwingli would die in battle in 1531. In 1525, during Zwingli’s growing popularity, a group of men gathered at a home in Zurich, believing God had commissioned them to baptize one another. They would become known as leaders of the Anabaptist Movement. The movement began to grow, as the idea of baptism after confession of faith had not materialized. Great dissent arose and the Zurich Government ordered them drowned, a parody of their new belief. It is in this unfolding drama, that the Baptist denomination is born.

Second Baptist Church

In 1880, blacks were just fifteen years out of the Civil War and a few years away from the end of Reconstruction. The tenor of the times was challenging for blacks and a great many moved North. Many found their way to Evanston, just north of Chicago. Lynching’s were occurring in the South. A very popular “Back to Africa” movement was under way, led by Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the AME Church. This first generation of blacks were responsible for a number of important strategies; educating a race, learning self-sufficiency, maneuvering through the land mines of racism and discrimination, handling every kind of issue from birth to death (buying homes, finding jobs, social life, economic savvy, political astuteness). All of this was new. The genesis of a brand new way of life was emerging. It was into this kind of climate, that Second Baptist was born.


SBC is the first black Baptist church organized in Evanston, IL. The official start date is November 15, 1882. Ten black members of First Baptist Church (now Lake Street Church) requested and were granted letters of dismissal. The Evanston Index reported, “the Second Baptist Church was organized and recognized by an ecclesiastical council invited for that purpose” with twenty members. Ten were from First Baptist’s rolls and there were others. The organizing pastor was Reverend T. Clanton, a seminarian at the Baptist Union Theological Seminary in Morgan Park, IL. The church worshiped in a room over the Post Office. They held fundraising events to purchase a church building. In September 1883 (less than a year after their start) the church purchased its first building and Northwestern University issued a 20-year lease for a lot located on Benson Avenue, north of Church Street. The church moved the building to this site. The church building was destroyed by a fire. In May 1890, SBC purchased a building used by Second United Methodist Church and petitioned the Village of Evanston to move the church to a lot owned by Nathan Branch on Wesley, between Grove and Lake Streets. Neighbors protested the move. The university purchased Branch’s lot and in exchange, he and his wife purchased the total lot (1717 Benson Avenue) for $750. In December, 1890 the church building was moved to the current location.


October 12th

HISTORY OF THE CHURCH (Part Two) (Focus on the beginning of Christianity in North America and its influence upon society)

“Thou art Peter. And upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

“Christianity in America,” according to Williston Walker, “is primarily an importation form the Old World.” In South and Central America, the dominant strand was Roman Catholicism, which imposed its so-called civilization on homogenous people. In North America, many strands arrived that contributed to the population and the result was a great variety and necessary mutual toleration, which contributed to the rise of religious liberty. It should be noted, that the Protestants also imposed their own “manifest destiny” doctrine, which gave them license to brutally assault and mistreat native populations. Franciscans and Dominicans (and later Jesuits) in South and Central America supported a Spanish regime in search of wealth and the accrual of land. While Spanish and French colonies also appeared in North America (Jacques Marquette “discovered” the Mississippi), real religious significance began when the Church of England was founded in Virginia in 1607. By 1620, English Pilgrims and Puritans arrived in New England and brought Congregationalism, established the first university for its ministers (Harvard, 1636)) and immediately began proselytizing Native Americans. The Congregationalists worked feverishly to ensure no dissidents would be allowed to remain in their colonies. However, a decade later Baptists began to show up (First Baptist was founded in 1665) and soon, Quakers arrived in the Massachusetts Bay and also began to grow. Four Quakers were hanged in Boston Commons for their religious differences from the Puritans. By the turn of the century, Puritans had “lowered” their demands for holy living due to outside protest, and protest from the leaders own children and grandchildren. Yale was founded in 1701 in part, as a reaction to those who were dissenting from the Puritan group. Banished from Massachusetts, Roger Williams went south and founded the first Baptist church in America (First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island) in 1639. This created a significant “opening” for other groups (especially the Quakers) to settle, live in peace with others and practice their own beliefs. Williams would later leave the church he established, becoming a “seeker” after the true church. In the middle colonies, there was already a rich religious diversity that included, Dutch Reformed, Lutherans, Mennonites, Puritans and Catholics. Some attempts were made to stop worship other than the Reformed Church, but they were not successful. Quakers first arrived in 1656 as missionaries. They were persecuted wherever they went. The first colony that was maintained occurred in West Jersey. They continued to struggle against Dutch Reformers, English Puritans and Presbyterians. The Quakers soon found refuge in Pennsylvania when a Pennsylvania grant was given to William Penn by Charles II. With so many different denominations and groups, it is not a great surprise that the time was ripe for a general transformation. The Great Awakening in North America began in 1726 in Raritan Valley, New Jersey. The Dutch Reformed Church, led by Theodore J. Freilinghuysen created a spirit of revival when he convinced churches under his care to seek a deeper spiritual awareness. Invited to preach in many areas, others soon adopted his emphases. In New Brunswick, NJ, a Presbyterian minister, Gilbert Tennett became involved in the awakening movement. George Whitfield became synonymous with this movement. From England, Whitfield had a near death experience from which he emerged with a joyous consciousness of the grace of God. He was not bound by denomination and preached everywhere, beginning in England and then traveling to America on a regular schedule (both north


and south). The Wesley Brothers- John and Charles, were also principal architects of the Great Awakening in North America. Both were deeply influenced by Morvanians, who focused on a deeply personal and intimate relationship with God. Ironically, both Wesleys had begun a work in Georgia years earlier, but it failed, in part because of its strict doctrinal creeds. They met Whitfield in England and George and John both began preaching in open areas (fields and near coal mines) to masses of people. Initially attacked by angry mobs, their preaching style soon caught on as “men and women cried out, fainted and were torn with convulsions.” They attributed this physical response to the Spirit of God. In 1734-35, the awakening reached New England with a revival in Northampton, Massachusetts. It’s leader was Jonathan Edwards, a fiery Congregational pastor whose most famous sermon epitomized the “fire and brimstone” preaching of North American for the next 200 years; Sinners in the hands of an angry God. The movement literally transformed the spiritual condition of many communities. However, Whitefield and those who were influenced by him, were very stringent about who was “saved” and who was “unsaved.” Some controversy followed the movement. By the 1740’s, the awakening had spread to the southern colonies. Much like the open field revivals in England, George Whitefield and John Wesley preached in Maryland, Virginia and Georgia. Masses of people, male and female, black and white, were converted, often collapsing into one another’s arms from the full effect of “the spirit.” Mind you, all of this is occurring during the institution of slavery. While Christianity (both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism grew by leaps and bounds in the Americas) a strange thing happened on its way into African slave communities. Roman Catholics eventually settled into accepting a syncretism of its tradition that would include rituals from African indigenous and Native Central and South American religions. Protestants on the other hand, were initially adamant about exposing African slaves to the Christian faith. In fact, in some instances it became a crime to baptize Africans as converts to the faith. The apparent theory was the argument that justified slavery in the eyes of white Christians; mainly, that Africans were not fully human. As such, they could not be baptized. The theology behind such a sentiment may be the first effort in history to deny one group of human beings, the basic right of their very humanity. To acknowledge Africans as humans would be to also suggest they had souls. If they had souls, then the institution of slavery being constructed as a major spoke in the growing capitalism of the western world, would have to face the basic tenet of the faith, “the sovereignty of God”, or “the brotherhood (equality) of humankind.” As masses of Africans were stolen from their homes, forced across the Atlantic and sold into slavery (North American in particular) Christian slave owners were forced to make difficult decisions. Should they continue to “deny” slaves introduction into the Christian faith? This might encourage the slaves to continue their own pattern/system of beliefs in their own gods. Should they open the door to “their” religion and allow slaves to be baptized? The latter view won the day, although it came with significant stipulations. They would allow African slaves to become Christians. However, they would focus on teaching the slaves “docility” and “servitude” out of the sacred text itself. There would be no preaching on Moses as the great liberator of the Hebrews, or Paul’s assertion, in Christ there is neither slave nor master, or even the inaugural address of Jesus who said, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me and he has anointed me….to set at liberty those who are oppressed. Thus it should always be noted regarding any study of the African American religious tradition, that tenets of the faith were erroneously introduced to justify slavery. Justifying slavery meant introducing a complex system of discrimination in which racism was the foundation. The Christian faith taught to the first Africans living in slavery was not transforming. Rather, there was a subjective misuse of the faith to create a superior/inferior strata where whites were deemed God’s chosen while blacks were deemed servants and slaves to the whites.


Scholars and historians are not sure when and how early Africans in slavery, began to deconstruct the lessons taught to them about Christianity. But it didn’t take long. The earliest “Negro” churches began in latter part of the eighteenth century. Southern blacks flocked to the Baptist denomination and the first churches of Africans in slavery were Baptist. By 1816, the first Negro denomination (African Methodist Episcopal) was founded. There is every indication that these churches (in the south and north) possessed an independence that rejected racism and embraced the unity of the human family. In this context, the first black churches began to develop with an internal theology focused on motifs of freedom and liberation, and an external theology focused on motifs of survival and continuation. Albert Raboteau, noted African American religion professor wrote in his seminal work Slave Religion, “From the very beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, conversion of the slaves to Christianity was viewed by the emerging nations of Western Christendom as a justification for enslavement of Africans. Pangs of guild over the cruelty inherent in enslaving fellow human beings were assuaged by emphasizing the grace of faith made available to Africans who otherwise would die as pagans.” 1981 African American Christian Ethicist Peter J. Paris wrote in his book The Social Teaching of the Black Church, “The tradition that has always been made normative for the black churches and the black community is not the so-called Western Christian tradition per se, although this tradition is an important source for blacks. More accurately, the normative tradition for blacks is that tradition governed by the principle of nonracism, which we call the black Christian tradition. The fundamental principle of the black Christian tradition is depicted most adequately in the biblical doctrine of the parenthood of God and the kinship of all peoples.” Once called, “the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men”, the church now acknowledges the sexism of such exclusive language and is able to use the “Sovereignty” of God in much the same way. 1985 In his book Black Religion and Black Radicalism, Gayraud S. Wilmore wrote, “An exceedingly elastic but tenacious thread binds together the contributive development factors of black religion in the United States as one distinctive social phenomenon. It is the thread of what may be called, if properly defined, black radicalism. Black religion has always concerned itself with the fascination of an incorrigibly religious people with the mystery of God, but it has been equally concerned with the yearning of a despised and subjugated people for freedom- freedom from religious, economic, social and political domination that whites have exercised over blacks since the beginning of the African slave trade.” 1983 More recently, scholar Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. has written, “Generally speaking our churches today are so engaged in hyperspiritualizing worship, building churches into big businesses, and turning themselves into gospel entertainment centers, that we sometimes lose sight of the real mandate of the gospel. Our focus is often fixed on “Church-ianity,”, rather than “Christianity.” 2005 Second Baptist Church has inherited a history of spoken and unspoken, seen and unseen, motifs, perspectives and habits that have been passed down from generation to generation. In November, we will be teaching specifically about our church’s own history and the outcome of receiving these motifs, perspectives and habits in a changing society and world. Next week, we will continue with an overview of the church, from Reconstruction to the birth of gospel music in the Black Church.

second baptist church 1717 benson avenue evanston, … · 2016-10-12 · second baptist church 1717...

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