A History of the A. M. E. Zion Church, Part 1

A History of the A. M. E. Zion Church, Part 1
Author: David Henry Bradley Sr.
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2020-03-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532688563

First published in 1956, Rev. David S. Bradley Sr. wrote what was at the time and remains today the most thorough, scholarly history of the beginnings and growth of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Beginning with the birth of A. M. E. Zion Chapel in a humble chapel in New York City, Part 1 traces the growth of the church into a powerful and agile denomination, expanding from the settled coast into the frontiers of upstate New York and western Pennsylvania. The advancing denomination, with natural and inherited "antagonism to slavery," attracted "freedmen, seeking spiritual freedom," including the famous black Abolitionist activists--Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass, who learned and honed his rhetorical skills as an exhorter in the A. M. E. Zion congregation in New Bedford, Massachusetts, under Reverend Thomas James. "No road was too pioneering no thought too liberal, for these were freedmen, seeking spiritual freedom . . . All along the Mason Dixon Line, and further West, in Ohio and Indiana, Zion Churchmen became beacon points of hope to the escaped slave and A. M. E. Zion became the church of freedom."

A History of the A. M. E. Zion Church, Part 2

A History of the A. M. E. Zion Church, Part 2
Author: David Henry Bradley Sr.
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2020-03-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532688296

In this second volume, David H. Bradley picks up the story of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion in 1873. From there he follows A. M. E. Zion's growth through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement, showing the denomination's special capacity for empowering lay people to be crucial to African American organization in the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout, Bradley explores the dynamics of organizational institutionalization in the midst of new growth and transformation through the Great Migration and the flowering of A. M. E. Zion churches in new African American communities on the West Coast.

Encyclopedia of Religion in the South

Encyclopedia of Religion in the South
Author: Samuel S. Hill
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Total Pages: 898
Release: 2005
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9780865547582

The publication of the Encyclopedia of Religion in the South in 1984 signaled the rise in the scholarly interest in the study of Religion in the South. Religion has always been part of the cultural heritage of that region, but scholarly investigation had been sporadic. Since the original publication of the ERS, however, the South has changed significantly in that Christianity is no longer the primary religion observed. Other religions like Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism have begun to have very important voices in Southern life. This one-volume reference, the only one of its kind, takes this expansion into consideration by updating older relevant articles and by adding new ones. After more than 20 years, the only reference book in the field of the Religion in the South has been totally revised and updated. Each article has been updated and bibliography has been expanded. The ERS has also been expanded to include more than sixty new articles on Religion in the South. New articles have been added on such topics as Elvis Presley, Appalachian Music, Buddhism, Bill Clinton, Jerry Falwell, Fannie Lou Hamer, Zora Neale Hurston, Stonewall Jackson, Popular Religion, Pat Robertson, the PTL, Sports and Religion in the South, theme parks, and much more. This is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the South, religion, or cultural history.