Black church

The black church (sometimes termed Black Christianity or African American Christianity) is the faith and body of Christian denominations and congregations in the United States that predominantly minister to, and are also led by African Americans, as well as these churches' collective traditions and members. The term "black church" may also refer to individual congregations, including in traditionally white-led denominations.

Black churches primarily arose in the 19th century, a time when race-based slavery and racial segregation were both common in the United States. Blacks generally sought an area for independent expression of faith, and escape from inferior treatment in White dominated churches. While most black congregations belong to predominantly African American Protestant denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), Church of God in Christ (COGIC), or National Baptist Convention related churches, others are in predominantly white Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ (which developed from the Congregational Church of New England), integrated denominations such as the Church of God, or are independent congregations. There are also Black Catholic churches.

Most of the first black congregations and churches which were formed before 1800 were founded by freed black people—for example, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Springfield Baptist Church (Augusta, Georgia); Petersburg, Virginia; and Savannah, Georgia. The oldest black Baptist church in Kentucky, and third oldest black Baptist church in the United States, the First African Baptist Church, was founded about 1790 by the slave Peter Durrett. The oldest black Catholic church, St Augustine in New Orleans, was founded by free blacks in 1841. However, black religious orders such as the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore have existed since the 1820s.

After slavery in the United States was abolished, segregationist attitudes towards blacks and whites worshiping together were not as predominant in the North as compared to the South. Many white Protestant ministers moved to the South after the American Civil War to establish churches where black and white people worshiped together. In Wesleyan Holiness denominations such as the Church of God, the belief that "interracial worship was a sign of the true Church" was taught, with both whites and blacks ministering regularly in Church of God congregations, which invited people of all races to worship there. In some parts of the country, such as New Orleans, black and white Catholics had worshiped together for almost 150 years before the American Civil War—albeit without full equality and primarily under French and Spanish rule.

Attacks by the Ku Klux Klan or other whites opposed to such efforts thwarted those attempts and even prevented Black or African Americans from worshiping in the same buildings as whites. In communities where black and white people worshiped together in the South shortly after the American Civil War, the persecution of African Americans was less severe. Yet, freed blacks most often established congregations and church facilities separate from their white neighbors, who were often their former owners. In the Roman Catholic Church, the rising tide of segregation eventually resulted in segregated parishes across the South, even in places where segregation had not previously been the norm.

These new black churches created communities and worship practices that were culturally distinct from other churches, including forms of Christian worship that derived from African spiritual traditions, such as call and response. These churches also became the centers of communities, serving training grounds for community leaders, and as school sites, taking up social welfare functions such as providing for the indigent, and going on to establish orphanages and prison ministries. As a result, black churches were particularly important during the Civil Rights movement.