Spiritual Church Movement

Although some African Americans became involved with Spiritualism in such places as Memphis, Tennessee; Charleston, South Carolina; Macon, Georgia; and New Orleans during the nineteenth century, the Spiritual movement as an institutional form emerged during the first decade of the twentieth century in Chicago—a city that remains the movement's numerical center. Mother Leafy Anderson, who founded the Eternal Life Christian Spiritualist Church in Chicago in 1913, moved to New Orleans sometime between 1918 and 1921 and established an association not only with several congregations there but also with congregations in Chicago; Little Rock, Arkansas; Pensacola, Florida; Biloxi, Mississippi; Houston; and smaller cities.

Mother Anderson accepted elements from Roman Catholicism, and other Spiritual churches also incorporated elements of voodoo. Whereas the number of Spiritual congregations in Chicago and Detroit surpasses the fifty or so reported in New Orleans, in a very real sense the latter continues to serve as the "soul" of the Spiritual church movement.

Like many other African-American religious groups, the Spiritual movement underwent substantial growth during the Great Migration, particularly in northern cities but also in southern ones. In 1923 Father George W. Hurley, a self-proclaimed god like his contemporary, Father Divine, established the Universal Hagar's Spiritual Church in Detroit. On September 22, 1925, in Kansas City, Missouri, Bishop William F. Taylor and Elder Leviticus L. Boswell established the Metropolitan Spiritual Church of Christ, which became the mother church of the largest of the Spiritual associations. Following the death of Bishop Taylor and a succession crisis that prompted a split in the Metropolitan organization, Rev. Clarence Cobbs, pastor of the First Church of Deliverance in Chicago, emerged as the president of the principal faction, the Metropolitan Spiritual Churches of Christ. Cobbs came to symbolize the "gods of the black metropolis" (Fauset, 1971) with his dapper mannerisms and love of the "good life."

The Spiritual religion cannot be viewed simply as a black version of white Spiritualism. Initially, congregations affiliated with the movement referred to themselves as Spiritualist, but by the 1930s and 1940s most of them had contracted this term to Spiritual. As part of this process, African Americans adapted Spiritualism to their own experience. Consequently, much of the social structure, beliefs, and ritual content of Spiritual churches closely resemble that of other religious groups in the black community, particularly the Baptists and Pentecostalists.

In time, the Spiritual movement became a highly syncretic ensemble that incorporated elements from American Spiritualism, Roman Catholicism, African-American Protestantism, and voodoo (or its diluted form known as hoodoo ). Specific congregations and associations also added elements from New Thought, Ethiopianism, Judaism, and astrology to this basic core.

The Spiritual church movement has no central organization that defines dogma, ritual, and social structure. Many congregations belong to regional or national associations, but some choose to function independently of such ties. An association charters churches, qualifies ministers, and issues "papers of authority" for the occupants of various politico-religious positions. Although associations sometimes attempt to impose certain rules upon their constituent congregations, for the most part they fail to exert effective control.

Instead, the Spiritual movement exhibits an ideology of personal access to power. Theoretically, anyone who is touched by the spirit can claim personal access to knowledge, truth, and authority. Although associations may attempt to place constraints on such claims by requiring individuals exhibiting a "calling" to undergo a process of legitimation, persons can easily thwart such efforts, either by establishing their own congregations or by realigning themselves with some other Spiritual group. The fissioning that results from this process means that Spiritual associations rarely exceed more than one hundred congregations.

Probably more so than even Holiness-Pentecostal (or Sanctified) churches, Spiritual congregations are small, rarely numbering over one hundred. They often meet in storefronts and house churches and have found their greatest appeal among lower- and working-class African Americans. The larger congregations crosscut socioeconomic lines and may be led by relatively well-educated ministers. In addition to the types of offices found in black Protestant churches, Spiritual churches have mediums who are alleged to possess the gift of prophecy—that is, the ability to "read," or tell people about their past, present, and future. For the most part, mediums focus upon the wide variety of problems of living.

Like many other lower-class religious bodies, Spiritual churches are compensatory in that they substitute religious for social status. As opposed to those of many black religious groups, most Spiritual churches permit women to hold positions of religious leadership. Indeed, most of the earliest Spiritual churches in New Orleans were headed by women. Spiritual churches with their busy schedule of religious services, musical performances, suppers, and picnics also offer a strong sense of community for their adherents. Furthermore, they provide their members with a variety of opportunities, such as testimony sessions and "shouting," to ventilate their anxieties and frustrations.

Despite the functional similarities between Spiritual churches and other African-American religious groups, particularly those of the Baptist and Sanctified varieties, the former represent a thaumaturgical response to racism and social stratification in the larger society. The Spiritual church movement provides its adherents and clients with a wide variety of magico-religious rituals, such as praying before the image of a saint, burning votive candles, visualization, and public and private divination by a medium for acquiring a slice of the "American dream." Whereas the majority of Spiritual people are lower class, others—particularly some of those who belong to the larger congregations—are working and middle class. In the case of the latter, the Spiritual religion may serve to validate the newly acquired status of the upwardly mobile.

Most Spiritual people eschew social activism and often blame themselves for their miseries, faulting themselves for their failure to engage in positive thinking. Conversely, they occasionally exhibit overt elements of protest, particularly in remarks critical of business practices, politics, and racism in the larger society. Social protest in Spiritual churches, however, generally assumes more subtle forms, such as the rejection of what Spiritual people term "pie-in-the-sky" religion and a refusal to believe that work alone is sufficient for achieving social mobility.

See also Baptists; Catholicism in the Americas; Judaism; Pentecostalism in North America; Religion; Voodoo

Bibliography

Baer, Hans A. The Black Spiritual Movement: A Religious Response to Racism. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984.

Baer, Hans A., and Merrill Singer. African-American Religion in the Twentieth Century: Varieties of Protest and Accommodation. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992.

Fauset, Arthur. Black Gods of the Metropolis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971.

Jacobs, Claude F., and Andrew F. Kaslow. The Spiritual Churches of New Orleans: Origins, Beliefs, and Rituals of an African-American Religion. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991.

hans a. baer (1996)
Updated bibliography