Wesleyan While Black
Photo by Jack Sharp from Unsplash
The year 2020 was a year of great turmoil and struggle. If dealing with a pandemic were not enough, grappling with social unrest, paralleled with skyrocketing unemployment and financial hardship, made life quite daunting at times.
It made it even more daunting for a young man who grew up in a middle-class suburban family. Both of my parents lived with us under the same roof. My father made a career, after serving our country in Korea, as a supply room supervisor with Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company. My mother, a home economics major in college, first served as a dietician in the local hospital and later as a teacher, assistant principal, an associate superintendent in the county school system and the highest paid woman in county government, serving both on the community college board of trustees and on the board of directors of the local hospital.
I would say that I was privileged. I never remember ever wanting for anything. I had nice clothes and the newest toys, lived in a decent home, ate three meals a day with snacks, had a car at 16, and could drive two other cars that were at my disposal. We lived beside my grandparents who were also caring and loving. We went on vacations and had friends whose parents were doctors, lawyers, and educators. Going to college was never an issue. I graduated from college with no loans because my father paid for it.
For me, having a job has never been an issue. When I was sixteen, I worked as a bag boy in the A&P Tea Company grocery store. Our father would take my brother and me to work with him to fill up the vans at his workplace in the evenings. When I came home for the summer from college, I worked summer jobs with Southern Bell, making good money. I had several job offers coming out of college and selected the one I wanted. Yes, I felt entitled and never wanted for anything.
I not only felt entitled, but I was entitled. In our city, everybody knew our last name. All of my siblings were successful in their own professions. I have a sister who was valedictorian of her high school class and had a very successful career with the local power company. Another brother was the president of his junior-high class, a college graduate, and respected throughout his company as a cost control supervisor. Another brother became a dentist and had one of the largest dental practices in America. He served as the chair of licensing for ambulatory care throughout North America. Still another brother, who became the superintendent of public schools in our county, was named state superintendent of the year and second runner up as the national superintendent of the year in America. I was the high school star quarterback, named Teenage Citizen of the Year by our local Jaycees. I’ve been successful in business, education, in executive leadership in my church’s denomination and at the seminary where I serve. We've all been blessed and fairly successful.
And while we have all been blessed to be successful, it has all been rooted in a strong Wesleyan faith. We are seven generations Methodist. All of us were baptized as infants at approximately six months old. We learned the infant, juvenile, adolescent, and adult catechisms. We attended Sunday school and church every Sunday, even when there was snow on the ground. We went through confirmation and accession into full membership. We were active in the choir and the various children’s, youth, and young adult groups. Even when I went away to college, I came back and continued to be active in church life. I graduated from a Methodist Seminary and have served all of my years of ministry in the Wesleyan faith. I believe in and practice the tenets of mutual accountability. I believe in and utilize the Wesleyan quadrilateral of scripture, reason, experience and tradition. I believe in the doctrines of grace, the Trinity, original sin, and salvation through our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ! I'm Methodist by birth and by choice.
From all that I have shared, it would seem that I have lived an almost utopian life. A middle-class, privileged, educated, employed male and productive citizen. But there is one thing I have not shared. While I was privileged to an extent and Wesleyan to the core,
I am a black man.
I am Wesleyan while black.
I have been embedded in a culture which includes a segment of people who don't like or regard me because of the color of my skin. I have stood in lines and been overlooked by store clerks calling on a white customer behind me. I have been called offensive names for no reason other than the color of my skin. I have been talked over and talked around by people who knew neither my name nor pedigree. Chills of fear have gripped my soul when I have seen police cars with lights and sirens on coming toward me, and I’ve breathed a sigh of relief as they passed by. I've been stopped, for no apparent reason, at high noon, driving a luxury sedan and dressed in business attire, as the officer came towards my car with his hand on his gun. You see, my reality is that my lifestyle can change at a moment's notice. I can even change my faith, if I choose, but one thing I can never change, nor do I want to, is my color.
So how does Wesleyanism connect to my ethnicity as an African American? I believe that John Wesley’s sanctified faith caused him and those who truly practiced such a gospel to promote and practice social justice. Social justice is one of the fruits of a sanctified life. And although Wesley promoted the tenets of social justice, there were those who did not espouse the same. When Wesley commissioned his followers to bring his new movement called “Methodist” to the “new world,” he expected them to adhere to the principles he had promoted in England. What he did not foresee was a religion caught in the grasp of a society already predisposed to marginalizing an existing class of people: Africans. They were a people who had been brought to a new world to become slaves against their will. They were objectified and treated as less than human. Wesley desired for his new movement to actualize the tenets of social justice as an outgrowth of sanctified faith. Methodists started out with the intended purpose of human dignity for all, but somewhere along the way, their good intent became mired in the mud of racism. The John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which was to serve as a safe place to worship for all of God’s people, became a place of segregation, oppression and persecution.
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion) grew out of the need of a race of people desiring to be liberated from a culture of racial oppression. “Colored” members began to worship in the John Street Church, New York City, in 1765. The number of Africans grew between 1765 and 1796. The growth of the African members began to cause trouble with the white members. The Africans were allowed to worship but were relegated to the balconies. The African preachers were not allowed to be ordained, nor were the Africans administered the sacraments until the white members were served.
James Varick and Abraham Thompson, both local preachers, asked and were granted permission to remove themselves and begin a new mission called Zion Chapel. The new mission adhered to the basic tenets of Wesleyan doctrine while providing a needed ministry of liberation to people of African descent. The tenets of Methodism were so ingrained that they included the name in their new identity, calling the new church The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in America. Zion continued to promote the tenets of Wesley, while also being instrumental in the abolition of slavery.
Harriett Tubman, known as the “conductor” of the “underground railroad,” was a member of the AME Zion Church, later becoming a minister. Not only was Tubman a member and minister, so were Frederick Douglas, the noted orator and abolitionist, and Sojourner Truth, one of the great proponents of the women’s suffrage movement. All three were Zion preachers of the gospel, proponents of human and racial equality and justice, and followers of Wesley.
For more than 220 years, The AME Zion Church has continued to promote social justice through sanctified faith. From the founding of the Underground Railroad, to assisting in the founding of the NAACP, to being the initial meeting place of the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama, to the current fight for voters’ rights and racial justice and equality for all people. The AME Zion Church has served as one of Wesleyan’s greatest proponents of social justice through sanctified faith.
And it is out of this theology and Wesley’s principle and practice that I dream of a more perfect and inclusive present-day Wesleyanism:
I have learned that while I have been blessed to live a relatively good life, have been fairly successful, and have dug my roots deeply in Wesleyan doctrine, tradition and practice, a part of our society won't let me forget that I am treated differently, and often unfairly, because of the color of my skin. While I realize that we don't live in a perfect world and there will always be systems of hatred and division, I dream of a world where there will be equality for all of God's children… a world where people of all colors will have the same opportunities and access… a world where people will feel safe in their homes and on the streets… a world where intimidation tactics and voter suppression are things of old, and police officers and people of all colors can feel safe and secure around each other… and a world where the complex of choice is the educational complex and not the prison industrial complex.
I dream of a society that practices human equality. Regardless of whether or not people want to acknowledge it, we all are made in the image of God and therefore are equal in God’s sight. I have learned that social inequality is motivated by the pervasiveness of sin. Wesleyanism has taught me, as we move from sanctification to glorification, that we, as sinful humans, can become better. By the sanctifying grace of God, made available to us by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can become different people than we have been before. We can become kinder, more understanding, more sensitive, more just, more loving, more self-giving.
In other words, we can become holy.
Human beings are broken creatures; we, however, don’t have to stay that way. And racist actions and attitudes, like all other sins, will bow under the power of God’s sanctifying grace. Let the bowing begin with you and me!
I am a black man.
I am a black follower of Christ.
I am Wesleyan while black.
And I know our world can be a better place.
Dr. J. Elvin Sadler is the General Secretary of The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and Assistant Dean for Doctoral Studies at United Theological Seminary. He also serves on Firebrand’s Editorial Board.