THIS JULY, THE United States turns 247 years old. Independence Day calls to mind a powerful narrative — our nation’s defiant break from the British Empire, explosive population growth and expansion, and ascent as a world power. Yet within this historical movement are rooted many other stories — large and small — that reflect who we really are as a nation. When we hold up a larger mirror, when we view ourselves more completely and take all these stories into account, then we recognize that “our” history is more than a collection of dates, events, and people prioritized by the powerful. History is a complex web of beliefs, practices, and interpretations that exist in the sacred movement of time and space as a spiraling mixture of who we are and who we are becoming.
Sharing a common understanding of history is complicated these days by new words in our lexicon like “fake news” and “alternative facts.” How do we know what to believe and what to reject? Isn’t “revisionist history” a bad thing?
In fact, many historians agree that all history is revisionist. Historical interpretation, by its very nature, changes with time and circumstance, requiring new views and fresh analyses. From one perspective, the revision of history in any form means to criticize the past and disrupt commonly held ideas and beliefs. Conversely, the introduction of new, validated, historical information broadens the scope of discourse and deepens its meaning in ways that bring clarity to the past and hope for the future.
This summer the United Church of Christ (UCC) celebrates a change in its own origin story. In 1957, this mainline Protestant denomination was formed from the convergence of four European-based denominations and traced its earliest root through the Congregationalists to English reformers who arrived on these shores in the 1630s. Thus, it was understood by many that these four streams formed the UCC as a historically “white” denomination. This new denomination understood itself to be a “united and uniting” church that formed in the contentious era of the early Civil Rights Movement. It adopted a commitment to social justice and racial/ethnic diversity that invited others to join this culturally white “church of extravagant welcome.”
But the origin story was wrong. The denominational power structure had suppressed the narrative and living history of a fifth stream, that of the Afro-Christian Convention — a tradition, rooted in African persons and culture, that arrived in Virginia’s Tidewater region around 1619.
In the newly released book Afro-Christian Convention, Yvonne V. Delk writes, “The Afro-Christian Convention flows from those first Africans. It holds a story of mothers and fathers who emerged out of enslavement and the balconies of white Christian churches with a double focus: the free and autonomous worship of God in the way Black people wanted to worship and advocacy for the unity and social welfare of the Black community.”
Recovered historical evidence shows that in 1892, these Black worshiping communities created the convention to serve their churches in North Carolina, Virginia, and beyond. It assumed the form and function of a denomination through its publications, its work in foreign missions and women’s auxiliaries, and its biennial reports. The origin story formed by the UCC in 1957 omitted more than 65 years of ministry and mission from the Afro-Christian Convention — and a much longer history reaching back to the west coast of Africa.
In July, the United Church of Christ officially celebrates the Afro-Christian Convention as “the Fifth Stream of the UCC historical legacy.” This action is a result of those who kept the Afro-Christian Convention alive in form and function and of a Christian denomination recognizing that to authentically serve the call of Christ in the future, it must bring all history under the revision of Christ’s rule. This aligns closely with the word sankofa of the Akan people of Ghana, which means “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.” Sankofa is illustrated by a mythic bird with its feet firmly planted forward while its head turns back to retrieve an egg, seen in the actions of the UCC to value and celebrate recovered wisdoms of the past when charting a path toward the future.
New historical data unearths uncomfortable emotions and difficult questions, but when authentically and honestly embraced, it can open the way for a God of justice to speak in ways that both mystify and bless.
Julia M. Speller is professor emerita in American religion history and culture at Chicago Theological Seminary and a contributor to Afro-Christian Convention: The Fifth Stream of the United Church of Christ (2023).
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