Saving the Heathen: The AMEC and Its Africanist Discourse

Abstract

Even as AMEC, pastors, and evangelists used the rhetoric of evangelical Christianity to bring lost souls under the cross of Christ, the church still had to address the nagging cultural construction of being children of Ham and thus, quite possibly, being outside the purview of Christian salvation. Sylvester Johnson posits that the idea of Hamitic origins of African American identity pervaded nineteenth-century American culture. The country, steeped in the mythic understanding of being the new Israel, employed Noah and his sons as a trope to explain the origins of the races:

One should keep in mind that Euro-Americans imagined themselves to be historical Israel…it was the rule and not the exception for Euro-American religionists to identify ancient Israelites as exclusively Caucasian…It was generally assumed that the people of God described in biblical narratives were whites.²

ALMIGHTY Jesu, change proud Japheth’s heart—Make him to know that Thou a Brother art To Shem and Ham, the Yellow and the Black. From him Thy throne’s great face O hold not back.

Almighty Jesu, stay proud Japheth’s hand—Upraised and dominant in ev’ry land He goes—but not for love of Thee and God. In pride he scorns to kiss Messiah’s rod.

Almighty Jesu, Thou of Shemite blood, Remember, O remember Shem, for good; Thou Priest, like to Melchizedek, who came Of Ham, remember, O remember Ham.¹