Just ahead on "American Black Journal."

We've got a really great show for you in our continuing series on the black church in Detroit.

This time, we're gonna look at the wonderful diversity of denominations among black churches.

We'll talk about where they come from and how they differ.

We'll also take a look at Detroit's significant role in the leadership of religious groups across the country and around the world.

You don't want to miss this show.

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♪♪ Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm Stephen Henderson.

And as always, I'm glad you've joined.

We are continuing our year-long series that looks at the black church in Detroit.

And that series is produced in partnership with the Ecumenical Theological Seminary, and with the Charles H. Wright museum of African-American history.

Today, we're looking at the historically African-American denominations in the church.

Because of religious preference, racial segregation, and other injustices, lots of separate denominations began to crop up in black churches in the late 18th century.

I sat down with Reverend Cindy Rudolph of Oak Grove AME church, and with Reverend Dr. Tony Henderson of the Ecumenical Theological Seminary, to talk about the origins and beliefs of African-American religious groups.

I want to start here with this idea of why there are so many churches, so many dominations that we count as the black church?

I always think of it as this kind of wonderful point of diversity in our community, but I'm not sure everybody understands why that diversity exists and where it comes from.

So, I will start with you, Pastor Rudolph.

Tell us, as someone who's leading an AME church, what that's all about.

So I think that our diversity is for sure our strength.

The black church is not just a monolithic church.

It is a very diverse church, and we are able to represent different theological perspectives.

And I think that's a beautiful thing because it gives people many options.

I think we share something in common, and that is that we are here to meet the spiritual, and social, and educational needs of our people.

And that can include a myriad of things.

And so we thank God for the diversity of the black church.

The AME church is unique in that while many churches were born out of theological and spiritual differences, the AME church was founded out of social protest.

And so when we look at our founding Bishop, who was Bishop Richard Allen, he was born a slave in the year 1760.

And at the young age of 20, he purchased his freedom for $2,000, which was a tremendous amount of money back in the 18th century.

And so we thank God for his foresight.

He was attracted to the Methodist teachings because at the time, they were very liberal in their thinking.

They preached an anti-slavery message, and they preached a very liberating gospel.

And so as a slave, he was of course attracted to that.

After he purchased his freedom, he then went on to become a traveling preacher himself, and he preached in places like Maryland and Delaware.

He made his way to Philadelphia, where he became the 5:00 AM morning worship preacher at the St George's Methodist Episcopal church.

And it was during that time that he began to attract many new worshipers of African descent.

And unfortunately, the white Methodists at the time were not prepared to handle that.

And so in an effort to maintain control, what they did was they relegated the blacks to worshiping in the balcony and the back of the church.

This of course was unsettling for Richard Allen and Absalom Jones who were leaders at the time.

Absalom Jones was actually pulled from his knees while praying one morning.

And that sort of galvanized the black worshipers along with Richard Allen, and they led what is arguably the first act of organized civil disobedience on the part of free Africans in the United States.

When they walked out of St George's Methodist Episcopal church and started their own church.

They were already operating as the free African society, which was a mutual aid society, which was designed to empower black people, free black people who were attempting to make their way at that time.

And so that went on to become the AME church many years later in 1816 when we were officially established.

Dr. Henderson, again, this diversity comes from our history.

It's born out of, I think necessity in many instances, but it is driven by the discrimination and the segregation that we faced.

Talk about the development of these different denominations within the church over time.

First, let me applaud my colleague for her accuracy in giving the historical origins.

As one of my colleagues says, we may be in the same boat now, but we didn't come over here in the same boat.

And so our beginnings are as diverse as our denominational identity.

Diverse in the sense that we were taken from various parts of Northern, Western, Northwestern and central Africa, and brought over here.

We have Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Lutherans, Catholics, and so forth because in an effort to respond progressively and positively to the outrage of being enslaved, our people sought refuge, solace, and comfort, pretty much wherever they could find it.

And so some became Baptist, some became...

But depending on where they were, a lot of people do not know, and yet several do know that black Baptists started out, the ancestors of black Baptist are African Muslims from Islam.

And you can find the evidence of that in the churches, in the black Baptist churches in South Carolina.

When you see the Muslim imagery carved in the pews, buried in the walls, and other artifacts of historical significance when you visit what we now call the Gullah people of South Carolina.

And so depending on where our folks were, how connected they were to the underground railroad, or how disconnected they may have been as Reverend Rudolph has said, they connected to the cry and struggle for freedom and jumped on wherever they could, however they could.

And as a result of that, we had black people leaving white churches because they either couldn't be a part of the leadership and decision makers, or even if they had what we'll call good white folk, which means they didn't beat them as much, they didn't discriminate and slaughter them and kill them as much, or as gruesomely as some of their neighbors did, black folk realized that they were not born to be enslaved.

They were not born to be chattel property.

They were not born to be locked up and exploited and devalued.

And so they struggled.

When it became unpopular and illegal for them to learn to read.

And this is something else I want to expose.

Our people have not been historically ignorant and illiterate.

That's right.

When you bring persons who speak Ebu, French, Kiswahili, Spanish, Portuguese, and Akan, and a whole host of other indigenous African languages together, and you take the mama and put her on one plantation, you take the children put them somewhere else.

You either kill the father or farm him out to somewhere else, and you put them with folks that are not of the same tribe and culture, you make it impossible for them to read, to communicate, to thrive.

Yeah, and that's done intentionally.

Exactly.

That was done intentionally in an effort to destroy us.

Where we find our strength is that in spite of all of the segregation, the discrimination, the dehumanization, and devaluing, God enabled our people in a sort of self-teaching type way through divine revelation to survive and to thrive.

And to create our own spaces.

So, Pastor Rudolph talk about how that history cast forward in your church today.

I mean, your church is different from a Baptist church that's black or a Methodist church that is black, in the sense that your church was started as a way of giving African-Americans a space to participate in religious belief and celebration.

So how does that history of liberation and a push toward liberation sort of play out today in the AME church?

So I think that we are all called to preach and to live out social justice.

Not just for black people, but for all people.

We want to see equity and inclusion.

And so as Oak Grove, we are committed to outreach.

I don't know that there's a sermon that I preached that doesn't have some element of social gospel in it.

We need to be able to preach a liberating word that always pushes people to strive for more, and to recognize that we need to be who God designed us to be, which means that we need to level the playing field.

Which means that we need to be on equal footing as everyone else.

And so whether it's environmental justice that we're fighting for, whether we are fighting for better education, or more opportunities or whatever it may be, we always want to emphasize that we as a people are entitled to our rights.

And so we want to push that always, and we want to be the church that preaches a liberating gospel, but the church who also lives that gospel.

And so we believe in outreach, we believe in empowering our people, we believe in being where the people are, and meeting the needs of the people.

And that goes right back to our history as the AME church, because we are founded to meet those needs.

Not just spiritual, but social, educational, environmental.

All of those things, we're called to meet those needs.

To speak to those needs, yes, but also to meet those needs.

Dr. Henderson talk about how the things that Pastor Rudolph is talking about are common across black churches, whether they're AME or Baptist.

I hear that same message I feel like from pastors no matter what the denomination is when they are leading a black church.

That's absolutely true.

Basically, we have two arch type generalized categories of churches.

One is congregational, therefore they abide by a covenant agreement.

The other one is Episcopal, which means they are governed by creeds, and we call those creedal churches.

We have a new hybrid in the 21st century, where some churches that are covenantal are also creedal, in that they have no difference faith wise in what the Apostles Creeds and other creeds lift up.

They just lift them up in a way that is different from those who are in covenant.

Your Baptist church doesn't have to have a Bishop's approval even though we now see this new phenomenon of Baptist bishops.

They all want the same thing.

Decent affordable housing, clean water, clean air, safe environment.

They want good jobs, health insurance, life insurance, vacation benefit.

They want fair politics.

Where if I vote for you to be the mayor, Stephen, I don't need a bunch of folks coming behind me saying, well, I know Steven won, but we don't want him.

We gonna put Bozo in, and let Bozo be the mayor.

No, all of them want the same thing.

We're in the same room.

We just come in through different doors.

And that's why we have no problem being a part of ecumenical group.

That's why we have no problem being a part of interdenominational groups.

That's why we don't have a problem being integrated racially, and economic, and political integrated groups that are real, authentic, and that are working for us as opposed to working against us.

That's why we can be a part of round tables that include Jews, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and others.

Because we have discovered through our collaboration that everybody really wants the same thing.

So Detroit has this really long list of pastors who have risen to international and national leadership within their denominations, and there is a really bright light among that group.

Bishop Charles Ellis III of Greater Grace Temple.

He's the former presiding bishop of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World.

Bridge Detroit's Orlando Bailey spoke with Bishop Ellis about Detroit's influential role in the African-American religious community.

Tell us how a Bishop Charles Ellis from the city of Detroit works his way up to becoming presiding Bishop of one of the largest Pentecostal fellowships in the world.

Well, I thank God for being a church baby, pew baby, we call them.

You know, I was born in the church, and that's all I've known all my life.

And I'm blessed to be a third generation Pentecostal pastor as well as preacher.

My grandfather, my father, and myself.

And we've probably been a part of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World probably from the late 30s.

My father was born in 1935.

My grandfather founded a church that is still in existence in Chicago on 35th and Indiana avenue on the south side of Chicago.

And he founded that church in 1934.

I believe a few years afterwards, maybe five years afterwards, I believe, he affiliated with the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World.

So we've been in this organization for a long time.

My father rose to the position of assistant presiding bishop.

He was probably going to become the presiding bishop in 1998, but he made his transition in 1996.

Now my journey, you know, I've been with the youth group of the PAW.

You know, 1982 assistant treasurer, then treasurer '98.

I'm sorry, '88, '82, then treasurer '88.

Then president of the youth org in '92, and then became an assistant treasurer of the parent body sitting with the board of bishops in 1996.

So my journey has, you know, bishop '99 at Cobo hall.

The convention was here in Detroit that year.

I was the only bishop, and actually, the last bishop, Orlando, of the 1900s.

I was the only Bishop in 1999.

So I kind of found myself in 2004 when I became assistant presiding bishop, and then presiding bishop in 2010.

Many individuals told me that I was that bridge from the younger generation to the older generation because I made bishop, presiding bishop at 52 years old.

For decades now, Detroit has been an epicenter of black culture and black faith.

Can you talk a little bit about Detroit being America's largest majority black city, and the outsized influence that it has on predominantly African American denominations not only in the city, but in the country and around the world.

You know, whenever you talk about civil rights movement, you know, Detroit comes up.

You know, you have Dr. King with Reverend C.L.

Franklin, and other religious leaders here leading that march down Woodward.

We have his speech at Cobo hall.

The "I have a dream" configuration of the speech.

And all of us know that as pastors, you know, we preach messages and we bring a little bit from that to this, to this to that.

So there was a little bit of, I have a dream speech in that speech in 1963 at the March down Woodward that ended up at a rally there at Cobo hall.

You know, but people don't realize that, you know, when you talk about Detroit, you have a lot of religious leaders here who have risen to that plateau and that elevation of the highest office in many of the major mainstream African-American religious organizations.

You know, you talked about myself being the presiding bishop of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, which is the oldest apostolic organization in the modern world.

We trace our roots right back not just Azusa street, you know, in California there, but all the way back to the day of Pentecost in the upper room.

But even you have the progressive Baptist, and Dr. Charles Adams serve as the president.

James Perkins celebrated the leadership of that presidency.

You have Bishop J.

Drew Sheard now who is now the presiding bishop of the grand old Church of God in Christ.

You know, yes, we've had Bishop C.L.

Anderson Jr who served as the first presiding bishop, or second presiding bishop at one time.

And Bishop PA Brooks, God bless both their dust, you know, who celebrated the leadership of the first assistant presiding bishop.

But now, we have a presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ right here in Detroit, Michigan.

You know, my good friend, Bishop Lambert Gates, who celebrates now as the pastor here in Detroit of Apostolic Faith Temple as well as Mount Zion in Indianapolis, but he was Detroit bred and born.

And his roots trace back to Clinton street right about the temple.

Right there on the Linwood Chicago Boulevard area.

And, you know, he is the presiding bishop of an offshoot from us in 1957, I believe.

The Pentecostal Churches of the Apostolic Faith.

So listen, we have great influence even in the mainstream large black religious institutions.

Bishop Ellis had a lot more to say, and you can see his entire conversation with Orlando at americanblackjournal.org.

Finally, today we at Detroit public television send our condolences to the family of Jonathan Clark who was the chair of the education advocacy group, 482Forward, and a minister at City Covenant Church.

Clark was a valued community partner in the Brightmoor neighborhood, and his passion for serving the area and their families was evident when "American Black Journal" and "One Detroit" produced two road shows at his church.

We are saddened by his passing.

We offer our deepest sympathy to his congregation and to his family.

That's gonna do it for us this week.

Thanks for watching.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org, and you can always keep up with us on Facebook and on Twitter.

We'll see you next time.

♪♪