Morris Brown African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is in a gentrifying community on the Peninsula of Charleston, South Carolina. This congregation is a historic black church that has been very involved in the surrounding community. Until about 20 years ago, most of the church members lived within walking distance of the church. Now that gentrification is occurring on the Peninsula, many church members have been displaced, and Morris Brown AME Church does not have the connection to the community it has traditionally embraced. As a historic black church, this project will address ways that this congregation can connect to a constantly evolving community.
In this effort, I will examine distinctive elements of black church ecclesiology that are formative for the ministry of Morris Brown AME Church. Prominent among these are the theology of Richard Allen, the founder and first bishop of the AME Church, and the scholarship of Raphael Warnock and Walter Fluker. The black church is so much more complex than just black people sitting in a church building. The development of the black church is a distinctive Christian movement born out of adversity that included slavery, segregation, and sharecropping. These challenges uniquely position the black church to minister to those on the margins of society. From this tradition, Morris Brown AME Church can connect with a gentrifying community in Charleston to minister both to the new neighbors and with the new neighbors on behalf of the marginalized people in our community.
This will hopefully be realized by developing a racial reconciliation group that will have a Christian foundation and embraces the tenets of Ubuntu. Out of this relationship that will be formed between the congregation and neighborhood, side door ministries will be designed to address many of the present challenges in our community. Among these will be the development of the Morris Brown Development Corporation that will address housing challenges—establishing a STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and math) Program that will address discrepancies in formal education. Finally, Morris Brown AME Church will expand its relationship with the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) to address health concerns that disproportionately affect people of the margins.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/44205 |
| Date | 08 April 2022 |
| Creators | Keeton, James A., Jr. |
| Contributors | Stone, Bryan P., Daily, Eileen |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
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