# Afro-Christian Convention (body) **Stub — expand when full book text and additional primary sources are available.** The Afro-Christian Convention was a historically Black Christian denomination that became one of the predecessor bodies of the [[United Church of Christ]] (formed 1957). Its worship practices drew directly from African cultural roots — preaching and singing from African chants, shouting akin to African dance — and carried a distinctive theology of felt, embodied religion. Historian Percel O. Alston names these practices as a gift the Afro-Christian Convention brought to the UCC. (Source: [[readwise-afro-christian-convention-yvonne-delk|Afro-Christian Convention — Yvonne Delk (Readwise Highlights)]]) --- ## Worship Tradition The Afro-Christian Convention's worship theology is described by Percel O. Alston (quoted in [[Yvonne Delk]]'s *Afro-Christian Convention*): - **Preaching and singing** traced back to African chants - **Shouting** connected to African dance - **"Feeling aspect of religion"** as the dominant mode — not incidental or informal, but structurally characteristic - **Fervor and great joy** — framed explicitly as gifts to the UCC, not as excess to be disciplined away This matters for St. John's UCC worship theology. The UCC's own denominational heritage includes this African-rooted, emotionally expressive worship tradition, which predates and is structurally distinct from the manufactured emotional intensity of NAR/Bethel/Hillsong contemporary worship. See [[Musical Sacramentality]] for the distinction between culturally-rooted expressive worship and apostolic-authority-mediated emotional manipulation. --- ## Racial-Theological Significance [[Yvonne Delk]] frames the Afro-Christian Convention against the backdrop of white ecclesiology's complicity in racism. White theology "granted spiritual anointing to white power and privilege" (Location 336). The Afro-Christian Convention's presence in the UCC's ancestry is part of the denomination's reckoning with that history — and its inheritance of something white Christianity did not generate. --- ## Stub Items for Expansion - Full denominational history (origins in the Christian Connection? merger timeline with Congregational Christian Churches before 1957?) - Geographic distribution and size at time of merger - Theological distinctives beyond worship practice - Key leaders other than those cited in Delk's work - How the Afro-Christian strand has been remembered (or forgotten) in contemporary UCC identity --- ## Connections - [[United Church of Christ]] — predecessor body via the 1957 merger - [[Yvonne Delk]] — author of the primary source for this entity - [[Musical Sacramentality]] — Afro-Christian worship as a countermodel to NAR manufactured intensity - [[Praise and Worship Theology]] — points of contrast and resonance with contemporary worship music theology > [!question] > How much of the Afro-Christian Convention's distinctive worship theology survived the 1957 merger into the UCC? Has it shaped UCC liturgy in documented ways, or has it been absorbed and flattened by the predominantly white Congregational stream?