Africans in America; 103; Brotherly Love; Interview with Catherine Brekus, Associate Professor of the History of Christianity, University of Chicago Divinity School

well she was born in seventy three in cape may new jersey and that's almost all that she tells us and in her narrative which is the only information about her that we have she compresses all of her life before her first conviction and she was about twenty one arm into four paragraphs so all we know about her is that she was born to our free parents and keep me new jersey who were evidently quite poor because of injury nearly was seven years old she was apprenticed now as a servant sure doesn't tell us anything about that and i wish that she had because it must've been incredibly painful experience to have been seven years old and i have been separated from her family and it makes me wonder if some of her later struggles in her suicidal feelings weren't somehow related to those early experiences seven years old is very young to be separated from her family and she didn't see some of her siblings for many years in her narrative she mentioned seeing one

sister later in her life who she hadn't seen in more than thirty years so she was writing about sixty miles away from home which is a long way in a time where there were automobiles or four quick modes of transportation so she was really on her own at a very early age and probably worked very hard and had no parents to look after her i'm sure that she visited them but she didn't have anyone on a day to day basis who is caring for her and i think she found that leader in the space community a fellowship within her church where god became apparent that she had lost there is new jersey was a free state by then i think yeah but there were slaves who still had been held there

on and there were many laws passed in northern states that emancipated slaves who were held after a certain date so we usually was he was graduated so on where now when slaves to reach a certain age when they would reach twenty one and they would be emancipated which really was was born free actually it's been great ice i sometimes wonder i guess how much she may have distinguished between herself growing up free and slaves in her midst if she was seven years old and apprenticed to a family as a servant she probably didn't draw much of a distinction

between her play and the plight of slaves on end there i guess you could say there are many friends of slavery and she was in one she really had no control over her life at that time and so i think that that experience probably laid the groundwork for for a later interest in slaves her dedication to preaching to them that she saw herself as being linked to them by common experiences and of course by the common experience of racism which she certainly encountered many times in her life oh really i'm sure to unite i think that i think that during all these religious experiences are very closely linked to her experiences growing

up we don't know enough about those experiences but i imagine that dream is despair was connected to the sorts of painful experiences that she may have undergone as a child so when she describes herself feeling as if she's in such a precarious position as if she could be plunged into hell any moment i think it reflects that sort of uncertainty and insecurity that she must've felt all the time without her parents without anyone to rely on it was not uncommon in the early nineteenth century for indentured slaves to be whipped are beaten if they were disobedient she may have had those experiences as well so i think that her or her religious crisis came after a i probably a lot of painful experiences that we just knew very little about

i was horrified and i become a little bit more used to reading these sorts of accounts because many female preachers and male creatures in their narratives describe feeling as if they wanted to commit suicide and it turns out that it's it's biblical an origin jonah for example says at one point i would rather be dead than alive which released descriptions are much more vivid than anyone else's descriptions and truly horrifying the first time she claims that she thought about drowning herself in a brought inge described looking down at the water rushing in thinking about being swallowed up in madden and losing herself completely seems to feel so weighted down with a feeling our sinfulness worthlessness that she just wants to lose her identity completely intact sheet she just wants to obliterate

herself and it's horrifying and it's it happens again to her weight her again during her religious struggles where she she says is i think i have her words right eye was be set to hang myself by a cord and she thinks about first hanging herself and then she thinks about drowning herself in a drowning her head in a pitcher of water so she's just tormented by these feelings of worthlessness so that she doesn't seem to feel as if she deserves to live and she claims that the only thing that saves her is this this reliance on christ that somehow she feels as if there's this other force that loves her and sustains her and keeps her from doing something which in her understanding of the world and her christian cosmology would have sent her straight to hell so when she imagined standing over the pit of hell and she really is imagining what would happen to her if she had committed

suicide she's she would have gone to hell she believed so after hurt her second bout of struggles with them thinking about killing herself she she went to god to pray and she claimed that at that point saying tried to prevent her from praying she's a very vivid sense of god's presence in the world and the devil's presence in the world in the garden and the devil are always battling for her soul and so she she says that she sees satan and this is the most horrifying image of satan i've ever read usually saying this very abstracted these memoirs going to release memoir seaton is she just writes him a monstrous dog with a huge tongue protruding from his mouth and two eyes like balls of fire and he's in pursuit of her and it's it's very free i hope i never see that

she doesn't say much about it she says that her parents were not religious but was she was still living in new jersey and as i presume when she was still working as a servant she was twenty one and she went to hear a presbyterian minister to preach and spun whatever he said that day made her start thinking about her soul and her salvation and it was then that she became tormented by these feelings of suicide in worthlessness shame to have such a deep sense of her own sinfulness and it wasn't until several years later when she had moved from new jersey to philadelphia and fur she attended church with a group of white matter this and they did nothing for her she wrote in her memoir later that it seemed as if there was a wall between her in and then she heard a voice saying to her this is not the people for you and so she talked to the cook in in the family that she

was working in the cook suggested that she go to a meeting that was being held by richard allen who later became the founder of the african methodist episcopal church and she went to hear him preach and from the moment she walked into that church he knew that that was the place for her endgame in a number of weeks she she was converted yeah sure sure she doesn't say too much accept it moved to philadelphia and for a brief time matter of weeks i think it was only three weeks she went to a methodist church that was led by a weightless journey and tell more and it's likely although she doesn't say much about this it's likely that that plaques were segregated that was true in many white methodist churches that blacks have to sit separately and that she

probably didn't feel as if she were a man treat it as one so when she first went to philadelphia for a brief time she united with a white methodist church and she doesn't say too much about her experiences there but apparently she didn't feel as if she was included as a full member so train only later when she was writing in her narrative said that it seemed as if there was a wall between her and that people and when i read those words i imagine the train and we met at the wall was was almost literally on wall because off and black memphis and white methodist churches were segregated seating wise they were not treated as

full members they couldn't vote for example dreamily because she was female would not have been able to vote you know she had been white she was doubly disadvantaged that way but blackmail methodist would not have been allowed to vote so sure you know we seem to feel as if she was not welcome there and she was probably right that this this was not the place where she was going to find true communion with a community of like minded believers so it was i think it was really a very painful disappointment for her she had moved to a new city and she wanted to find a church that welcomed her but it but you really felt as if there was this wall and she and she writes in her memoir that it was almost as if she had heard a voice saying this is not the people for you i think

walker some religious historians i have something at stake here but i think that it's almost impossible to understand early nineteenth century american culture with outstanding religion most people learn to read by reading the bible and so even people who didn't think of themselves as being particularly religious were raised in a religious culture a culture that was saturated with symbols of religion and civic event even people who didn't believe would use religious language so this is especially true for cerino me who i am who wove biblical language and everything that she wrote and through whose identity i think were so closely linked with the king james bible that it's hard to separate her from it but in general i think that that's true of most people in the early nineteenth century and i think in the twentieth century we have a tendency to separate different categories like politics and society in the economy

and religion and i think for many people living link she did all those things were intertwined so an economic crisis for example would be understood in religious terms if there is an economic depression and maybe because god was angry or if there was a political dispute and it might also reflect that part was angry and intonation have to preserve its covenant that that language of covenant runs all the way through nineteenth century american history where where many politicians said that america was a new israel that they are sitting on a hill and at the un americans were were like the israelites from the old testament founding at a new community without guidance well it i have found

it impossible to reach arena lee's narrative without reading the king james bible alongside of her narrative so i've learned a lot about the bible and i had never thought of myself as a biblical historian and i guess i'm still not but i now understand the way she saw it and she compares herself to many old testament prophets so for example jonah is a very important character or for her the very first time that she ever preaches she stands up and she interrupts a minister who had taken jonah as his text and she told people there that she was a like jonah and that she had been called to preach that she hesitated and infected hesitated for eight years but that god had continually called her and finally she job eight if you remember the story of jonah jonah was called to preach to the wicked city of nineveh but he didn't want to so he fled and god punished him bite by having all wales swallowed him up and truly compared herself to joanna

hoffman and she claimed that in some ways she had not wanted to preach but that god had forced her to continually called her and when she tried to deny her call he punished her so that's just one example of the way that that she wove her own story into the fabric of the scripture so that in some places it's hard to tell her and jonah her part or her and jeremiah part jeremiah was a prophet who claimed when god called him to preach that he couldn't preach because he was just a child and god replies i will put my words in your mouth and really uses that same language later she says that god had promised her he would put his words in her mouth to that when she spoke she would speak the words that god wanted her to speak she wins speakers herself she would speak as god she would speak is god's prophet so there are many many places in her narrative that are just saturated with

their vocal phrases and sometimes in ways that are almost amusing we'll have small details about her taking a canal boats and then the next phrase will be something that sounds very stilted and strangely when you realize it's it's directly verbatim from the bible and for example she wants talks about preaching and she says that oh lord it was as if the lord had touched her mouth with a live call that's an image from isaiah at first it sounded familiar but i wasn't sure where to come from side tracked down but there are many places and her narrative like that where wear it on her own story and the global story of these profits are so closely intertwined that you can't take them apart these you're a charge she on jury yet to

really ramps you hear richard allen preach and this was before the founding of bethel church officially at eighteen sixteen that was after a group of african methodist had separated and were worshipping on their own end to relief from the minute she walked in that door seem to know that that was the place for her and it so happened that on the day that she went richard alan asked if there was anyone in the congregation who won at night with them and she immediately said yes so for the next three weeks during police spent a lot of time examining her soul and it was during that period where she again had suicidal feelings or she was tempted to hang herself once and drowned herself another time that was the period when trina we had the vision of satan coming towards her it was a very difficult three weeks for her where she was preparing herself for this experience so three

weeks after she first went to bethel church shooting it was sitting in the pews and richard allen announced his text and the text was i perceived it by heart is not right in the side of got to stand it only eighteen or seven after jerry lee had been attending a white methodist church for a few weeks she went to bethel church where reverend richard allen was preaching and found from the moment that she walked in that church she thought that it was the church for her so at the end of the first service when richard allen asked if there was anyone in the congregation who won at night with an cerino he said yes she did and she spent the next three weeks in in a period of real soul searching and a very difficult painful

period for her where she seems again to have felt overwhelmed by feelings of sinfulness and worthlessness considered committing suicide twice again one spy by hanging herself by a cord a second time by possibly drowning herself that was when she saw this horrifying vision of satan so after three weeks trina we went to the church and she was sitting in the pews and richard allen announced his text and his text for the day was i perceived by heart is not right in the sight of god and even before he had started preaching she felt something happy happening something stirring within her and as she described it later in her memoir she suddenly realized that there was one thing that was keeping her from union with christ and she described it it was it was no malice or anger against one particular individual who she never mentions by

name so is dreamily is sitting there in church she certainly feels overcome by these feelings of sinfulness and she says out loud lord i forgive every creature and at that moment she has this very powerful conversion experience which she describes this as feeling as if she really has literally been born again that it's as if she's lost her outer skin sheet how she describes feeling as if she has set up a garment covering her entire body from the tip of her head to the soul of her feet and at the moment that she's converted that garment splits and it it comes away from her and she's left as a completely new person per year in at no sad and she went to bethel church to hear

to hear richard allen preach and his text for that date was i perceive i heart is not right in the sight of god andrea lee wrote later in her memoir of that from the moment that he said those words even before he started preaching she began to feel as if as if his conversion experience was about to happen and the first thing that she realized was that her hart was not right inside of god and she looked inward she realize that there was a blind seeing that was gnawing away at her inside and she isn't saying much in detail about what that was except that it was malice against one particular individual shows it's a hole was so at that moment she says ward i forgive every creature and it's as if our feelings and anger have been purged i think all for earlier feelings as well

sinfulness and work for them worthlessness and anguish and at that moment she truly feels reborn she she claims that expensive a garment that had been completely enveloping her entire body from her head to her feet was stripped away leaving a completely new self in its place so she had completely lost the outer self and although the painful feelings and the despair and the anger in the worthlessness that had been part of her or her former life and at that moment she was she said a new creature and christ she was a new person and it was as if all of her former weakness and all of her former suffering had been transformed into strength and at that moment she actually leapt up out of her seat knew she couldn't sit quietly as this was happening to her and it was her first time that she ever spoke publicly in front of a congregation and so she leaped up and she started telling everyone in the congregation that because she had been saved

i think this was a deeply empowering experience yet are you sure just from their own i think that that's really his conversion was a deeply empowering experience we don't know as much as we'd like to about her early life but it is clear that she suffered quite a bit that that she was tempted to commit suicide that she felt worthless that she felt hopeless but at this moment she felt as if she had been brought into union was something that was bigger than her and so she stopped thinking about herself solely as an individual but as as part of god she described almost as as losing her sense of identity in some ways i think of the twentieth century we see that as a negative that that it's anti individualistic but for her i think it was the opposite that

that she felt as if from fernand hollen she was entirely guided by god house to have given her a great strength and did give her strength great strength given what she did later in her life it was all from this feeling that she was guided by god and that everything that she did was because god wanted her to do it so she was and depending on her own strength choose depending on god's strength after that three or four years after she experienced conversion she had a call to preach when you think about this in the context of the early nineteenth century this is truly amazing there were no female preachers are very few there were quaker women who preached which really was the first woman among the african methodist to preach their women who followed in her

footsteps later but she had very few examples and start over again i heard glasses called a pre k in nineteen eleven jerry lee felt called to preach and this must've then completely astonishing for her she didn't know any other african methodist preachers there were no other african methodist preacher she was the first there were a quicker women who preached in public but very few models that she had but she recounts in her memoir of that she was sitting quietly and she heard a voice and the voice said go preach the gospel and she was startled as you would be if you heard a voice coming out of nowhere and she responded no one will believe me

and the voice responded to her go preach the gospel i will turn your enemies to become your friends so at that moment she has had a divine revelation from god himself telling her that she must preach so even though she doubts even though she says no one will believe me i'm wrong one man and pour i'm an educated i'm black why would anybody i believe that i have been called to preach but god says i've chosen you and it's not up to you this is something that that i have an ordained for you she still in this period of doubt and so she thinks well maybe maybe satan called me maybe i didn't genuinely hear the voice of god says she says that she went to a secret place and she knew all down and she prayed any damage really has a vision and she has a vision of a pulpit with with the bible's lying on it

and at that moment there is no doubt she's heard the voice of god and she is literally seen her destiny in front of her her destiny is that pulpit with the bible and no matter what anyone else says or who questions her right to speak she's had this immediate revelation and there is no authority greater than that there's no minister who can tell her that because she doesn't have a clerical education that she can't preach so at this point she is struggling in trying to decide what to do and she has a dream that she's preaching and she wakes yourself up because she's preaching so loudly in her sleep that poem that she that she wakes herself up and she knows that she's been called thank you okay so where should i start so after to really felt called to preach she had a dream

and it's really believed as many other people did in the early republic that god could communicate with his believers through visions through voices and through dreams she she believed that the boundaries between this world and the next world for actually quite permeable so that god could interfere in history in various ways and it interfered in history by directly speaking to her and telling her that she had been called to preach but then got also sent her dream and in this dream to really was preaching to a huge crowd and she could see herself standing there speaking to this huge congregation and she was preaching with such force and such fervor that she eventually woke herself up because of the strength of her voice but he came to power so after katrina we had this dream and was convinced

that she had been called to preach she decided the next step was to go to richard allen and tell him this end and seek his approval and seek his advice and she was very scared as you can imagine and she describes in her memoir walking through the streets and being afraid to approach his door what would he say to her when she came to him and said that she had heard god's voice telling her to preach but she found courage and she went to his house and he invited her in and she relayed the story of her conversion and her call to preach and he said that it was appropriate for women to lead prayer meetings in their homes or to exhort and by that he meant she could speak about religious things without actually taking a scriptural taxed an expert king and exhorting was much less authoritative been preaching but he told her that the map that is a discipline that the guidebook for mathis made no allowance for female

preachers so he couldn't allow her to preach so it's really left his house that day she said that at first she felt relieved because she couldn't imagine what it would be like to be a female preacher sort of persecution that she would face and how would she ever convince other people that she genuinely been called but then as she walked further away she she claimed that she felt as if it's a fire with an air but

amy at the lab end after touring really felt called to preach she went to visit richard allen and she told them that she had been called to preach she's very nervous about telling him this as you can imagine because there were no other female preachers and he according to her treated her kindly but he said that there was no provision for female preachers in the methodist discipline so drearily left his house and in the beginning she claimed she felt relieved because she now felt as if she didn't have this is terrible burden that she had to go out and preach the gospel to every creatures she said that richard allen had told her that this was not scripture all that that she could not have been called to preach but as she continued walking away from his house she felt more and more in her words as if the fire within her had been smothered in the bible which he quoted often there's a passage that says quenched

not the spirit despise not profit signs and that was later how she understood what started to happen to her from the moment that she left richard allen's house that she had quenched the spirit that she had been called by god to preach but didn't have the courage to tell richard alan that he was wrong so she went through this terrible period of despair where she felt as if god was calling her to do something but she was told that she could not do it so it seems as if it almost compensation for that or shorten very shortly after that she married a minister and it may have been that she hoped to fulfill her own preaching ambitions through him that she could be has helped me it mean he would allow her into the pulpit occasionally with that she could somehow obey her a call by helping him okay hey is so she married a man named joseph lee who's the pastor of an african methodist

church in snow hill about six miles outside of pennsylvania and she moved there and it was not a happy time in her life at all she says very little about it in her memoir accept that she she didn't find friends there and she didn't find a sympathetic community there so much so that she wanted to me but her husband said no that he had a responsibility to his flock in snow hill and got a shorter of the same thing by sending her another dream and in that dream god told her that joseph papp to watch over the flock of his sheep or else they'd be devoured by waltz surgery relieved and knew that she had a duty to stay with han in snow hill but it was a terrible time for her and she seems to have had something akin to a nervous breakdown she writes in her memoir that she fell into such a state of general debility that she couldn't even sit up by

herself and she spent several years like that longing to preach and having dreams about preaching one she had a dream that that she interpreted as god's reassurance that someday she would preach she sought out the sun in the dream a cloud came an obscure the sun but then the cloud moved away and the sun shone again and she interpreted the stream to mean that eventually she would be like that's son and she would be allowed to exercise her talents tsai talk about the death of her husband first you and this is so horrible crime will see on she lived in snow hill pennsylvania for eight years between eighteen eleven and are seven years between eighteen eleven and eighteen eighteen and in six of those years she lost five members of her family says was a time of terrible

suffering doesn't say very much about this it's compressed into a paragraph but one of the people who died was her husband in a band that she gave birth to other children who died in may have banned them hers of her family such as siblings who died but in a teeny teen she was left a widow with two children one six months old and one two years old completely alone in the world and she really had to rely on her friends for support so in a teeny team she went back to philadelphia and there she felt renewal of her call to preach and first katrina we went back to richard allen and she asked him for permission to hold prayer meetings in her house and that was acceptable she could speak in that informal setting to other women and men but he never at that point would have allowed her to stand in the pulpit so for your truly served

god that way she she preached in an informal way within her sick within her own house then in eighty nineteen she was sitting in bethel church enters a visiting minister who had come to preach and according to hurt he was not doing a very good job with the sermon and he was preaching on a tax from jonah and as she described it describes it it was as if it was a super natural impulse this was not within her controllable this was not premeditated she had not thought about it but certainly she sprung to her feet and she interrupted this minister while he was speaking and she basically took over this worship service and for the next several minutes she exhorted on his passage from canada and she compared herself to china and she described how like jonah she had felt called to preach but she had suppressed that call and now eight years later it had been eight years since she first felt called to preach she felt it again when she had finished

speaking she sat down and she's terrified she thought this is it i'm going to be expelled from this church i'm going to be excommunicated but instead and what must have seemed like a miracle to her richard allen standup and he said it eight years ago this woman shereen we came to talk to me and she told me that she had a call to preach but i didn't let her speak and i should have because all of us can see today from what she said that she is divinely inspired so at that moment she had won over the most powerful man in the church the first bishop of the african methodist episcopal church the founder of bethel church and at that moment she became the first female preacher among the african methodist but mccain after she

finished preaching she said after two really had finished preaching she sat down and she was terrified because she thought this was the moment when she was going to be expelled from her church but in what must have seemed like a miracle to her the reverend richard allen stood out and he said you really came to me eight years ago and she asked for permission to preach but i said that the method is disciplined didn't call for women preachers and so i sent her home saying that she couldn't predict but now eighty years later everyone in this church can see that she has been divinely inspired so from that moment on she had his approval and he was the most powerful man in the african methodist church he was the first bishop of the african methodist church the founder of bethel church and she traveled from then on with his approval shiller and richard allen was worshiping in the

seventeen a nice with the group white mathis and she and absalom jones often spoke about the prejudices that they faced with in this church st george's methodist church in philadelphia but they stayed within the church and actually many black methodist can methodist contribute money to help refurbish the church but when the church was refurbished and it was done out song jones kneel down in the spot where he'd always kneel down and some of the the white trustees came in and told them that he could not kneel there if you have to go elsewhere and at that moment he and richard allen decided they would found their own church a black methodist church where where everyone would be able to worship as equals so richard allen at the time measuring only met him was on his way to becoming the acknowledged leader of the african mathis in eighteen sixteen

he became the first bishop of the african methodist church lake erie richard allen became one of jerry lee's greatest admirers and he often arranged preaching appointments for her he took her to methodist conference is with hand and i think most extraordinary of all he took care of her son for two years while she was out of philadelphia preaching said their wives were very closely intertwined he seemed to a ban very very close friends she sees who've looked up to him almost as a father and as long as he was alive he protected her and he made sure that she had places to preach and that she had enough money after he died in eating perry won and she found it was much more difficult for her to find places to preach she no longer had his protection and just briefly

the tree so after richard allen gave trina lee permission to preach she began first holding meetings in philadelphia often it at around the houses of sympathetic friends she was afraid in the beginning due to speak in a church she said in her memoir later that she thought war anywhere but here she couldn't imagine standing in that male space of the pulpit initiative is again in eighteen nineteen after richard and torturing me permission to preach she first the hand preaching in private houses around philadelphia at that point she didn't feel comfortable speaking in a church yet and she wrote in her memoir that she said lord anywhere but here she just couldn't imagine standing in that that masculine space of the pulpit so in the beginning she was more comfortable preaching and private houses but she

also preached outside she preached in barn she preached in school houses and courthouses she preached wherever she could find a space and eventually she found the courage also to preach and churches and she did that quite often so she traveled all across the country not only in pennsylvania but new jersey delaware ohio she even went to canada there was one year where she said that she'd traveled over two thousand miles and and many of those miles she traveled and fight she had very little money so she was dependent on the generosity of other people to pay her travel fares and sometimes she had to walk but with this trial i think she was incredibly courageous to have done this often she traveled with another woman but still two women traveling across the country by themselves two black

women often preaching to mixed congregations of blacks and whites they must have felt very vulnerable and i know from reading other female preachers memoirs that some women were afraid they'd be assaulted sexually assaulted or robbed so so i think this is another example of how strong trina we felt in her faith that she was willing to do this that she was willing to say checked herself to all kinds of possible dangers but she believed that god was with her wherever she traveled there's probably no example that illustrates this better than her willingness to go to maryland which was a slave state and in her memoir it's really quite astounding she doesn't say much about it she says that she and another woman another black woman go by horseback and ride into maryland so your two black women alone writing into a slave

state to preach the gospel but she is so certain that god is with her that that she refuses to feel any fear and she preaches there for several months to huge crowds of both white and black arm shiite at one point records a number of slaves coming to hear her preach and she writes that some of them have traveled twenty or thirty or even seventy miles by foot to see her that they had heard that a black female preacher would be at this camp meeting and said they they risked their own safety end and walked all of these miles to hear her and then had to walk back again before daybreak because they have to work and at twenty four during a really felt called to preach to slaves she wrote in her

memoir that she she never went anywhere just because she wanted to go she wet because god wanted her to go and i was telling her that even though be very dangerous that she had a religious duty to go and proclaim the gospel to slaves so she and another black woman alone got on horseback and they wrote into maryland a slave state and there she held meetings all across the state to huge crowds made up of both slaves and slave holders at one african methodist camp meeting she wrote in a very poignant passages in her memoir that there were huge numbers of slaves who had walked twenty or thirty or even seventy miles to hear her preach that they had heard that there was a free black woman who'd be preaching at this camp meeting and even though they would have to walk that entire distance back at night to be in the slave quarters the next morning from work they were willing to do that to hear her and see her it seems too bad for

found moving moment for her as she looked out at that huge sea of people who would come to hear her and i think this is why the moments where she felt her own destiny as a free black woman linked to the plight of these slaves and she felt as if she really did have a duty or a calling to speak to them unfortunately we don't know what she said i would love to know what she said but we do know that a few weeks later she spoke at another african methodist me and she'd show is at a meeting that she held for african methodist and many slaves in maryland and at twenty four train and we chose one of the most beauty four passages from isaiah and also one must have been

deeply meaningful to her and to everyone who heard her speak she spoke on these words the spirit of the lord god is upon me because the lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings and the meek he had sent me to bind up the broken hearted to proclaim liberty to the captains and the opening of the prison to them that are banned so she preached amidst taxed which is about slavery and at all these types of slavery spiritual slavery and also physical slavery we don't know what she said but it's likely that she may have preached a message of moral and spiritual leppert liberation but also temporal liberation let's do that again in eighteen twenty four cerino leave preach to a

group of african methodist including slaves i text from isaiah out which i think had deep personal meaning for her i think the words in these tax in his text were about her the passage reads the spirit of the lord god is upon me because the lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings and the meek he has sent me to bind up the broken hearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them for a pound i think she really believed that she had been called to proclaim liberty to the captives and that's why she was in the slave state of maryland a great personal danger it would not have been impossible for her to have been kidnapped and sold by a slave trader it happened often and in fact she carried papers with her certifying that she was free at one point there was a magistrate who tried to get those papers away from her so she faced great

personal danger in a slave state of maryland but she felt as if she was there on a divine mission and she was certain that god would protect her yeah sure on jury know we often their opposition in her travels and there was one particular incident that she recounted that must've been frightening almost where she was preaching in a church and a man came up to her and he said that he believed the color people did not have souls and he sat down in the front row and as she wrote he boldly tried to scare me out of town it's so the whole time that you know he was preaching she had to look at this man in the front row who believe that she didn't have a soul and she somehow had to prove to him that he was wrong i did

shereen we often met opposition in her travels as a black woman she was threatened on starry start the season ticket and once a time when started on jerry know we often faced opposition in her travels she was a black female preacher at a time when there were very few female preachers at all so sometimes she was accused of being a man dressed up in women's clothing because no one can believe that a woman could actually preach as well as she preached at other times she was attacked on the basis of her race so there was one time where she went to preach in the church and a man came up to her before she delivered her sermon and he told her that he didn't believe that color people had any souls in his words and he sat down in the front row and the entire time that she was speaking as she wrote later he boldly tried to look me out of candidates so there was

really in front of his congregation with a man sitting right in front of her who did not believe that she was human but she didn't have a sold a way that white people had souls sushi as she was preaching had to convince him as wells this entire congregation that she was spiritually equal to man and according to her anyway because she was empowered by guide heat the end of the sermon thought better of what he had said and came up to shake her hand or she would say that he necessarily been converted she hoped but she wasn't sure well i'm sure you'll be mostly preached and text from the new testament that one part in her memoir where she says god is love and she focused on the

time the mercy and compassion of christ but she also believed in the wrathful god of the old testament and their descriptions of her preaching to congregations who began to scream and shout week because they were so frightened by what she was saying there was one sermon that she preached in new york where she threatened the people there with a verse from matthew that well it is very tough but in one sermon in new york she threatened the people there that god would burn up the chaff in an unquenchable fire some people who were saved we're going to go to hell says she had a vision of god that incorporated both sort of motherly compassionate god and a more fatherly angry god least in terms of nineteenth century would have understood father and mother

she identified slavery as a sin and it was a sin that god would punish god was not going to let this happen so she predicted that sunday there might be a sort of a millennial apocalypse and in fact she mentions very briefly nat turner not by name but it's clear that she meant nat turner and she says perhaps he's right perhaps there will be an apocalypse at the end were two armies of black army on a white army will clash so i think she had the sense you know you know and the way that it is hard to imagine years before the civil war that this sort of strife was coming and with the plans nat turner was certainly relying on old

testament models and annie was also very visionary like train a leaky believe that he had seen a vision of christ telling him what to do it's hard to know how dreamily would have responded to ham i think in some way she would've been horrified by the violence because she seems to have been very compassionate spirit and it's it's truly astounding three parts of her memoir where she was willing to preach to the slave holders as well as the slaves but i do think she shared his sense of god's finger at slave holders and that these men did not repent if they didn't free their slaves that they would be punished and they might be punished in this sort of apocalyptic a horrible way nat turner was a

baptist and he seems to have been particularly influenced by old testament models of an avenging god who would it would seek retribution for since so he identified the slain stands guard told israel and god it would punish anyone who threatened them so he imagined himself as a modern day profit he was a jeremiah oren is the keel origin owner and he had come as god's agent to exact retribution on whites for enslaving blacks i guess i feel it does affect violence is never justified but on the other hand i understand their rage and it's hard for me to understand how slavery would ever have ended without the civil war without bloodshed but i'm also hesitant to

to say that any war is just i guess i have a pacifist leanings so i'm i am uneasy when i read the map turner transcript it's horrifying there were there were young children who were killed but you can you can feel the rage and you can feel the anger and you can wonder whether slavery ever would have ended without that sort of rage absolutely i think i think youre you know we saw this to admit that slavery is not something that effects just the slave and i think that's why she preached to both slaves and slave holders that she understood that the entire system words was evil and was sinful and was detrimental to all people that anyone implicated in it we somehow corrupted by

it so it's a i would agree that that slavery was a system that that brought blacks and whites into into a sort of a relationship that was ultimately destructive end and ultimately leading to this sort of conflagration that was the civil war slaves understood the bible in their own lives as having personal meaning for them in that they thought that they were like the old israel who had been enslaved and so they project themselves back and their story became the story of old israel and i think that matt turner saw himself as a black moses and he'd come to set his people free and so so he interpreted himself as a biblical prophet who was divinely justified in what he was doing there are many examples in the old testament

horrible acts of violence and nat turner saw himself in that tradition that the only way to purr urge the slaveholding south of his sinfulness west through this rebellion through this violence through bloodshed he believed that he had god's approval and god sanction in doing that is that their slaves believed that they were the old israel described in the bible they were being held captive and nat turner imagined himself as a black moses and he had been commissioned by god in a moment of direct revelation to set his people free so he saw himself in these biblical terms as having a biblical nation and she read all test me know if it that god in the old testament often worked through acts of violence and often protected the

israelites through acts of violence and it was in that tradition that nat turner situated himself he was an avenging siam who had come to save his people from the sinfulness of the slaveholding south and in maryland a slaveholding state to really preach to a group of slaves and free blacks and attacks that i think had deep personal meaning for her the text is from isaiah the spirit of the lord god is upon me because the lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings and the meek he had sent me to bind up the broken hearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the present them better about it must have then a truly radical revolutionary moment for cerino

me to be standing in front of this group of both slaves and free blacks and to say that she had a mission to proclaim liberty to the captains and to assure them that sunday their prison would be open i think that her authority came from her belief that she was acting completely in accordance with god's wishes so that she was always under his protection and he had called her to do this and so even though she subjected herself to possible dangers even though she stood in front of this crowd and said something that was so revolutionary that she promised them that someday they would be free she felt secure and doing it because she believed that god was speaking through her that when she opened her mouth she was like jeremiah who had been promised that when he spoke he would speak god's words she really tells us throughout her memoir that when she spoke she spoke

with kind words and when she spoke against slavery she was also speaking pants weren't wet i i have found that students respond to treanor the story so emotionally as well as intellectually especially women who were studying for ministry but but everybody and it's a story of such courage and such faith i can imagine having that much faith i can imagine being a black woman in the nineteenth century who's only had three months' worth of education and daring to travel into a slave state to preach it's an amazing story an astonishing extraordinary stories should be fiction but it's not it just really happy and i think it says something about the power of her faith and the power of other people's

favorite this time to to transform the world and people today are really inspired by that i think