Chapter Two:

"Civilization" and Its Discontents

The First Awakening

In the late 1760's in Charleston, S.C., a young musician, french horn tucked under his arm, made his way to a performance. As he passed by a large meetinghouse, there was a commotion on account of a "crazy man was halloing there." He might have ignored the event but his companion dared him to "blow the french horn among them" and disrupt the meeting. Thinking they might have some fun, John Marrant lifted his horn to his lips. Suddenly, the crazy man -- evangelist George Whitefield² -- cast an eye upon him, pointed his finger and uttered the words "Prepare to Meet Thy God, O Israel!" Marrant was struck down for some thirty minutes and upon recovering, he was ministered to for several days by Reverend Whitefield. On the third day, Marrant found God and dedicated his life to the propagation of the gospel.³

Marrant first witnessed to members of his family and when they rejected his newfound evangelical spirit, he fled to the wilderness seeking solace among the beasts of the woods. Soon encountering a Cherokee deer hunter, they spent ten weeks together killing deer by day and making brush arbors by night to provide sanctuary for themselves in the wilderness. Becoming fast friends by the end of the hunting season, the hunter and the missionary returned to the hunter's village. However, when he attempted to pass the outer guard at the Cherokee village, the Cherokee were less than excited with the visitor. Marrant was detained and placed in prison.⁴ It was not Marrant's blackness troubled the Cherokee; the peoples of the Southeastern United States had relations with Africans stretching back perhaps as far as a thousand years. It was more likely his dressing in the manner of a European colonist that was the source of his trouble. The Carolina frontier was, at this time, the scene of constant siege between colonists and Indians.

When threatened with death by the Cherokee king, Marrant witnessed to the Cherokee in their native tongue, "I cried again, and He was entreated. He said, "Be it as thou wilt;" the Lord appeared most lovely and glorious; the king himself was awakened, and the others set at liberty. A great change took place among the people; the King's house became God's house; the soldiers were ordered away; and the poor condemned prisoner had perfect liberty and was treated like a prince. Now the Lord made all my enemies become my great friends." ⁵ Being thus freed and granted permission to evangelize among the Cherokee, John Marrant did so at great liberty for some nine weeks.

At the king's bidding and with fifty Cherokee accompanying him, he later set out on a mission to the "less savingly wrought upon" people of the Southeastern region where he spent some months among the Mvskoke confederation. Marrant was, as Arthur Schomburg notes, "A Negro in America [like] the Jesuits of old, who spread the seed of Christianity among the American Indians before the birth of the American Republic."⁶ Some months later after returning from his mission to the Mvskoke, he returned to his family "in the Indian style" who took him for "a savage" and refused to recognize him.⁷ After repeated pleas, they were finally reunited and Marrant returned to his place in colonial society.

Shortly after leaving the Cherokee, John Marrant settled upon another mission. Being a "free carpenter," he contracted to work on a plantation just outside of Charleston. As with the Cherokee, Marrant set about bringing to the slaves on the plantation the word of the holy gospel. However, the mistress of the plantations was less than pleased at Marrant's efforts. Being shocked to find her slaves at prayer, she had her husband round up a posse and raid the prayer-meeting. "As the poor creatures came out they caught them, and tied them together with cords," Marrant reported, "till the next morning, when all they caught, men, women, and children, were strip'd naked and tied, their feet to a stake, their hands to the arm of a tree, and so severely flogged that the blood ran from their backs and sides to the floor, to make them promise they would leave off praying."⁸ Marrant warned the slaveowners "that the blood of these poor negroes that he had spilt that morning would be required by God at his hands."⁹

When the Revolutionary War began, Marrant was impressed by the British navy, became a "black loyalist," and eventually settled in England following the war. On May 15, 1785, Marrant was ordained to the Christian ministry under the patronage of the Countess of Huntingdon. Huntingdon was also the patron of George Whitfield, African American poet Phyllis Wheatley¹⁰ and Samson Occom, the "father" of modern Native American literature.¹¹ At some point, Marrant also became a friend and follower of another Methodist minister by the name of Prince Hall.

Prince Hall, a former slave and "person of color" from Barbados, believed that all persons possessed "a natural and unalienable right to that freedom that the great Parent of the Universe hath bestowed equally on all mankind."¹² Toward that end, Hall petitioned the government of Massachusetts for the abolition of slavery in 1777.¹³ In 1782, Hall once again petitioned the Massachusetts legislature; this time he sought to establish an African colony that was to become the modern African state of Liberia. Hall later petitioned the legislature for the education of colored children and founded such a school in 1796. In the same year, he founded the African Benevolent Society to help "persons of color" to become worthy, self-supporting citizens.¹⁴ He was not only an ardent abolitionist, but he advocated full citizenship for blacks and equality before the law; he opposed all forms of racial or class discrimination and was insistent on the protection of his people from social insult and indignity.

However, it was for the founding of another institution that was to me be Prince Hall's most significant contribution. On March 6, 1775, Prince Hall and 14 men of color were made masons in Lodge #441 of the Irish Registry attached to the 38^th British Foot Infantry at Castle William Island in Boston Harbor, Massachusetts. It marked the first time that Black men were

made masons in America. On July 3, 1776, an African lodge was formed with Prince Hall as the worshipful master. It wasn't long before this lodge received an additional "permit" to walk in procession on St. John's Day. The Grand Lodge of England issued a charter on September 29, 1784 to African Lodge #459, the first lodge of Blacks in America.¹⁵

Prince Hall Freemasonry is one of the fundamental independent institutions in the African-american community and was the training ground of a huge cadre of African American leaders. Early members of Prince Hall Masonry were poet Jupiter Hammon, as well as abolitionist James Forten and Prince Saunders, later Attorney General of the country of Haiti.¹⁶ Richard Allen and Absolom Jones, brothers of John Marrant in Prince Hall Grand Lodge, founded the Free African Society of Philadelphia in 1786, a mutual aid society dedicated to the promotion of racial solidarity and the abolition of slavery.¹⁷ Richard Allen went on to be a founder the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Absolom Jones was ordained as minister of African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia.¹⁸ Members of Free African Lodge #459 of Prince Hall Freemasonry formed a part of the funeral procession of President George Washington, one of the most famous of Masonic presidents.¹⁹ The alliance between Prince Hall Freemasonry and African-American church life is a critical and often underexplored factor in the African American religious experience.²⁰

On the 24^th day of June in the year 1789, African Lodge #459 held its annual St. John's Day celebration. The Chaplain of African Lodge #459, the former "savage"John Marrant, delivered the St. John's Day sermon to assembled brothers. He beseeched them to "present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God...let love be without dissimulation, abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. These and many other duties are required of us as christians, every one of which are like so many links of a chain." ²¹ Marrant told his audience that a black exodus to Africa, the restoration of a pure and covenanted black community to their Zion, was an element of God's providential design. Marrant preached that this restoration would be as a benevolent overruling of the sins of the slave traders and slaveholders. ²² Marrant spoke strongest against those that would "despise their fellow men, as tho' they were not of the same species with themselves, and would in their power deprive them of the blessings and comforts of life which God in his bountiful goodness hath freely given to all his creatures to improve and enjoy. Surely such monsters never came out of the hand of God in such a forlorn condition."²³