Black Culture and Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism, 1790-1930, an Overview

Abstract

These Words, written by the illustrious pan-African intellectual Edward Wilmot Blyden, echo one of the most prominent themes in black religious thought from the nineteenth century onward: Ethiopianism, the prophesied redemption of Africa, a mission that was to be accomplished through the efforts of black Americans. Blyden, who in his later years became a passionate defender of Islam, initially found in the Jewish doctrine of Zionism an implicit affirmation of his belief in the spiritual destiny of African Americans. To Blyden, the sons and daughters of Africa everywhere in the diaspora-like the Jews-possessed a special charge as religious exemplars for the rest of humanity. Believing that Jewish aspirations for nationhood were comparable to those of blacks, Blyden hoped that some day African Americans would return to their motherland in order to aid, uplift, and restore her to her former glory. As for Zionism, Blyden argued that the significance of that movement extended far beyond the worldly promise of Jewish statehood. The Jews were “qualified by the unspeakable suffering of ages to be the leaders:’ he wrote,”not in politics but in religion:’ and best suited at “propagating the international religion” by which persons of”all races, climes, and countries[could] call upon the one Lord:’ Advocating a kinship between blacks and Jews, Blyden went so far as to suggest that Africa might be a productive site for both to begin the “higher and nobler work” of the uplift of humankind to which both peoples had been called.