Abyssinian Baptist Church

The Abyssinian Baptist Church is a Baptist megachurch located at 132 West 138th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Lenox Avenue in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is affiliated with the National Baptist Convention, USA and American Baptist Churches USA. The Abyssinian Baptist Church congregation traces its history to 1809, when seamen from the Ethiopian Empire (then known as Abyssinia) helped lead a walk-out protest against racially segregated church seating, and its congregation began to meet independently. Thomas Paul was an early minister of the church. During the 20th and 21st century, prominent ministers of the church included Adam Clayton Powell Sr., Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Samuel DeWitt Proctor, and Calvin O. Butts. The church has served as an influential place for African-American spirituality, politics and community. The church worshiped in several places before building the present church structure. Its present building was built in 1922–23 and was designed by Charles W. Bolton & Son in Gothic Revival and Tudor Revival styles – it has also been described as "Collegiate Gothic". It features stained glass windows and marble furnishings. The church and its associated community house were designated a New York City Landmark on July 13, 1993.

The congregation began after an incident in 1808, when visiting Ethiopian seamen and free African-American parishioners left the First Baptist Church in protest over being restricted to racially segregated seating. They named their new congregation the Abyssinian Baptist Church after the historic name of Ethiopia. The congregation worshiped at a number of places: first on the corner of William and Frankfort Streets, then at 44 Anthony (Worth) Street until the mortgage upon the church was foreclosed upon in 1854, at which time the congregation worshipped temporarily at 356 Broadway. Then in 1856 they established themselves at 166 Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, an area then sometimes called "little Africa." It was during their time here that the church split into two "warring" factions, one for the Rev. William M. Spelman, who had been with them since 1855, and one desiring his removal. In 1885, Rev. Spelman was ousted from the pulpit, at which time he and his followers went to another church on 37th Street. In 1902 the congregation moved uptown with the movement of the African American population, to 242 West 40th Street, and from there to a tent pitched next to the future site of Marcus Garvey's Liberty Hall in Harlem, where the size of the congregation increased dramatically thanks to the preaching of Adam Clayton Powell Sr., who had become the pastor in 1908. The church purchased property on the same street for a new sanctuary, paid for by tithes and offerings. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the future prominent German theologian, anti-Nazi activist and martyr, arrived in New York in 1930 - then a young student doing postgraduate study at the Union Theological Seminary. Frank Fisher, a black fellow-seminarian, introduced Bonhoeffer to the Abyssinian Church, where Bonhoeffer taught Sunday school and formed a lifelong love for African-American spirituals, a collection of which he took back to Germany. He heard Adam Clayton Powell Sr. preach the Gospel of Social Justice, and became sensitive to not only social injustices experienced by minorities but also the ineptitude of the church to bring about integration. It was there that Bonhoeffer began to see things "from below"—from the perspective of those who suffer oppression. He observed, "Here one can truly speak and hear about sin and grace and the love of God... the Black Christ is preached with rapturous passion and vision." Later Bonhoeffer referred to his impressions abroad as the point at which

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