Spiritual Church Movement

The spiritual church movement is an informal name for a group of loosely allied and also independent Spiritualist churches and Spiritualist denominations that have in common the fact that they have been historically based in the African American community.

Many of them owe their origin to the evangelical work of Leafy Anderson, a Black religious leader of the early 20th century who was born in Wisconsin and in 1913 founded the Eternal Life Christian Spiritualist Association. In 1920 she relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana, where she demonstrated mediumship by bringing messages from her spirit guide Black Hawk, a historical war leader of the Native American Sauk tribe, who had lived near where she was born.

Although the churches founded by Anderson are often associated with New Orleans, the spiritual church movement has always been national in scope. It spread quickly throughout America during the 1920s, and one impetus for its diffusion was the fact that in 1922, the National Spiritualist Association of Churches expelled or made unwelcome all of its Black members. This led to the formation of a national group called the Colored Spiritualist Association of Churches, and within a few years there were Black Spiritualist churches in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and many other cities. During the decade preceding World War II, the Spiritual churches of New York City were well documented in print and film.

At the present time, the spiritual church movement encompasses primarily churches which are influenced by Protestant Christian worship styles, especially Baptist and Pentecostal praise music, as well as churches that contain a great deal of Catholic imagery, including the veneration of saints.

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