Black History Month invites us to remember that the Black Church has long been a site of both worship and resistance, a place where prayer and protest were never far apart. One striking example comes from a prayer written by Frederick Douglass and offered publicly by George Lawrence on January 1, 1813, at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in New York City. The occasion marked the fifth anniversary of the United States’ abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and the moment was treated not as a political milestone alone, but as a sacred one.
In the prayer, Lawrence addresses God as the “Father of the universe and disposer of events,” proclaiming that the gathering was not to celebrate military victories or political power soaked in human blood, but to commemorate a moment shaped by God’s own “wise counsel.” The abolition of the slave trade was named as divine intervention, God staying “the hand of merciless power.” Yet the prayer did not rest in gratitude alone. It pressed forward with urgency, crying out for God to “crush that power that still holds thousands of our brethren in bondage,” and to let liberty, freedom, and justice reign universally.
What stands out is how clearly this prayer links faith with freedom. For the early Black Church, belonging was never a private or purely spiritual reality. It was collective. It was embodied. It was unfinished as long as even one person remained in chains. Lawrence’s prayer insists that gratitude for progress must always be accompanied by a demand for liberation. To belong (to God, to one another, to the world God created) meant refusing to accept systems that denied the full humanity of Black people.
This moment at the AME Church reveals how the early Black Church cultivated a communal identity rooted in divine love while actively resisting oppression. Prayer became a language of hope, protest, and vision. It named God as the author of freedom and called on heaven to dismantle the structures of bondage on earth. During Black History Month, this prayer reminds us that the Black Church has always understood justice as holy work, and that true belonging is inseparable from liberation, dignity, and the ongoing struggle for freedom. Amen.
Here is the prayer:
And, O! thou father of the universe and disposer of events, thou that called from a dark and formless mass this fair system of nature, and created thy sons and daughters to bask in the golden streams and rivulets contained therein; this day we have convened under thy divine auspices, it’s not to celebrate a political festivity, or the achievement of arms by which the blood of thousands were spilt, contaminating thy pure fields with human gore! but to commemorate a period brought to light by thy wise counsel, who stayed the hand of merciless power; and with hearts expanded with gratitude for thy providences, inundated in the sea of thy mercies, we farther crave thy fostering care. O! wilt thou crush that power that still holds thousands of our brethren in bondage, and let the sea of thy wisdom wash its very dust from off the face of the earth; let Liberty unfurl her banners, Freedom and Justice reign triumphant in the world, universally.
This prayer and a lot of other great prayers can be found in this book, Conversations with God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans.
