Jelks 1Tonight in many African American communities Watch Night services will be observed. These services began in the 18th century—the greatest era of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It was the Moravians, a small European Protestant denomination in the Czech Republic who bequeathed the Watch Night service to North America and the Caribbean. Moravian adherents leaving Europe eventually made their way to the Americas by the 1730s settling in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Jamaica, and the Virgin Islands. They brought and shared the idea of the Watch Night service with English and American Methodist.

Watch Night Services were instituted to “watch over” one’s covenant with God. As one writer observes, “these gatherings were a time for congregants to mediate on their state of grace—were they spiritually ready to meet their maker if the call were suddenly to come? As the 13th chapter of Mark instructs, the faithful need to be ever vigilant, because the hour of the Lord’s coming is not known. (Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh. KJV).”

By the 1770, Watch Night Services were being held in Old St. George’s Church, the main Methodist Church in Philadelphia—the very church that Richard Allen, one of the founders of African Methodist Episcopal Church, led black members out of in 1787 in protest over the segregation of its members according to race at the prayer altar. African Americans belonged to both the Moravian and the Methodist traditions within American Protestantism and were present and formative in the rituals of Watch Night throughout the Americas in this era. Each year as devout Methodists and Moravians African Americans participated in these “Covenant Renewal Services.”

In 1862, Watch Night Services in the United States took on greater significance for black Americans–whether slave or free—as they anticipated President Lincoln’s military decree, known as the Emancipation Proclamation, which commenced on the morning of January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation did not formally eradicate American slavery, but it was the decree that undermined the economic institution throughout the country by declaring that slaves were free in all the states that were in open rebellion against the Constitutional Union. For many African Americans, spiritual renewal became attached to the physical release of nearly four million people who were held in perpetual bondage. After slavery, as black people formed more of their own independent denominations, Watch Night services became a ritual practiced in many black churches until this day.

The ritual of Watch Night is still important, even if one does not share in its Christian origins. For all black people it is a moment to remember the struggle of our slave forbearers for freedom from perpetual servitude. And for all others, it is a call on the eve of a new year to renew our commitments whether religious or otherwise. Each year we can commit ourselves to both the spiritual and liberation of those who find themselves in bondages from the draconian policies of political states to the internal demons of self-loathing, addictions, and fears. Whether you pray, mediate, or sit in stillness remember to watch for signs of freedom and wait for renewal. The world may be hateful and scornful, but it is through the strength of faith, whatever faith you may possess, that beloved community is born.

The great gospel composer, Charles Albert Tindley (1851-1933), an African American Methodist clergy from Philadelphia captured the faith and hopefulness of his slave forbearers in his 1905 gospel composition “The Storm is Passing Over.” This gospel anthem is a song of both watchfulness and renewal. It is a Watch Night anthem. The lyrics begin:

O courage, my soul, and let us journey on,
For tho’ the night is dark, it won’t be very long.
O thanks be to God, the morning light appears,
And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah!

Listen to the Detroit Mass Choir’s version of Tindley’s composition and may you be renewed this night to watch for freedom and be renewed in your spirit to struggle for justice. Happy New Year!