1793年费城黄热病与黑人循道派的兴起

Philadelphia’s 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic and the Emergence of African Methodists

费城是美国早期自由黑人相对集中的地方,黑人成为费城循道派中的一支重要力量,并且建立了自己的互助组织'自由非洲人会社',最终于1794年在费城出现了第一个黑人循道派文本和第一个由黑人建立的循道派主教制教会。在这一过程中,1793年费城发生黄热病这一事件成为一个重要偶然因素。面对黄热病带来的死亡,费城黑人挺身而出,以其行动赢得了许多费城市民的尊重,并由此加强了循道派黑人群体自身的身份认同。他们以此为契机走向了建立独立教会的道路,推动了黑人循道派的发展。然而,此次费城黄热病大流行应归咎于来自圣多明各的法国难民。在法国大革命影响下出现的海地独立革命,使那里的法国人逃往费城并带去了黄热病。因此美国黑人循道派的兴起,一方面是黑人参与循道派而发展的结果,另一面也是全球范围内一系列事件发生连锁反应影响的结果。

African Americans, with their relatively high density in Philadelphia in the early United States, emerged as an important group within Philadelphian Methodists. After setting up "Free African Society", their mutual-aid organization, they eventually published the first African Methodist text and established the first African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1794 in Philadelphia. During this course, Philadelphia’s 1793 yellow fever epidemic was an important accidental factor. Facing death from the epidemic, the African Americans in Philadelphia won the respect of many citizens through their heroic conduct, and thus strengthened the group identity of African Methodists. Taking this opportunity, they speeded up their pace of establishing a separate church,accelerating the development of African Methodists. This accidental epidemic, however, was attributed to the Saint-Dominguan refugees of French descent, who fled from the Haitian Revolution under the impact of the French Revolution and carried yellow fever to Philadelphia. Hence the emergence of African Methodists in the United States was the result of both the development of Africans’ participation in Methodism and the chain reaction of a series of global events.