Amherstburg First Baptist Church, Amherstburg, Ontario

Backgrounder

Amherstburg First Baptist Church in Amherstburg, Ontario, was a principal Underground Railway-related Black church in Upper Canada. Strategically located near the United States border, it offered sanctuary to African Americans fleeing slavery. Constructed by 1848-49, this church was a spiritual home for thousands of Black Baptists, and it helped foster the development of a distinctive Black Baptist church tradition in Ontario. As the Mother Church of the Amherstburg Regular Missionary Baptist Association, it played a crucial role in the development of Black communities and identity in Ontario. Through this organization, people of African descent could pursue their ambitions, develop their talents, and assume positions of leadership at a time when they were denied these opportunities elsewhere.

Amherstburg First Baptist Church was built under the leadership of its charismatic founding pastor Anthony Binga Sr., an escaped slave and abolitionist. Amherstburg was a primary receiving point for African Americans seeking freedom, due to its proximity to the United States border and the Detroit River’s relative narrowness at this spot. African Americans began to settle in Amherstburg in the 1820s, joining a previously established African-Canadian community. By the mid-1840s, the Black Baptist community at Amherstburg desired a formal, purpose-built church to house their activities. Years of fundraising, led by Anthony Binga Sr., preceded the church’s construction. The congregation participated in every aspect of the church’s construction, and they dedicated it on December 21, 1849.

Amherstburg First Baptist Church represents an early moment in the development of the Black Baptist religious experience in Ontario. For many of its original builders and users, this building was the first place in which they were able to congregate, worship, and express their values as Black Baptists, and to develop their traditions without hindrance. Closely linked with the church is the Amherstburg Regular Missionary Baptist Association, which was formed in 1841 in part as a response to widespread racism in the United States and Canada.

The church has a simple, compact, rectangular form, with a small front vestibule. It is known as an auditory church because its open, compact form allows congregants to hear the preacher, a key figure in Baptist practice, and to participate in the call-and-response rituals that characterize Black Baptist worship. Early additions to the church of specialized architectural features including the social hall behind the sanctuary. Beneath the white vinyl siding that currently covers the church exterior, the original wide plank siding of the 1849 building is preserved. Amherstburg First Baptist Church exhibits a clarity of plan, simplicity in massing and decoration, and modesty of scale typical of auditory churches built by Black settlers, as well as other Protestant groups in this period in what would become Ontario.

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