Andrew Bryan - Founder First African Baptist Church

Andrew Bryan - Evangelized into Baptism Illegally by Master Johnathon Bryan

Christians did not have total religious freedom in the British colonies. Planters who were eager to spread the word of the Bible and the Lord were stymied by legal proscriptions against converting or preaching to slaves.

For some people, what they know to be right is more important that what is legal. Slavemaster Johnathon Bryan and his brothers were, not perfect by modern vision -- no slavemaster could be. At the same time the Bryans were arrested for slave preaching.

Arrests did not stop them from effecting a change on slave Andrew Bryan. Andrew Bryan was born into slavery in 1737 near Charleston, South Carolina. A bit late in life, in 1782, Bryan was truly converted to Baptism by the itinerant black Baptist preacher George Liele. Liele had official license to preach to slaves along the Savannah River, and Bryan remained behind with the remaining parishoners when Liele and other left with the British in later 1782.

Although Bryan built a small shack and attracted a congregation of many hundreds, 350 of them who were allowed to be baptized by their masters. The un-Christian masters reacted more to the pragmatic fear of slave uprisings than a Christian love for all souls.

Once a slave learned to be a true Christian, he learned about freedom. Although religions are more often cast in negative light by modern educators, there is a large element of freedom in Christianity, no matter how badly church leaders have behaved over the centuries. The slaves who truly understood the Christian freedom, they were no longer happy to be enslaved.

Bryan was able to purchase his freedom upon his master's death. By this time he had become an officially ordained Baptist. His church was officially recognized in 1788.

In 1794, Bryan built the Bryan Street African Baptist Church. It was the first African Baptist church in Georgia and the first Baptist church in the coastal area of Georgia where Savannah is. Andrew Bryan died in 1812 - though he had gained his freedom and become a property owner, his daughter had been born into slavery and continued to live in slavery.