The Black Church: Three Views

excerpts from Time essay (April 6, 1970) 

For most of white America, the black church is an alien segment of the nation's culture, hidden behind the plain facades of large brick churches, the rude clapboard of country chapels, the salvation-emblazoned windows of tattered storefronts.

It is a montage of impressions, some real, some misleading the low-moaning spirituals, the clapping and the shouted amens; the phenomenon of a father Divine and the curious charisma once possessed the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell; the prophetic, nation-shaking philosophy of a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the pragmatic, neighborhood-building politics of a Rev. Jesse Jackson. There are almost 16 million black Christians in the U.S., and by far the majority find their faith and spiritual comfort in churches and denominations of their own making. These churches were the first black institutions in the nation: they are still, by every measure, the largest.

Today they reflect the struggle of U.S. blacks for their rightful place in society, and the leaders of those churches differ widely in the role they see for the Black Christian in this struggle. But whether radical, conservative or moderately liberal, they generally agree that the black church holds a unique place in American society.

The Conservative View Reverend Joseph Jackson, pastor of Olivet Baptist Church on Chicago's South Side and perennial president of the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. (He claims 6,000,000 members.) Jackson bitterly opposed martin luther King's civil disobedience campaign, and has so vigorously quashed liberal opposition within his denomination that half a million members left in 1961 to form the progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc. He was one of the few black leaders to endorse Richard Nixon (with little effect) in the last election; outspokenly dedicated to "law and order" he won the "Patriot of the Year" award from the Ultra-Right winger Bill James Hargis in 1968

Though he is broadminded in some areas of theology (he is a graduate of liberal Colgate Rochester Divinity School), Jackson has a view of the Negro recalling the old-fashioned suffering servant image from Isaiah. Christianity, he argues, permits protest against unjust laws but not rebellion against civil order. "The difference between Negro Christian and white Christian," says Jackson, "is the meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ. our forefathers were cross-bearers. They believed in it. You can't build a great church preaching hate, envy, and revenge, and sending the people out on the street after the sermon mad at the world. No matter how nonviolent, civil disobedience lays the ground for civil hatred and the desire to destroy. They took from the civil rights struggle the religious faith that went with it."

The Militant View Calvin Marshall, pastor Varick memorial Church, Bedford-Stuyvesant, whose congregation basically middle class, is chairman of the Black Economic development Conference. Its field director, James Forman, stunned U.S. churches and synagogues last year with a Black manifesto demanding "reparations" of $500 million for the years of suffering that blacks endured at white hands, and the years of neglect by white churches.

At 37, the strapping, bearded 6-ft. Marshall is a magisterial figure in the pulpit. On his clerical robes, he wears the cross-in-the-hand button of the National Committee of Black Churchmen and the black, red and green "liberation" colors--which are evident elsewhere in the church: on a prayerbook, on the altar, and on the wall.

"We need the church to be a spiritual organism where the Spirit of God goes out into the broader community and reorders and restructures that community. That's what Jesus wants, that's what the Gospel is all about."

 

The Liberal View Samuel L. Williams, pastor of the 650-member Friendship Baptist Church and chairman of Atlanta's Human Relations Committee, is academic dean at Morehouse College in Atlanta. he is a minister in the progressive National Baptist Convention, which split from Jackson's group. Williams, like his former pupil, Martin Luther King, espouses a basic integrationist philosophy. "The Judaeo-Christian teaching is simple on the unity of mankind. Those in the black movement who are moving toward separation are wrong.

"We have been criticizing the white Protestant for separation. If they were wrong, I don't see how the black militants can be right. What sense does it make in the last quarter of the 20th century for a person to get in a corner all by himself?"

"White America would rather see this nation destroyed than give up white racism. the worst institution in America today is the white church. It has more hypocrisy per square inch than any other. And no impression I have received in the past five years has made any difference."

posted 2/28/03