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Books by Joseph R. Washington, Jr.
The
Politics of God: The Future of the Black Churches (1967) /
Black Sects and Cults (1984)
Dilemmas of the New Black Middle Class (1980) /
Jews
in Black Perspectives (1989) /
Black Religion (2002) /
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There is something
tragically askew in the religious state of black Americans;
namely, the near-failure of qualitative development in
integrated and/or separate black middle-class churches and
denominations.
That same
near-future is of course evident in every mainstream Protestant
denomination, black or white, whether the criteria be lack of
growth or loss of adult membership, youth participation, trained
clergy, theologically alert laity, or commitment to black
ecumenism. But nowhere is this reality more poignant than among
black United Methodists. Not only did they shrink by 140,000
between 1940 and 1964, but their attrition from an estimated
385,000 since the 1968 decreed of “no more segregated
jurisdictions” has paralleled the demise of the segregated
Central Jurisdiction.
A Disquieting
Inertia
Since there is no
significant countervailing evidence in any integrated and/or
middle-class denomination, the lack of qualitative development
is the issue of moment – one that can no longer be avoided
without fatal consequences for the healthy growth of black
church life.
It is a multifaceted
issue laced with serious questions. Is the distinctive religion
of black Americans culture-bound? Is it limited to the lower
class and therefore alien to the middle class? Is it inherently
racial and consequently inimical to integration or to functional
interaction between self-accepting and other-regarding
ethnics?
That dynamism is not
the dominant pattern in middle-class black churches is a
virtually undisputed fact, empirically verifiable by any
unbiased investigator in most communities where middle-class
blacks practice religion. It is precisely because of its
pervasiveness that this inertia is so disquieting.
Owing largely to the
controversy over more exciting debaters’ points (i.e., What is
black religion, black theology, the black church? What is
uniquely black in religion or theology or the church?), this
alarming situation has been allowed quietly to fester. But,
however important and interesting such discussions may prove to
be – and after all, black Christian life can be interpreted in
a variety of ways of which none excludes the others – they
amount to little more than whistling in the dark apart from a
vibrant community of participants. What is important is that the
issue of lack of quality and quantity in middle-class black
religious life be rightly understood and addressed. Dealt with
in those terms, it is an issue of relevance to white and black
churches alike.
Black Students:
In Retreat from Religion
It may be that as
chairman of Afro-American studies and professor of religious
studies here at the University of Virginia, and as lecturer in
both fields on some 100 U.S. campuses, I have been made more
acutely aware than most of my fellow religionists to what must
be called a crisis in the black religious spirit. In any case,
in the past three years I have witnessed the emergence of a
strange phenomenon. Whether in the classrooms on this campus or
the lecture halls of other colleges, I have found that
surprising numbers of white students (who are nothing if not
middle class) are deeply interested in the study and application
of religion.
The University of
Virginia is but one of many institutions whose courses in
religion are attracting hundreds. For example, in 1968 the
faculty of the University of Virginia’s religious studies
department consisted of two full-time members; in 1974 there are
14. Concomitantly, the number of students majoring in religion
has mushroomed from a handful to over 200. However, only two of
these are black. At the University of Virginia as at other
universities, mainline religion, while admittedly one of the
black community’s most important institutions, holds the least
interest for black college students.
Indeed, almost
everywhere black college students are for the most part
compulsively antireligious. They do join gospel choirs and (like
their white peers) take part in fundamentalist movements, but
these involvements call for action, not for reflection. What is
worse, even such superficial concerns appeal to fewer and fewer.
The point at which the black students’ retreat from religion
will bottom out and start the upswing is not in sight.
The fact is that one
would be hard put to find a
strong, independent department of religion at any black
college. Generally, religion is dealt with in the
philosophy/religion department. This state of affairs speaks
volumes about religion among middle-class black students,
parents, alumni, professors and administrators. They all seem to
view religion as unamenable to research and serious inquiry.
Interesting as it
would be to explore the reasons why middle-class black and white
college students respond to religion in opposite ways, to do so
would lead us too far from the issue at hand. Let me say only
that the paucity of black students taking courses in religion
means that, if an when they decide on a church commitment, they
will find themselves at a great disadvantage. This sad situation
may have antiblack consequences. For the church, an institution
of great influence and potential strength, can be an instrument
of community.
The erosion of
middle-class church membership could be explained away as just
another indication that blacks are no different from whites. But
that would be to underestimate the crucial importance of
religion in the black community, to shake off black religion and
black theology, and to disregard the portent of antireligious
black youth and proreligious white youth.
Some argue that the
black middle-class churches’ loss of vitality is proof of the
failure of integration. They imply that at best a marginal
segment of the black religious population can be brought into
the wider church community, and that for each black successfully
integrated, ten or a dozen will be lost to nonintegrated
churches or, more often, to all churches. This line of argument
leads to the conclusion that the only institution capable of
appealing to the black masses is the black church independent of
white denominations.
Socialization
Centers
This is an argument
that may have merit, but it does violence to the facts. While
the black denominations do enjoy a large membership, their
churches for the most part are growing neither numerically not
theologically. Why. Because in truth they are middle-class
churches. They generally do not reach the masses of working
people and underprivileged families who comprise the vast
majority of the black population. Hence their only recourse is
to take the defensive by way of black ecumenism. This would be a
justifiable tactic if it could become operational. But
notwithstanding their rhetoric, black Baptists or Methodists –
who enjoy the largest following and are the most middle-class of
all black churches – have no incentive for uniting
intradenominationally, let alone interdenominationally. A real
black ecumenism, necessarily growing out of profound theological
conviction, would seek the economic, political, religious,
cultural, and social uplift of the great masses. Were there such
a black ecumenism the crisis would not be upon us.
It will not do to
blame middle-class churches for the crisis, to scold them for
having lost their roots and their evangelistic fervor, to say
that they have waxed too fat – too institutional,
professional, and formal. The trouble with this diagnosis is
that ever since reconstruction black middle-class churches have
neither intended nor pretended to be anything other than
socialization centers, where charitable activities crowded out
prophetic witness and community spirit (as the significant
exceptions make perfectly clear).
The influx of black
into the cities during World War II occasioned neither great
growth nor sharp decline in the black middle-class church.
Indeed, that church is a fixture, the quintessence of stability
and respectability. What is different today is that it is no
longer taken for granted as something to join. Up to the time of
the civil rights movement, becoming a church member was the
preferred way to gain identification and social status and to
forward political action. But the civil rights movement opened
up new avenues of opportunity for blacks. Hence fewer blacks of
middle age and even fewer under 30 feel drawn to the black
church as a place of belonging and comfort. In a functionally
open society where black culture is free to flourish, the church
has been edged out of the preferred status.
No wonder then that
the people who look to the church tend to be the least
imaginative, resourceful, intelligent, militant, and dynamic.
The black church continues to be the captive of the
tradition-ridden.
The case of the
mainline white churches is diametrically different. Their
decline is in part the result of their taking the faith
seriously by engaging in prophetic social action, thus making
the church pew and uncontrollable place for many who had once
found it easeful. Black middle-class churches, on the other
hand, have generally turned a deaf ear to calls to faithfulness.
More Style Than
Substance
A second reason for
the decline of the mainline white churches us related to the
first. Whites of the middle class (whether conservative
Lutherans and Presbyterians or liberal Episcopalians) seem to
“take to” theology, to such a degree that they will pay
attention even to extreme interpretations of the gospel. This
attitude accounts for the fact that of late many of them have
moved away from the mainline churches to fundamental groups. To
middle-class blacks, theology has been of less critical
importance. They do not see Pentecostal or other fundamentalist
groups as bastions of security or island of peace.
They are
actually ashamed of lower-class blacks who engage in mass
evangelism and media hustling. Indeed, they are apprehensive
lest through such activities they be pulled back down to the
level from which they so recently emerged. In short, it is not
sound theology or prophetic social action but decorum and
culture that black church members prize most highly. To them the
church is a place neither of challenge nor of change. Its
purpose is to keep alive a tradition for those who have arrived,
a place where form is more important than function and style
more revered than substance.
Events in the larger
society, such as the civil rights movement, affect the black
church only to the extent that they disturb its rhythm of
automatic infusion. Otherwise the black church is relatively
immune to social change. That is precisely what makes it
special, different from white churches. It is like a tree
planted by the waters: it will not be moved. And it is this
obstinacy that has been its strength, generation after
generation, and can be its strong suit in the future. But
presently it serves to foster indifference.
Too Middle Class?
Another explanation
of the failure of black middle-class religion is that it is too
middle class. This is a formidable argument. If the middle-class
churches are to grow, they must recruit new members from among
the mass of blacks, who, obviously, are lower-if not
under-class. But the churches seem unable to relate to the
masses. That point was brilliantly put in an address to 500
black United Methodists gathered at Atlanta in mid-December
1973. The distinguished speaker admonished his middle-class
audience concerning their attitude toward poor blacks:
You will work for
them but not with them. Your heart will bleed for them but not
your head or your hands. You will be their advocate but not
their friend. You will sponsor them in their cause, but their
cause is not your cause anymore . . . because you are
middle-class.
But this explanation
of the black religious crisis, while excellent so far as it
goes, ignores several difficulties:
First, there can be
no question but that black middle-class church people must
participate much more energetically in the struggle to secure
economic, political, and social justice for the masses. In so
doing, however, they will be increasing the pool of middle-class
blacks and decreasing the membership (at least relatively) of
middle-class black churches; for it is common knowledge that the
faster blacks become middle-class the faster they leave the
church.
Second, there is the
fact that lower-class blacks want to become middle-class and
middle-class blacks cannot become lower class. Yet, instead of
attempts to work through this dilemma, there is a sudden switch
to romanticizing the masses and damning the middle class, as if
to be both middle class and truly black contradicts black
reality. Thus the Atlanta speaker declared: “You [of the
middle class] will extol their folk religion as the authentic
experience of an authentic people, but it is not the religious
you prefer or know best.”
Third, inherent in
the diagnosis cited above is the assumption that the problem of
dynamism in black middle-class black church life is a problem of
class. But if that is the case, not only is there no difference
between blacks and whites but blacks must choose between race
and class. Class status undoubtedly involves knotty problems.
But to say that it is so determinative that the problem is not
people in their class but their class in people is to say that
people cannot prevail; and it follows that class must be done
away with and therefore the human. It follows further that apart
from the masses, there is nothing authentically black in
religion, theology or the church. The logical conclusion is that
blacks must work to keep the masses down, so that the masses can
continue to endure the suffering wherein alone genuine blackness
lies. Thus, black religion is bound to the poverty of black life
– the only real black culture. On this premise, to work for
social and economic justice and for religions and cultural
quality is to work for the end of black middle-class churches
and, eventually, of all black churches.
Religion as a
Means to Racial Advancement
No, it seems to me
that none of these several diagnoses of the crisis in black
middle-class religion gets at the underlying cause. That is to
be found in the meaning and function of religion in black life.
Black students are on the mark when they say that religion is
what black folk do when they are not able to do anything else.
For blacks, religion is a spiritual force to prime the pump of
survival, a means to the end of racial advancement, not an end
in itself. Experiential at best, ethical at most and ethnic in
the main, it is a survival tool that can be (and is) discarded
when the individual no longer feels the need of the emotional
reinforcement it can provide.
In a word, religion
for blacks has been sheerly pragmatic. It is one-dimensional,
however creative and powerful; a religion of the downtrodden,
the despised and rejected. When blacks are down and out, in
slavery, religion is freedom loving and creative (as in the
spirituals). But when slavery ends, the slave songs are cast
adrift from their creative source. (Today the spiritual is
primarily an art form.) Those who are on the upswing, who have
cut their racial moorings and learned to live by mind rather
than emotion can find a resting place neither in lower-class
religion, which offers only emotion, nor in middle-class
religion, which offers neither mind nor emotion.
Learning to Love
and Loving to Learn
The problem of
growth in black middle-class churches will not be solved by
their being emotional like the folk. (That dimension must be
included, but the folk can do it better.) What is needed is
knowledgeable laypeople and clergy. Thus, above all, the black
middle-class church must foster love of learning – something
altogether different from collecting certificates and degrees.
Loving to learn and learning to love are not in conflict, and
both are indispensable for the black church to be itself. The
black church is the black community’s only national
institution. It exists because the black community has called it
into being. It has but one task: to serve the needs of the black
community and its Lord. Being the instrument of the black
community and the touchstone of the black family, it must
conceive of religion as the life of learning to love and loving
to learn.
To this end each
black church can do three things: (1) acquire the techniques and
use its resources to build up in the homes of its members a
sense of the value of knowledge; (2) develop learning
opportunities in the church; (3) underwrite financially
first-class departments of religion in black colleges (or at
least in one such college). However, this third step will
improve black institutions of theological education only if the
love of learning (the condition for theology) prevails there and
in the family and the community, where the discipline of
learning to love (the work of theology) is regarded as the
ultimate joy.
The church can
enrich its community action program, increase its social
activities, make its worship more appealing; but if it does not
foster learning in concrete ways, its decline is assured. There
is not other way to be and do its truth.
An emphasis on
learning is the only means of securing leadership and followers
among youth in numbers sufficient to reverse the present trend.
It is not a short-term solution. Nothing can be done immediately
by wishful thinking or assessing blame, Inculcation of love of
learning is a long haul, one that only the black community can
mange for itself. And in the process, the idea that religion is
simply pragmatic, or a spiritual sop for the down-and-out who
cannot think for themselves, will give way to the understanding
of religion as the truth of imagination.
Knowledge or the
love of learning is not the only power, it is the ultimate power
in religion as in every other dimension. Critical knowledge of
world religion and church history, thorough study of theology
and the Bible, and, finally, rigorous thinking are minimal but
essential means to keep a church alive and therefore respected.
Such a church will be irresistible to rebellious youth and
confused adults.
Let me repeat: the
love of learning will not in itself ensure the growth of a black
middle-class church, but without it in the equation there will
be no healthy black middle-class church.
This is what the
black church has to learn for itself. The love of learning has
not been tried and found wanting; it has not been tried.
Consequently, learning to love (theology) has yet to be tried.
When that lesson comes home, nothing else of religious
significance will matter any less, but learning to love will
matter more.
Source: The Christian Century (1 May 1974) |
