Foundations of the black church

African-American religion is a unique combination of worship, cultural
connection and activism

By Bruce T. Murray
Web Sage Editor

Rugged congregationalism

The American ideology of “rugged individualism” – whether in myth or reality – is not operative in the same way for African-Americans, especially when it comes to religion.

“The general understanding of self and community exists at a different level for African-Americans,” said Michael Dash,
associate professor of ministry and context at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.

“African-American heritage reflects a concept of community, 'village,' relationship to one another and support for one another, which became the foundation for African-American religiosity. The historical circumstances and conditions reinforced the ways in which African-Americans communicate, relate to themselves and support their sense of relationship among others,” Dash said.

Dash, along with Christine Chapman, co-authored of The Shape of Zion: Leadership and Life in Black Churches, which interprets data from Faith Factor Project 2000, a survey of African-American churches, coordinated by the Interdenominational Theological Center.

Confirming Dash's assertions, the survey shows black churches are strongly involved in addressing social needs, such as assistance to families, youth programs, food distribution and other outreach services.

“When it comes to willingness to help and reach out, historically black churches rate more highly than all other faith groups,” Dash said. “African-American congregations exist for the community more than others. They are always beyond the four walls of the church, rather than existing for the congregation itself.” (See a summary of the data here.)

Elements of African-American religion

Africans who came to America strongly identified with Biblical themes, such as the suffering of the innocent – as embodied by Jesus' crucifixion – and the stories of Exodus, and Job. The importance of religion in the lives of African-Americans remains strong today.

According to a 1999 survey by George Gallup and D. Michael Lindsay, more than 80 percent of black Americans regard religion and faith as very important to their personal lives. The seven largest historically black congregations count about 17 million people in their membership.

“An elemental bond of group identity is belonging to a religious community,” Dash and Chapman wrote. “The black church has no challenger as the cultural womb of the black community: Not only did it give birth to new institutions such as schools, banks and insurance companies, but it also provided an academy and an arena for political activities, while nurturing young talent for musical, dramatic and artistic development.

“Black Christianity has been a source, the primary consistent source, for African-American culture. Black Christianity has contributed several indispensable elements to the black struggle: First, as an indigenous institution, it supplied an organizational framework that assisted the masses to consolidate their finances, integrate ideas, and unify behind their leaders. Second, the black church gave the civil rights movement strategic and philosophical direction through leadership and support.”

Survival, liberation and the new crisis

Scholars C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya characterize the history of the black church according to two traditions: the “survival” tradition and the “liberation” tradition.

As the only stable and coherent institution to emerge from slavery, black churches became the womb of black culture as well as a number of major social institutions, Lincoln and Mamiya wrote in The Black Church in the African American Experience. (Duke University Press, 1990)

In the parlance of planning and zoning, black churches are “multiple-use.” According to Dash and Chapman, “Social conditions placed a special burden on black churches: They had to be social centers, political forums, school houses, mutual aid societies, refuges from racism and violence and places of worship.”

During the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and 1960s, black churches were at the focal point. “The black church, on becoming the church of protest, contributed two essential elements to the African-American struggle: First, it supplied an organizational framework for the emerging protest movement; second, the church gave the movement strategic and philosophical direction through the teachings of Martin Luther King,” Dash and Chapman wrote.

According to King's teachings, the civil rights protesters were morally obligated to disobey unjust laws through nonviolent resistance, the authors wrote. Since the 1960s, many of the following generations of children who benefited from the gains made during the civil rights era have entered the economic and political mainstream. But others remain painfully behind.

“As well-prepared blacks entered the ranks of the upwardly mobile middle class, they left urban areas to live in surrounding residential neighborhoods. The inner city was abandoned to its African American underclass. The poorly educated, unskilled urban masses were left trapped in jobless inner cities,” Dash and Chapman wrote.

This situation produced a “duel crisis” – a class crisis and an urban crisis – that threatens to undermine the viability of the black church as an institution, the authors wrote.

The class distinctions in the larger society are paralleled in churches, resulting in “middle class” churches in the suburbs and urban class churches in the poor inner cities, said R. Drew Smith, director of the Public Influences of African-American Churches at Morehouse College.

“The class divisions within our nation and within our religious life is huge,” Smith said. “Most congregations in this country are middle class in fact or in orientation. Their values are essentially middle class.

“In the era of segregation, a range of social classes were thrown together in the same schools and neighborhoods. Middle class professionals and the poor were right there in the same place. That is no longer the case. You have spatial separation between the classes is much more stark than before. The social isolation of the poor in the United States is much more severe than ever before,“ Smith said.

“The challenge is, how do congregations with middle class orientations find out ways to reach out and minister and growing numbers of the poor inhabiting our cities?”

Preaching, storytelling and music

Among the most distinct features of African-American worship are the preaching and the music. Both practices are connected to the rich African tradition of storytelling, which found its place in America in black churches.

“Storytelling is a treasured art within African-American culture,” Dash and Chapman wrote. “In the early African-American church, black Christians had little concern for adherence to denominational polity, recitation of creeds or following of predetermined liturgical action. From the African taproot, the early shapers of black folk religion forged a Christian worldview or 'sacred cosmos,' that permeates all of life. Music, song and storytelling became the major means of shaping, documenting and distributing folk theology.”

Black preaching as storytelling became a natural focus of religious worship. “The black preacher is fundamentally a storyteller,” Dash and Chapman wrote. “Good black preaching is the skillful use of language to make the story come alive as the preacher uses a range of figures of speech to communicate ideas, thoughts and feelings about relationship with the Supreme Being and the God who is present with the congregation.

“An important and observable feature of black preaching is the two kinds of simultaneous interrelationships going on: the interaction between the preacher and the Spirit, and the interaction between the preacher and the hearer – the pulpit and the pew. These interrelationships are demonstrated as an antiphonal attribute of 'call and response' so characteristic of black worship.”

Black spiritual songs emerged from the storytelling tradition. “In the slave period, the 'sorrow' songs were forged out of the crucible of pain and suffering,” Dash and Chapman wrote. “For the slave ancestors, those songs were affirmations of God, sustaining a people in spite of the brutality and dehumanization that they experienced. Spirituals tell the story of the African-American struggles, pains and triumphs. They are moving testimony of 'how we got over.'”

Music of all kinds remains an important element of most African-American religious services. According to the ITC survey, 52 percent of the respondents said spirituals are always included in services. Baptist churches, the Church of God in Christ, and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church place a particular emphasis on music.

Ongoing issues

• Women in leadership – The issue most divergent by denomination is the issue of women in the clergy, Dash said. Overall, 40 percent of the clergy in the ITC survey approve of women as pastors, while only 20 percent of Baptists and 23 percent of the Church of God in Christ approve.
  The survey also found that the higher a clergy member's education, the more likely he is to approve of women in pastoral leadership.
  “Resistance to women in pastoral roles is an ingrained tradition that has persisted in some patriarchal elements that do not free them to deal with this,” Dash said.
  In 2000, the African Methodist Episcopal Church elected its first female Bishop, Vashti McKenzie.
  “The assignment of Bishop McKenzie to chair of the bishop's council is a move that is long in coming and also has significant political implications,” Dash said.
  
  
• Homosexuality and same-sex marriage – “Congregations need to discover ways to talk about homosexuality in congregational life in such a way that helps members affirm this reality and affirm others,” Dash said. “Some denominations are willing to deal with in creative ways and others are not. Part of the issue is an unwillingness to explore the connection between one's sexuality and one's commitment to God. People don't want to talk about it.”
  Black churches in Africa, particularly the Episcopal church, have strongly opposed allowing homosexuality in the clergy.
  “It's an ironic situation in which the colonized churches are now turning on the colonizers and saying, 'you are violating what you taught us,'” Dash said.
  
  
• Growth in Pentecostal denominations – “Globally, this phenomena is taking off like wildfire,” Smith said. “People are looking for something powerful and profound. The Pentecostal and Charismatic denominations offer a very vibrant and rich focus on spirituality that focuses on the supernatural experience in worship life – speaking in tongues and being taken over by the spirit. These supernatural, mystical and transcendent qualities give a sense of something extraordinary.
  “The supernatural dimension of spirit, which is very much at the center of the Pentecostal religious experience, is not as present in some of the 'modernized' and 'modernizing' African-American denominations. The more educated, literary and intellectual religion is viewed as a kind of watered down approach. It's seen as a secularized religion. Religion has tried to come to terms with secular society in ways that loses its following in the view of people looking for something more powerful,” Smith said.
  Dash said black Pentecostal churches tend not to be involved in the social and political milieu in the way of other African-American churches. Their theology and orientation represents religion as refuge, or religion as transcendence.
  
  
• Black churches and the Nation of Islam – “There is a strong level of cooperation between Christian and non-Christian groups in the African-American community,” Smith said. “You do not have the tension between black Christians and Muslims or Black Hebrews that you have outside the African-American community. African-American churches are less rigid on matters of doctrine and religious principle. This is not to say they don't have convictions along very specific lines; but in most instances, you're not going to get into a slugfest over doctrine in African-American churches.”
  Although many black Christians support the Nation of Islam and its controversial leader, Louis Farrakhan, they do so selectively, Smith said.
  “The vast majority of African Americans groan about some of Farrakhan's racial theories and statements about the Jewish community. Where they embrace Farrakhan is his outspokenness on black suffering, the black struggle, being independent and self-determined. They rally around him on those sorts of things, and overlook the glaring problems,” Smith said.
  
  
• Suburbanization of black congregational life – A result of out-migration of many African-Americans to the suburbs. The local congregations that remain in city oftentimes have trouble meeting the needs of the community.
  In other cases, members of a congregation gradually move to the suburbs, while the church remains in the inner city. Church members commuting back to the inner-city oftentimes feel no relation to community, Dash said.
  
  
• Aging leadership – “Like the Roman Catholic Church, African-American churches have an aging leadership and a shortage of resupply, so there has to be a vigorous response,” Dash said.
  In many cases, people leave their other professions later in life to join the clergy. “Oftentimes, people make a professional commitment to the clergy later than other professions,” Dash said.
  
  
• Aging congregations – “African-American congregations have lot people at retirement level but not lot of young people coming in. They have been losing young people by permitting them to go their own way rather than building relationships between generations and affirming that we are one community and one village,” Dash said.
  
  
• Assimilating new members – “This is an important action item for many churches. People cycle in and cycle out. This is related to how well the congregation responds to the needs of people who come to the congregation looking for a place to belong and spend their time and energy,” Dash said.
  
  
• Church finances – 64 percent of the churches in the ITC survey reported to be in “good financial health”; 33 percent said finances were “tight,” and 3 percent reported financial difficulties.
  
  
• Church size – More than half of the churches in the ITC survey had fewer than 100 regularly participating adult members, which presents problems in recruiting and paying qualified ministers.

Data

Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) survey asked church leaders more than 200 questions covering six broad areas, including worship patterns, content of sermons, community service, sources of conflict, financial health, and demographic statistics.

The study received 1,863 responses from pastors, assistant pastors and lay leaders at the following historically black denominations:

• African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME)
• Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME)
• African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ)
• Church of God in Christ
• African-American Baptist churches
• African-American Presbyterian churches
• African-American Methodist churches

Church leaders reported that they are involved in the following activities:

• 92 percent of the churches sponsored youth programs.
• 86 percent provided assistance to families in need.
• 75 percent ran food pantries or soup kitchens.
• 76 percent conducted voter registration.

Pastors reported that the content of their sermons always focused on the following:

• God's love and care – 83 percent
• Personal spiritual growth – 74 percent
• Practical advice for daily living – 66 percent
• Social justice – 26 percent
• References to racial situations in society – 17 percent
• References to black liberation theology or womanist theology – 12 percent

“While most religious traditions emphasize the importance of community as the place where God is worshiped, within African-American life, one of the strongest forces is a deep sense of relatedness,” Dash and Chapman wrote in The Shape of Zion. “Religion, understood as being one with life, is not an isolated part of the community's life, but permeates every facet of the community's existence.”

This philosophy often translates into social action: 55 percent of the church leaders surveyed said they approve of clergy taking part in protests and marches on civil rights issues.

Resources

African-American Religious Experience
Includes links to the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society

Faith Communities Today
See "elements of worship" (page 42) and
congregational activities (page 45).

The Hartford Institute for Religion Research