I have new work coming soon. Thank you for your patience. Until then here is an essay my friends at The Heidelblog graciously published a few months back. Note: in the essay I say I *was* in the black church. I have since returned. I’ll tell you about it later
I don’t blame you if, when you think of the black church, you think of it as an emaciated and anemic institution. It would be an easy intellection to hold especially when an entire book can be written about the state of black America (by people who would consider themselves allies of the black church) and the black church barely garners throwaway lines. But I met Jesus in a black church and that makes it an important and living organization, not only for me, but for millions.
I’ve written on this site about becoming a Presbyterian. Long before then I was baptized in the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church at a young age.
I was baptized again when my mom joined a Baptist church. I was eight. Pastor Montgomery insisted I had to be dunked since the Methodists only poured water on my head. I was nervous because I couldn’t swim and I was not sure how long Pastor Montgomery was going to keep me under the water. He also appeared to me to be about 100 years old so I thought there was a chance he would be too weak to bring me up or forget to bring me out of the water. I was so anxious I forgot to take off my socks before I stepped into the baptismal pool. After the successful completion of the operation, I changed back into my church clothes and scampered to my seat in the pew holding my saturated, black dress socks. I will never forget the look on my mother’s face as she shook her head at me.
That anecdote sums up my experience in the black church. Every story I could tell you would contain those elements. Hearing about Jesus. Leaders caring about my spiritual formation. Loving people who were patient in the face of my ignorance, blindness, immaturity, and fear. The names and churches would change but the underlying themes would not. That is why the periodic fulminations I hear about What’s Wrong With the Black Church and its literary cousin, Black Christians Need to Do Better don’t hold interest for me.
I was a member of a black church until I was 28 years old (I’m 54 now). The confidence I have in Christ is rooted in what I learned in black churches. The moral certainty I had to say “no” to certain avenues offered to me in the Los Angeles county drug wars of the 1980s came from the black church. The fact that I’m writing this as a middle-class father without a criminal record is down to the expectations and guardrails set out for me in the black church.
Yes, I have heard wayward teaching and overtly racialized and politicized messages in black churches. Yes, many black churches are in thrall to the prosperity gospel. And, yes, there have been many cases of offerings being redirected for personal gain. I have to tell you as I have journeyed across the nation, across denominations, and across theologies that those problems are not localized to only the black church. No one is going to get me onside in doomcasting the black church but I understand the concerns.
I just take a longer and more personal view. Let me tell you why
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