Article
Black theology has apparently been dialoguing with everyone except “Aunt Jane” and the black preacher. Few ministers and laypeople laboring in the trenches are aware of black theology, and those who are remain somewhat indifferent to its teachings. Ironically, while black theology theoretically relies heavily upon expressions of the people, such as freedom and sorrow …
Continue reading “Practicing Liberation in the Black Church”
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In this age of integration and ecumenism, one hears a great deal of talk about black and white churches’ "getting together." But before black churches and black Christians allow themselves to be carried away by the idea that they are called to usher in a golden age of reconciliation in the church, they should examine …
Article
The roots of black preachers’ prerogative and power are in the soils of African religion and American racism. The African reality of a wholistic as opposed to a secular and a sacred life, the place of the black church as sole as well as “soul” refuge during slavery, and the gift of oratory made the …
Continue reading “The Activism of Interpretation: Black Pastors and Public Life”
Article
As Bishop John Hurst Adams of the African Methodist Episcopal Church observed recently, black churches are operating essentially on the agenda given to them by their founders. The first agenda of early black American congregations and then of emergent denominations included (1) the proclamation of the gospel, (2) benevolences, (3) education and, by the mid-19th …
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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-failure 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 …
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The publication of Thomas Sowell’s Race and Economics in 1975 marked the rise of an aggressive and widely visible black conservative assault on the traditional liberal leadership of blacks in the United States. The promotion of conservative ideas is not new in Afro-American history. George S. Schuyler, for example, published a witty and acerbic column …
