The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 23 (2012)

The Sociopolitical Role of the Black Church
in Post–Civil Rights Era America

Makoto KUROSAKI*

INTRODUCTION“The Black Church Is Dead.” This provocative headline appeared in
the Hufﬁngton Post on February 24, 2010.1 The author of the essay that
followed was Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a professor of religion at Princeton
University and author and co-editor of several inﬂuential books in theﬁeld of African American religious history. In his brief “online” essay,
Glaude made the point that “the idea of this venerable institution as central to black life and as a repository for the social and moral conscienceof the nation has all but disappeared.” He went on to say that the standard view that prophetic energies were an inherent part of black churches
was a myth and the reality was that “all too often black churches andthose who pastor them have been and continue to be quite conservative”
on sociopolitical issues. What is behind his argument was his deep apprehension that the prophetic tradition of the Black Church was waning.2
Glaude lamented that “rare are those occasions when black churches
mobilize in public and together to call attention to the pressing issues ofour day. . . . Where are the press conferences and impassioned efforts
around black children living in poverty, and commercials and organizing around jobs and healthcare reform?” His ending, however, was a call
*Associate Professor, Kanda University of International Studies

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for the resurrection of the Black Church: “Black churches and preachers must ﬁnd their prophetic voices in this momentous present.”
Glaude’s obituary for the Black Church, or otherwise his jeremiad,
ignited intense debate. Within two weeks, a panel of leading scholars ofAfrican American religion published their comments and reﬂections on
the Religion Dispatches website.3 Other interpreters of the Black Church
responded on different websites. Some sharply criticized the headline as“deceptive,” others assailed his very right to criticize on the ground that
he was raised a Roman Catholic and was outside the family of the historic Black Church. Still others, however, gave him credit for stirring
discussion. This resulted in a roundtable discussion on October 21, 2010,
sponsored by the Institute for Research in African American Studies atColumbia University, in which prominent scholars and clergy, including
Glaude himself, engaged in serious discussion about the future of theBlack Church in America.4
As provocative as the headline was, the debate over the nature of theBlack Church is not new. Since W. E. B. Du Bois pointed out the centrality of the Black Church in the African American community at the
beginning of the twentieth century, the study of the Black Church has
been largely centered on one deﬁning question: Does the Black Church
encourage or discourage sociopolitical activism among African Americans?
Scholars of the ﬁrst half of the twentieth century such as Benjamin E.
Mays, Joseph W. Nicolson, Gunnar Myrdal, and Franklin E. Fraziertended to characterize black churches of the time as priestly, otherworldly, and accommodative.5 In contrast, scholars of the 1960s and ‘70s
such as Hart M. Nelsen and Anne Kusener Nelsen, James H. Cone, andVincent Harding, inspired by black churches’ social activism as exempliﬁed by Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, illuminated the prophetic, this-worldly, and resistant tradition of the Black
Church.6 Other scholars such as Gayraud S. Wilmore observed that theBlack Church had been simultaneously “the most reactionary” and “themost radical” institution.7 In 1990, a more comprehensive analytical perspective was offered by C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, whoemphasized the necessity to comprehend black churches as being
involved “in a dynamic series of dialectical tensions” between polarities
such as priestly versus prophetic, other-worldly versus this-worldly, andaccommodative versus resistant.8
The magnitude of controversy that Glaude’s essay stirred is a sure indication that the role of the Black Church in contemporary America needs

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to be examined. Indeed, since the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights
Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, there have been tremendous socialchanges in the African American community. The end of legalized racism has opened the possibility for African Americans to reach unprecedented levels of access to mainstream politics. On the other hand, it has
produced polarization between the black middle class and the black poor.
The post–civil rights era has also witnessed the rise of movements addressing other sociopolitical issues such as women’s rights and homosexuals’ rights. In short, the Black Church in the post–civil rights era has
increasingly come under pressure as to whether it can effectively address
the issues of class, gender, and sexuality as well as race.
Compared to a substantial number of studies on the activism of theBlack Church during the civil rights movement, studies on the role of
the Black Church in the post–civil rights era have been limited, althoughcase studies have been increasing in number. Lincoln and Mamiya’s
nationwide survey of 2,150 black churches, The Black Church in the
African American Experience (1990), still stands as the most valuable
source for understanding the contemporary Black Church. Another important source is the collection of essays based on the nationwide surveyof 1,956 black churches conducted by faculty members at Morehouse
College, which resulted in the two-volume report New Day Begun (2003)
and Long March Ahead (2004).9 In addition to these two sociologicalstudies, Anthony B. Pinn’s social analysis with ethnographic information, The Black Church in the Post–Civil Rights Era (2002),10 serves as
another important source for an overview of sociopolitical issues surrounding the contemporary Black Church. It is expected that these studies will be complemented by other studies that include more historical,
political, and theological perspectives.
In this article I explore the contours of the sociopolitical role of theBlack Church in the post–civil rights era. Keeping Lincoln and Mamiya’s
dialectical model in mind, special attention is given to three aspects ofthe contemporary Black Church. The ﬁrst section examines factors thathave contributed to the overall decline in social activism in the post–civilrights era. The second section observes contemporary issues of genderand sexuality. The third section discusses the relationship between theBlack Church and unchurched black youth in inner cities.

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I.
A.

THE BLACK CHURCH AND ITS SOCIOPOLITICAL LEADERSHIP

Sociopolitical Concerns of the Black Church

Compared to the Black Church involvement in the civil rights movement, it is generally accepted that the activism of the Black Church insociopolitical issues since the 1960s has declined. Although this assessment is generally correct, it is not always understood why this should be
so. One explanation could be that the Black Church has lost interest insociopolitical issues. This explanation has some validity given that a new
theological trend known as “the prosperity gospel” has become increasingly inﬂuential in black churches. At present, however, a lack of interest
cannot be considered to be the leading cause of the decline of sociopolitical activism in the Black Church, since other surveys show just the
opposite result. Lincoln and Mamiya wrote in 1990:
A general conclusion that can be drawn from the results of several surveys
over a twenty-year period is that there is a broad support and consensus in
the black community, both within and without the churches, among clergy
and laity, for a social prophecy role for black churches. The attitude is pervasive that the churches should be involved in and express their views on
everyday social and political issues.11

The general trend has continued up to the present. According to the Pew
Research Center Landscape Survey, conducted in 2007, six out of ten
African Americans (61%) said that “houses of worship should express
their views on social and political matters.” The percentage was higher
than that of whites, among whom 45 percent responded the same way.12
In connection with the general trend, it is equally important to identify
the types of issues that black churches have regarded as important. The
nationwide survey by faculty members at Morehouse College (2004)
reveals that black churches have given priority to racial justice issues(civil rights, afﬁrmative action, and criminal justice) and socioeconomic
development issues (including public welfare and public education), bothconsidered to be the continuation of what the civil rights movement
addressed. The survey also shows that relatively less attention has been
paid to the issue of women’s rights.13 The implications derived from thesurvey are that black churches still have a potential to be mobilized aroundthe cause of racial justice as well as socioeconomic development issues
but that they have less potential to be mobilized around gender issues.

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267

Decline of Black Church LeadershipIf the Black Church’s lack of interest in these issues is not the leading
cause of declining involvement, what factors have diminished the social
activism of the Black Church in the post–civil rights era? Based on thestudies I have mentioned, three equally important factors can be pointed
out. First, as R. Drew Smith argues, is “the lack of consensus since thecivil rights movement about an African American public policy agenda.”14
During the civil rights movement, a broad consensus at the national level
existed as to a civil rights agenda: obtaining legal equality. In contrast,
the sociopolitical issues that the contemporary African American community is facing have diversiﬁed and fragmented into such issues as education, housing, jobs, crime, women’s rights, and homosexual rights.
Consequently, social activism has increasingly become locally oriented,
focusing on speciﬁc issues that local communities are facing. With thisshift, the social activism of the Black Church has also become locallytied to speciﬁc issues, which have contributed to the invisibility of theBlack Church leadership at the national level.
Second, as Allison Calhoun-Brown explains, the decreased activism
is related to lower church attendance on the part of African Americans
since the 1960s.15 An article by Andres Tapia in 1996 reported that
whereas a generation ago as many as 80 percent of blacks went to church,that ﬁgure was currently as low as 40 percent.16 Although this ﬁgure may
be too low, it still captures the general trend. The Pew Research Survey
in 2007 reported that the percentage of African Americans who went tochurch at least once a week was 53 percent.17
However, pointing out lower church attendance is not enough. According to Anthony B. Pinn, a more accurate picture of church attendance
since the 1970s includes both the surge in membership on the part of theblack middle class and, at the same time, the decline in membership on
the part of poor blacks, especially male youth.18 For the black middle
class, who have successfully entered mainstream society but have beenplaced in a position where they need to work and compete with whites,
the Black Church has been a stabilizing force, enabling them to conﬁrm
their roots and maintain their self-identity as “black.” Since the black
middle class has overcome poverty and come to live in the suburbs with
better education, housing, jobs, and health care, many no longer havepressing sociopolitical issues. Consequently, they have tended to expect
black churches to be spiritual sanctuaries rather than agents for social

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change. In contrast, in the eyes of poor blacks, especially inner-city maleyouth, black churches have become irrelevant for addressing the social
conditions surrounding them. The irony is that the unchurched havecome disproportionately from these people, while the social conditionsof inner cities have been precisely the issues that the contemporary Black
Church should address. The simultaneous process of surge and decline
in church attendance, the former for the black middle class and the latter for poor blacks, has contributed to the diminishment of the Black
Church’s capacity to provide effective leadership on sociopolitical issues.
Third, as scholars say, the Black Church no longer is “the only” or“the most important” social institution in the African American community.19 We should remember that the active involvement of black
churches in the civil rights movement came about because so many otherchannels of activity outside the church were closed, especially in theSouth. The end of legalized racism, however, dramatically expanded theparticipation of African Americans in politics. For example, whereas thenumber of black elected ofﬁcials was approximately one hundred in
1965, the number in 2002 was more than nine thousand.20 This has enabled African Americans to address their grievances through the politicalprocess. As Smith explains, the prevailing tactical paradigm within black
politics has also shifted from direct-action protest in the 1960s to electoral politics since then.21 Moreover, the number of black advocacy organizations at national, state, and local levels has dramatically increased
since the 1960s. They have provided African Americans with yet anotherchannel through which they can address sociopolitical issues. Therefore,
it could be said that the rise of black politicians and of black advocacy
organizations has undermined the traditional Black Church hegemonyin sociopolitical affairs.
The overall decline of the Black Church’s sociopolitical leadership,
however, does not mean that black churches have ceased to play any rolein sociopolitical affairs. It can be said that black churches and black
politicians complement each other in that the black churches are able toposition themselves outside the circle of the mainstream political system
to address issues that mainstream politics, which is oriented to the middle
class, tends to overlook, such as poverty, HIV/AIDS, education, shelter,
food, and crime prevention. In a similar way, black churches and black
advocacy organizations complement each other in that black churches
collaborate with the organizations and make an impact on policymakers.

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According to Pinn, many regional councils across denominational lines
and many local churches are working to address some of the health-care
problems facing African Americans.22 On the other hand, another survey suggests that only a small minority of black churches appear to havebeen decidedly active in these sociopolitical matters.23 Moreover, on thenational level, advocacy organizations such as the Congress of National
Black Churches, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition led by Jesse Jackson, andthe National Action Network led by Al Sharpton are all supported by
activist black clergy. On the other hand, the passivity of black clergy has
been also documented. Smith draws a conclusion from his survey that it
seems that “only a small minority of African American churches can beconsidered as extensively involved with activist organizations.”24 Theseseemingly contradictory survey results suggest that contemporary black
churches are involved in a constant series of dialectical tensions overtheir sociopolitical leadership.
II.
A.

THE BLACK CHURCH AND ISSUES OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY
Sexism in the Black Church

Sexism has emerged as a new challenge for the contemporary Black
Church to overcome. An especially controversial issue is the full ordination of women as clergy. Just as with Christian churches in general,
the Black Church has traditionally assumed the pulpit as “men’s space”
and the pew as “women’s place.”25 While black women have made up
about 66–80 percent of the Black Church membership, it is estimated asof 2005 that approximately 12 percent of ordained clergy are women.26
Obviously, women have performed various roles in the Black Church asevangelists, missionaries, deaconesses, Sunday school teachers, musicians, choir members and directors, ushers, recreation leaders, and thelike. Women have occasionally had opportunities to preach, although ina nonordained status. However, ordained status is required if one wants
to exercise other pastoral functions such as performing the sacraments.
Why has the Black Church been hesitant about women’s ordination?
First, the historical context needs to be considered. As Kelly Brown
Douglas and Ronald E. Hopson point out, “the black church provides aprotected space for black men to enjoy the patriarchal privileges of maleness, which are denied to them in a white patriarchal society.”27 Indeed,becoming a clergyman was historically a primary route for black males

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to enjoy “manhood.” Slavery deprived black males of opportunities toparticipate in politics and to become the mainstay of a family, both ofwhich were traits associated with “manhood” in the mainstream whiteculture. Under slavery, slave preachers were recognized as having attained the highest advancement in life and were the most respected persons within slave communities. After emancipation, the Black Church
was the primary and, in many cases, the only black social institution inboth the North and the South. Power and authority inevitably wereassumed by clergymen. In both Northern and Southern cities where black
churches were owned and controlled by African Americans, black clergy
were economically independent from white power structures. As a result,they could position themselves to exercise middle-class values.
Second, hesitancy concerning women’s ordination has to do with biblical interpretation.28 Black clergy who disapprove of women’s ordination often refer to the absence of women among the twelve disciples andcite the following biblical passages: “But I would have you know, thatthe head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man;and the head of Christ is God” (1 Corinthians 11:3); and “Let yourwomen keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them tospeak” (1 Corinthians 14:34). In contrast, black clergy who approve
women’s ordination often cite other biblical passages such as “There isneither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither malenor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Some
refer to the centrality of women to Jesus’ ministry such as the work of
his mother, the women who stood by at his cruciﬁxion, and the woman
who was the ﬁrst to witness his resurrection. In short, the Bible could beinterpreted in both ways. Most black clergy, however, have read theBible through a patriarchal framework, paying attention to the former
mentioned biblical passages but overlooking the latter.
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was the ﬁrst to adopt
the policy of fully ordaining women in 1894, but women’s ordination
did not take place in any other black denominations until the mid-twentieth century. Among other black denominations, the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, theNational Baptist Convention (NBC), and the Progressive National
Baptist Convention (PNBC) began to ordain women in 1948, 1954,
1965, and 1967, respectively.29 Yet support varies along denominationlines. In Lincoln and Mamiya’s nationwide survey, about 90 percent of
black Methodists respondents approved of women as clergy, whereas theTHE SOCIOPOLITICAL ROLE OF THE BLACK CHURCH

271

approval rate in the case of NBC respondents and PNBC respondents
were 26.5 percent and 42.7 percent, respectively. In the case of the
Church of God in Christ, the largest black Pentecostal denomination, theapproval rate was 26.6 percent.30 Furthermore, according to Sandra L.
Barnes, “even among supportive churches, emphasis on addressing
social and racially based inequities often results in the omission of gender issues such as women clergy, or relegates the topic to secondary importance.”31
In the ﬁeld of theology, commitment to overcome sexism has come
especially from those who advocate womanist theology. The word
“womanist” was ﬁrst used by African American novelist Alice Walker.
In her 1983 collection, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Walker suggested that black women had historically been concerned not only for
their own welfare but also for that of their entire family and community.32 The best illustration is the life of Harriet Tubman. After she
escaped from slavery to the North, Tubman returned to the South nineteen times to rescue her family and other slaves. Walker described black
women’s orientation that is characterized by concern for wholeness withthe word “womanist.”
Womanist theologians have used black women’s historical experiences as the primary source for their theological thinking and have tried
to connect Christian faith with overcoming the triple discrimination ofracism, sexism, and classism. Black liberation theology, articulated byJames H. Cone in the late 1960s, insisted that God is concerned with theliberation of the oppressed, most especially “black people” in the context
of U.S. history.33 Womanist theologians have taken Cone’s discussion
one step further and insisted that God is concerned with the liberation of“black women,” since they are “the poorest of the poor” and “the leastof these.” However, as Mark L. Chapman argues, because their experience encompasses racism, sexism, and classism, womanist theologians
believe that black women’s reality must be connected to the liberationof every person and, for that reason, they emphasize the need to produce
constant dialogue to challenge all oppressive forces.34 As Pinn notes,
womanist theology’s “long-term impact on the black church remains
uncertain.”35 However, coupled with the growing number of seminarytrained women and the existence of other black feminist organizations,
it is expected that womanist theology will gradually make a positive
impact on black churches.

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Homophobia in the Black Church

Few issues have been treated as negatively as that of sexuality in thecontemporary Black Church. Prejudice against homosexuals and a tendency to regard sexuality as a taboo topic persist in the Black Church tothis day, as evidenced in the Pew Research Survey of 2007. In thatsurvey, 64 percent of black Christians voiced opposition to same-sex
marriage, signiﬁcantly higher than their white Christian counterparts(50%).36
Two major factors are worth considering as to why the Black Church
has been hesitant to accept homosexuals openly and to discuss the issueof sexuality honestly. First, the discussion of sexuality in the Black
Church has been centered on “manhood” and “womanhood.” Slavery
robbed many black males and females of opportunities to exercise responsibilities traditionally associated with masculinity and femininity.
In many cases, they could control neither their own bodies nor their socialand family relationships. After emancipation, black bodies continued to
be exploited in the imagination of white Americans, who stereotyped theblack male and the black female with sexual innuendo, such as “Beast”
and “Jezebel,” respectively. Consequently, the Black Church in the latenineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century promoted their congregations to abide by strict sexual norms and to model socially accepted
forms of family so that black people could earn respectability in racist
white society. This, in turn, made the Black Church shun honest discussion of sexuality and pay attention exclusively to concepts of manhood
and womanhood. In the late twentieth century, sociological studies, suchas the 1965 Moynihan report,37 raised an alert over the high rate of black
family breakup in decaying inner cities. A subsequent argument of thesestudies was that the primary cause of black family breakup was the absence of responsible black males. Inﬂuenced by these studies, the Black
Church has tended to take a stance that the solution rests on whether
black males could restore their manhood as responsible fathers.38 Given
this context, it would not be surprising if the Black Church has given agreat deal of attention to the issues of manhood and womanhood.
Second, hesitation to accept homosexuals openly has to do with biblical interpretation.39 Black Christians who show homophobia often cite
the following biblical passages as a sign that the Bible opposes homosexuality: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it isabomination” (Leviticus 18:22); “If a man also lie with mankind . . . they

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shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 20:13); and “And likewise also
the men . . . burn with lust one toward another; men with men working
that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of
their error which was meet” (Romans 1:27). In contrast, as Pinn explains,some black Christians who support homosexual rights argue that biblicalpassages used to condemn homosexuality were developed in a particular cultural and historical context so that it is not doctrinally mandatorythat the Church condemn homosexuality as sin. Others argue that
although Jesus spoke out against many forms of sin, homosexuality is
not listed as sin anywhere in his recorded words.40 In short, the Bible
could be interpreted in both ways. The Black Church for the most part,however, has read it through patriarchal and heterosexual frameworks,
paying attention to the former passages but neglecting the latter.
It is important to note that there have been efforts to overcome theBlack Church’s conservative stance on the issue of homosexuality.
Various religious organizations on national, regional, and local levels aswell as at seminaries have set up forums and developed programs tochange the homophobic attitude of the Black Church.41 Although theBlack Church has softened its position on homosexuality, the fact remains that it is far more difﬁcult for openly homosexual persons to beordained as clergy than it is for women. Scholars point out that the Black
Church’s attitude of avoiding honest discussion of the issue of sexuality
is a cause of its inability to take sufﬁcient leadership in tackling the prevention of HIV/AIDS, which has been spreading among black youth.42
It is imperative for the Black Church to address issues of sexuality honestly if it is to maintain its social relevancy.
III.
A.

THE BLACK CHURCH AND ISSUES OF CLASSThe Black Church and Black Youth in the Inner CityOne of the most pressing issues for the Black Church today is that a
growing number of black youth, especially males, have lost contact with
the Black Church. This phenomenon is especially salient in the innercities. Lincoln and Mamiya pointed out in 1990 that, for the ﬁrst time,
there was a large proportion of black teenagers and young adults who
had no knowledge of and no respect for the Black Church and its traditions.43 During the 1960s, black preachers like Martin Luther King Jr.
called for black churches to identify themselves with the suffering of the274

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urban poor and address economic justice for them. Since the 1970s, however, the leadership of the Black Church seems to have declined. Whatfactors have caused this trend? Why have many black male youths seen
the Black Church as irrelevant for them?
Lincoln and Mamiya point out structural factors.44 First, there are
18–25 percent less black men than women nationally between the agesof seventeen and forty-ﬁve. This ratio of male and female has some impact on black male church membership. Second, in the inner cities, black
male youths are more likely to become victims of crimes and to lose theirlife and also to suffer a high incarceration rate. These circumstances havedeprived black male youth of opportunities to participate in the Black
Church.
However, there are psychological factors as well. Three factors should
be considered. First, black male youth tend to view the Black Church as
an institution for the middle class. As noted previously, the Black Church
is important for the black middle class because it enables them to feel
black cultural ties. For the ﬁrst generation that moved to the suburbs after
the civil rights movement, their home churches were still in the innercities. They commuted to their home churches from the suburbs on Sundays for worship and fellowship. For the currently growing second generation, however, suburban churches are preferred, and many no longer
commute to their traditional churches in the inner cities. Faced with theloss of membership and ﬁnancial difﬁculties, a growing number of large
black churches have left the inner cities for the suburbs. As a result, although there are still some large churches in city centers that attract commuters from the suburbs, most of the churches remaining in the innercities today are small, mostly Pentecostal storefront churches that serve
the very poor and attract older members. The exodus of the large black
churches to the suburbs has produced a gradual loss of various services
that those black churches had once offered beyond class boundaries tothe inner-city poor such as shelter, food, and medical services. The major
trend, which some scholars call “the suburbanization” of the Black
Church, gives black male youth a negative impression that the Black
Church is leaving them behind.45
Second, black male youth are more likely to be attracted to the Nationof Islam, a black Islamic movement committed to improving the spiritual, mental, social, and economic conditions of black people. Founded
in 1930 by Wallace D. Fard, then led by Elijah Muhammad from 1934
to 1975, and presently led by Louis Farrakhan, the NOI has continued

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to appeal to black male youth as an alternative to the Black Church. Two
major reasons can be pointed out for this. First, the NOI actively recruits
disadvantaged black male youths on the street or in prison, people whom
black churches tend to overlook. Second, the NOI’s doctrines, such asthat of black people as “the original men,” its patriarchal stance, andpractice of self-defense techniques are seen to be more militant attitudes
than those of the Black Church in the eyes of inner-city black maleyouth.46
Third, in connection with the second factor, black male youth in innercities tend to see the Black Church as a “feminized” institution. A scholar
points out that women are not only dominant in black churches but
church programs and worship styles such as “sewing circles and teas”
are oriented toward women. Moreover, while black male youth hear loveand nonviolence preached in church, once they step out into the street,“just the opposite character traits are necessary for survival.”47 Therefore, the message of the Black Church does not appeal to them. Many
black male youths in the inner cities today see the Black Church as irrelevant because it appears to them as a “feminized” religious institution.
How could the Black Church win the trust of black male youth in innercities? The answers drawn from the above discussion are these: First, itneeds to remove the impression that it is an institution for women. This,
however, is a complicated task. To that end, the Black Church needs toemphasize “masculinity.” But what kind of “masculinity” should it be?
Moreover, while the growth of ordained women clergy is a welcome signfor the empowerment of women in the Black Church, this may give black
male youth the impression that the Black Church is becoming a more
feminized institution. In short, what is required for the Black Church
today is simultaneously to promote a greater role for women in church
leadership, on the one hand, and to show that it is not a “feminized” institution, on the other hand. The Black Church needs to solve this dilemma
if it wants to win the trust of inner-city black male youth.
Second, the Black Church needs to identify itself with the sufferingof the black poor. To that end, the kind of ministry exempliﬁed by
Eugene F. Rivers III is required.48 Rivers is the pastor of the Azusa
Christian Community in Dorchester, one of Boston’s most violent neighborhoods. He formed the Ten Point Coalition in 1992 after he saw atragedy at one Baptist church in an inner-city neighborhood in Boston.
During a funeral for a gang member, members of a rival gang entered
the church and stabbed a gang member multiple times. The incident

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convinced Rivers of the church’s failure, and he organized the Coalition
to respond to the crisis. The Coalition adopted various strategies including educating and mobilizing the community, identifying and building
a relationship with youth, intervening and defusing gang conﬂict, andproviding youth programs that promote avoidance of violence and gang
involvement. Needless to say, to win trust from inner-city black youth
invited extreme risk. Rivers’s house was hit by stray bullets in 1991, andit was again shot at in 1994 by a crack dealer whom he had tried to rehabilitate. Nevertheless, Rivers stayed in the neighborhood, insisting that“dramatic change will always require dramatic sacriﬁces.” The Coalition
developed into an organization consisting of thirty-seven churches andagencies in the Boston area in 1996 and has been expanding since then.49
Rivers’s commitment clearly shows that the prophetic tradition in theBlack Church has lived on, and this type of leadership is required for theBlack Church to restore the trust of inner-city black youth.
B.

The Black Church and the Prosperity Gospel

No discussion of the role of the contemporary Black Church is adequate without taking up the controversy over the prosperity gospel.
Robert M. Franklin characterize the prosperity gospel as “the single
greatest threat” to the Black Church’s prophetic tradition.50 Fredrick C.
Harris characterize the tension between the prophetic tradition and theprosperity gospel as “a theological civil war” and explains that the tension reﬂects “fundamental differences in how black churches should go
about eradicating racial inequality in American society.”51 What is theprosperity gospel? What implications does it have for the problems of
inner-city black youth?
As of 2008, there are roughly 1,300 megachurches in the UnitedStates. A megachurch can be deﬁned as having a weekly attendance of
two thousand or more.52 Although not all megachurches have these characteristics, they generally have some of the following features: First,
many megachurches are nondenominational. The worship arena holds
several thousands to more than ten thousand worshipers and is equippedwith giant video screens above. Second, its worship services are alsobroadcast on cable television and sent out over the airwaves. Third,
megachurches have various facilities such as areas for eating, areas
where household goods are sold, bookstores, and day-care centers forchildren. Books, audio CDs, and DVDs produced by the preacher of theTHE SOCIOPOLITICAL ROLE OF THE BLACK CHURCH

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church ﬁll the shelves of the bookstore. Fourth, megachurches tend tobe located in the suburbs. Fifth, congregations consist of people with relatively higher education levels and higher incomes. The fourth and ﬁfth
points indicate that those who attend megachurches tend to be middle
class and striving working class rather than poor.
What many megachurches preach is the prosperity gospel, albeit not
all megachurches do so. The basic messages of the prosperity gospel arethat “Jesus was not poor,” “God wants you to be rich,” “God is positive,”and God guarantees truly faithful believers physical health and ﬁnancial
wealth in this life now.53 Thus, clergy of the prosperity gospel focus on
God’s grace in this world and neither mention suffering, judgment, andredemption, nor bring up controversial sociopolitical issues such as
structural racism, abortion, and same-sex marriage. They preach that personal transformation is the key to an abundant life and emphasize thevirtues of individualism, personal responsibility, entrepreneurship, andpersonal morality. According to a poll that appeared in Time magazine
in 2006, 17 percent of all American Christians, of whatever denomination or church size, said they consider themselves to be part of the prosperity gospel movement. Potential sympathizers, however, are more. A
full 61 percent agreed with the statement that “God wants people to beprosperous.”54
The largest megachurch in the United States is Joel Osteen’s Lakewood
Church in Houston, Texas. It is estimated that forty thousand membersof all races and ethnicities attend ﬁve services weekly and a further sevenmillion watch them in their living rooms. With more than three hundred
full- and part-time staff and approximately ﬁve thousand volunteers, andwith a budget of millions of dollars a year, the preacher at Lakewood
differs little from many CEOs of big companies.55 Although the prosperity gospel in megachurches and large churches has been more of aphenomenon among white Christians, it has been penetrating the black
Christian community as well. Among well-known black clergy who
preach the prosperity gospel are Creﬂo Dollar of World Changers Church
International in Fulton County, Georgia; Frederick K. C. Price ofCrenshaw Christian Center in Los Angeles; and T. D. Jakes Sr. of The
Potter’s House in Dallas.
Those who place value on the prophetic tradition of the Black Church
have increasingly expressed strong concern about the rise of the prosperity gospel movement among black Christians since the 1990s. It isnatural for them to have this sentiment because the message of the278

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prosperity gospel is diametrically opposed to that of the prophetic tradition that includes the social gospel, black liberation theology, and womanist theology. Whereas the prophetic tradition says that “God is on theside of the poor and oppressed,” the prosperity gospel says that “God ison the side of the rich.” While the former emphasizes a collective-oriented sense of freedom and social justice, the latter emphasizes individual freedom and wealth.56 Harris contends that “the message has moved
from community empowerment to individual prosperity. . . . The thinking is that if individuals rise, so will the rest of the community. That is
a complete reversal from the mission of the black church during slavery,
Reconstruction and civil rights.”57
The rise of the prosperity gospel might be a reﬂection of the largerchanges that are taking place in the African American community, mostnotably in the rise of the black middle class. The prosperity gospel
appeals to the black middle class as well as the striving working class,since it gives them spiritual justiﬁcation for their upward mobility without promoting guilt feelings for leaving the poor black behind. Furthermore, the African American community is divided as to what is the major
obstacle for black advancement. The Pew Research Center Survey in2007 reported that the majority of African Americans (53%) believedthat those who could not get ahead in life were mostly responsible for
their own condition, albeit three out of ten African Americans (30%)
blamed racism for failures to advance.58 It can be said that putting moreemphasis on individualism than group solidarity in the African American
community provides a setting where many black Christians are receptive to the theological claim of the prosperity gospel.
Yet, it should be noted that the prosperity gospel that emphasizes selfresponsibility has a strong afﬁnity with the logic of the conservative wingof the Republican Party, which tends to blame inner-city poor black
youth for their circumstances. Given that black Christians who support
the prosperity gospel come largely from the middle class, it is predictable, as Harris argues, that their conservative tendencies might “discourage black nationalist sentiments, promote political conservatism,engender apolitical views on activism, and by default, soften support inblack communities for liberal social policies targeted toward minorities
and the poor.”59THE SOCIOPOLITICAL ROLE OF THE BLACK CHURCH

279

CONCLUSION
The Black Church was formerly the most independent and stable institution in the African American community and remains an important
institution. There is no doubt that without the Black Church black leadership and black organizations would have hardly developed. This, however, has not exempted the Black Church from internal and external
critiques over its sociopolitical role. On the contrary, the Black Church
has always been put on trial because of its very centrality in the African
American community. The basic question that has continually beenaddressed is whether the Black Church encourages or discourages social
activism among African Americans. Although issues facing the Black
Church have changed in response to changes in America’s sociopolitical environment, this fundamental question has remained.
In this article, I have explored the contours of the sociopolitical roleof the Black Church in the post–civil rights era. I highlighted three
aspects. First, I detected factors in the overall decline of the Black
Church’s sociopolitical leadership in the post–civil rights era. My basic
argument here was that the decline could not be attributed to the lack ofinterest on the part of the Black Church but rather three major external
factors: a lack of consensus about an African American public policy
agenda, lower church attendance, and the rise of both black elected ofﬁcials and black advocacy organizations. Second, I noted that sexism
constituted a major challenge for the contemporary Black Church toovercome. The basic ﬁnding here is that although support for the full
ordination of women and open acceptance of homosexuals has been
gradually increasing, these issues have been often overshadowed by theissues of race. Third, the question of whether the Black Church can reachunchurched black youth in the inner cities is yet another serious one forthe contemporary Black Church. In this context, I pointed out that therise of the prosperity gospel might reinforce a growing class divide
between the black middle class and the black poor.
The above discussion reveals that the Black Church in the post–civilrights era has increasingly come under pressure as to whether it can effectively address the often-interlocking issues of race, class, gender, andsexuality. In all cases, black churches have been involved in dialecticaltensions between prophetic voices and conservative forces. In light ofthese circumstances, it can be said that Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s call for the
renewal of a Black Church that is linked to an emphasis on the prophetic

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tradition, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, is a legitimate
voice, though his emphatic, “The Black Church is dead,” is rather exaggerated. It is my contention that these dialectical tensions are necessaryand even constructive so that the Black Church can continually redeﬁne
and revitalize its roles to meet the challenges of the twenty-ﬁrst century.
NOTES
1Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., “The Black Church Is Dead,” Hufﬁngton Post, February 24,2010,
http://www.hufﬁngtonpost.com/eddi-glaude-jr-phd/the-black-church-is-dead_b_473815.html(accessed July 23, 2011).
2
In the context of the Black Church, terms such as “prophetic energies” and the “prophetic tradition” mean not only pronouncing a radical word of God’s judgment but also
being involved in political concerns and activities in the wider community. See, forexample, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African
American Experience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 12. In this article,
the phrase “Black Church” is used to denote the collective experience and reality of black
Christianity across denominational lines. The phrase “black churches” is used when myfocus is more on individual churches.
3
Anthea Butler, Jonathan L. Walton, Ronald B. Neal, William D. Hart, Josef Sorett,Edward J. Blum, and Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., “Updated with Response: The Black Church
is Dead–Long Live the Black Church,” Religion Dispatches, March 9, 2010,
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/2331/updated_with_response%
3A_the_black_church_is_dead%E2%80%94long_live_the_black_church (accessed July24, 2011).
4
Samuel G. Freedman, “Call and Response on the State of the Black Church,” NewYork Times, April 16, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/us/17religion.html(accessed July 23, 2011); David Gibson, “Is the Black Church Dead? Debate Flares
among African American Christians,” Politics Daily, January 15, 2011,
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/01/15/is-the-black-church-dead-debate-flaresamong-african-american-c/ (accessed July 23, 2011); and “IRAAS: Is the Black Church
Dead?” Kinetics Faith and Justice Network, October 21, 2010,
http://kinetics.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/show/479501?order=newest (accessed
July 24, 2011).
5
Benjamin E. Mays and Joseph W. Nicholson, The Negro’s Church (New York: Arno
Press and New York Times, 1933); Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, vol.2, The
Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1944); Franklin
E. Frazier, The Negro Church in America (New York: Schocken, 1964).
6James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Seabury Press, 1969);
Hart M. Nelsen and Anne Kusener Nelsen, The Black Church in the Sixties (Lexington:
University of Kentucky Press, 1975); Vincent Harding, There Is a River (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981).
7
Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Examination of theBlack Experience in Religion (New York: Anchor, 1973), xiii.
8
For further details of their “dialectical model of the Black Church,” see Lincoln andMamiya, Black Church in the African American Experience, 10–16.

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281

9
R. Drew Smith, ed., New Day Begun: African American Churches and Civil Culture
in Post Civil Rights America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); and R. Drew
Smith, ed., Long March Ahead: African American Churches and Public Policy in PostCivil Rights America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).
10
Anthony B. Pinn, The Black Church in the Post–Civil Rights Era (New York: Orbis
Books, 2002).
11
Lincoln and Mamiya, Black Church in the African American Experience, 226.
12
Pew Forum, “A Religious Portrait of African-Americans,” January 30, 2009, 16–17,
http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=389 (accessed March 7, 2010).
13
R. Drew Smith, “Assessing the Public Policy Practices of African American
Churches,” in Smith, Long March Ahead, 11–17.
14
Ibid., 9.
15
Allison Calhoun-Brown, “Will the Circle be Unbroken? The Political Involvementof Black Churches since the 1960s,” in Black Political Organizations in the Post–Civil
Rights Era, ed. Ollie A. Johnson III and Karin L. Stanford (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2002), 21.
16
Andres Tapia, “Soul Searching,” Christianity Today, March 4, 1996,
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=712 (accessed August 6,2011).
17
Pew Forum, “Religious Portrait of African-Americans,” 2.
18
Pinn, Black Church in the Post–Civil Rights Era, 27–36.
19
Calhoun-Brown, “Will the Circle be Unbroken?,” 22–24; Calhoun-Brown, “Whata Fellowship: Civil Society, African American Churches, and Public Life,” in Smith,
New Day Begun, 48; R. Drew Smith, “Assessing the Public Policy Practices,” 9–10,
17–23.
20
Steven F. Lawson, Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America
since 1941 ([1990] Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 274.
21
R. Drew Smith, “Black Churches within a Changing Civic Culture in America,” inSmith, New Day Begun, 3.
22
Pinn, Black Church in the Post–Civil Rights Era, 96–105.
23
R. Drew Smith and Corwin Smidt, “System Conﬁdence, Congregational Characteristics, and Black Church Civic Engagement,” in Smith, New Day Begun, 62.
24
Smith, “Assessing the Public Policy Practices,” 20.
25
Lincoln and Mamiya, Black Church in the African American Experience, 274.
26
Ibid., 289; Renita J. Weems, “Black America and Religion,” Ebony, November
2005, 124.
27
Kelly Brown Douglas and Ronald E. Hopson, “Understanding the Black Church:
The Dynamics of Change,” Journal of Religious Thought 56/57, no. 2/1 (2001), 105.
28
On this discussion, see Lincoln and Mamiya, Black Church in the African American
Experience, 294–97; and Pinn, Black Church in the Post–Civil Rights Era, 121, 126–31.
29
Lincoln and Mamiya, Black Church in the African American Experience, 285–89;
Pinn, Black Church in the Post–Civil Rights Era, 120–30.
30
Lincoln and Mamiya, Black Church in the African American Experience, 289–94.
31
Sandra L. Barnes, “Whatsoever Will Let Her Come: Social Activism and Gender
Inclusivity in the Black Church,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43, no.3
(2006), 373.
32
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1983), xi; Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ (New York: Orbis Books,
1994), 97–98.

282

MAKOTO KUROSAKI33
See James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power; God of the Oppressed (NewYork: Seabury Press, 1975).
34
Mark L. Chapman, Christianity on Trial: African-American Religious Thought before and after Black Power (New York: Orbis Books, 1996), 149. See also, Delores S.
Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (New York:
Orbis Books, 1993), xiv–xv.
35
Pinn, Black Church in the Post–Civil Rights Era, 132.
36
Pew Forum, “Religious Portrait of African-Americans,” 13–14.
37
The formal name of the Moynihan report is “The Negro Family: The Case for
National Action.” See BlackPast.org,
http://www.blackpast.org/?q=primary/moynihan-report-1965 (accessed November 8,2010).
38
Pinn, Black Church in the Post–Civil Rights Era, 106–8.
39
Ibid., 108.
40
Ibid., 113.
41
Ibid., 111–15.
42
Ibid., 98–101.
43
Lincoln and Mamiya, Black Church in the African American Experience, 309–10.
44
Ibid., 305–6.
45
Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, “Black Flight: African American Churches Leave the Inner
City for the Suburbs,” Christianity Today, December 20, 2008,
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/january/8.13.htm (accessed June 26, 2011)
46
Pinn, Black Church in the Post–Civil Rights Era, 6–27, 107.
47
Ibid., 107–8; David Briggs, “Men Are Losing Interest in Historically Black
Churches,” St. Petersburg Times, March 26, 1994,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/Inacui2api/delivery/ (accessed October 22, 2010).
48
See, Christopher Winship, “End of a Miracle? Crime, Faith, and Partnership in
Boston in the 1990,” in Smith, Long March Ahead, 171–92.
49
Wendy Murray Zoba, “Separate and Equal,” Christianity Today 40, no. 2 (5 February 1996): 14–24.
50
Robert M. Franklin, Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope in African American Communities (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 112.
51
Frederic C. Harris, “Entering the Promised Land? The Rise of Prosperity Gospel
and Post-Civil Rights Black Politics,” in Religion and Democracy in the United States:
Danger or Opportunity?, ed. Alan Wolfe and Ira Katznelson (New York: Princeton
University Press, 2010), 256, 261.
52
For detailed features of megachurches, see Scott Thumma and Warren Bird, “2009Proﬁle of the People Who Attend America’s Megachurches,” Hartford Institute for
Religion Research,
http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/megachurch_attender_report.htm (accessed November 9, 2010).
53
Harris, “Entering the Promised Land?,” 266–72; Melissa Harris-Lacewell, “From
Liberation to Mutual Fund: Political Consequences of Differing Conceptions of Christin the African American Church,” in From Pews to Polling Places: Faith and Politics
in the American Religious Mosaic, ed. J. Matthew Wilson (Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Press, 2007), 139–45.
54
David Van Biema and Jeff Chu, “Does God Want You to be Rich?,” Time, 10 September 2006,
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1533448,00.html (accessed January 10, 2011).

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283

55
Daniel Kalder, “The New Face of Christianity,” Observer, March 7, 2010,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/Inacui2api/delivery/ (accessed October 22, 2010).
56
Harris, “Entering the Promised Land?,” 255–76; Harris-Lacewell, “From Liberation
to Mutual Fund,” 131–60.
57
Ira J. Hadnot, “Politics Toned Down at Black Churches,” Dallas Morning News,
July 31, 2004,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/Inacui2api/delivery/ (accessed October 22, 2010).
58
Pew Research Center, “Blacks See Growing Values Gap between Poor and Middle
Class,” November 13, 2007, 33.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/ﬁles/2010/10/Race-2007.pdf (accessed October 22,2010).
59
Harris, “Entering the Promised Land?,” 260–61.