The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness

Introduction

1 INTRODUCTION What is the true nature and mission of the church? As a community formed in memory of Jesus Christ and informed by the gospels, what is it that makes it a faithful and authentic witness, and what exactly is it called to do? Indeed, all Christian communities must ask and try to answer that question. From the fledgling communities behind the gospels to the classic debates of Nicea and Chalcedon through the Reformation until now, christology and ecclesiology have always been done together so that those who are informed by a memory of Jesus must wrestle simultaneously with the implications of that memory for their own mission. That is the church’s burden. Yet, for reasons of history and theology, the burden carries with it an extraordinary freight, and the question has itself a distinctive resonance when the church is one built by slaves and formed, from its beginning, at the center of an oppressed community’s fight for personhood and freedom. That is the history of the black church in America and the theological prism through which any authentic inquiry into its essential mission must be raised. As a group of researchers discovered while making their way through the community of Bronzeville during the Great Depression, hardly any question is more vociferously argued in the black community , even among those who do not attend, than the meaning, message , and mission of the black church.1 Indeed, because so much is at stake in the viability of a community’s oldest and most enduring 2 T H E D I V I D E D M I N D O F T H E B L AC K C H U RC H indigenous institution, black intellectuals, W. E. B. Du Bois,2 Carter G. Woodson,3 Benjamin E. Mays,4 and E. Franklin Frazier5 among them, have agonized, often with great consternation, over the purpose and the promise of the black church. In more contemporary times, Eddie Glaude, professor of religion and chair of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University, re-presented this classic genre of scholarship, recapitulating some old themes in a new era when he created a storm of controversy by declaring in the Huffington Post that “the black church is dead.”6 Ironically, both the exasperated, hyperbolic character of his assertion and the ensuing conversation and controversy that it created, on all sides of the debate, bespeak the enduring significance of the institution in question. If the black church is dead, as Glaude asserts, concern over its prospects for resuscitation and role as an instrument of liberation is very much alive. In important ways, it is this enduring concern for the relationship between black religion and black resistance—piety and public witness —that helps to account for the origins and development of black theology . From the very moment of its emergence from the fiery tumult of riot-torn cities and heated national debate regarding the meaning of a new and rising black consciousness, captured in the expression “black power,” black theology has been careful to situate its own selfunderstanding within the larger historical narrative of black religion and black resistance. Because of the black church’s central, though not exclusive, place in this narrative, it has been, for black theologians, a primary focus of historical interpretation and theological reflection. To be sure, white churches have always been a critical part of the analysis. This is so because of their complicity and active participation in slavery, segregation, and other manifestations of white supremacy. But they have also been engaged by the discussion because black theology , even while focused sharply on black suffering, has endeavored to take seriously ecumenical Christianity’s claims regarding the marks of the true church, that is, a body that is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic .7 Yet, owing to the centrality of black churches’ historical location in the story of African American resistance, their cultural and institutional prominence within black life, and the theological questions Introduction 3 raised by their legacy of separatist existence, black churches—their origins, development, and mission—have occupied a central place in the discussion and, as they emerge within the critical reflections of black and womanist theologians, are central to this investigation. Purpose I aim in this book to analyze what black and womanist theologians have had to say regarding the essential mission of the black church and to critically examine...