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

Notes

191 NOTES Notes to the Introduction 1. See St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, “A Bone of Contention,” in Black Metropolis : A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, rev. and enl. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 418–429. 2. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro Church; Report of a Social Study Made under the Direction of Atlanta University; Together with the Proceedings of the Eighth Conference for the Study of the Negro Problems, Held at Atlanta University, May 26th, 1903 (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1903). 3. Carter Godwin Woodson, The History of the Negro Church (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1921). 4. Benjamin Elijah Mays, Joseph William Nicholson, and Institute of Social and Religious Research, The Negro’s Church (New York: Institute of Social and Religious Research, 1933). 5. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church in America, in The Negro Church in America / The Black Church since Frazier, by E. Franklin Frazier and C. Eric Lincoln, Sourcebooks in Negro History (New York: Schocken Books, 1974). 6. Eddie Glaude, “The Black Church Is Dead,” Huffington Post, February 24, 2010. Representing essentially the same kind of concern with the relationship between the black church and the struggle for liberation during the “black power” era, another black intellectual, C. Eric Lincoln, declared in the 1974 that “the Negro church . . . died.” Frazier, Negro Church in America, 105–106. 7. Examples include James Cone’s entire chapter devoted to the white church and black power in Black Theology and Black Power (1969; repr., Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989). Also, see his chapter “Church, World and Eschatology in Black Theology,” in A Black Theology of Liberation, C. Eric Lincoln Series in Black Religion (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970). Also, see chapter 2 of Cone’s For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner Studies in North American Black Religion 1 (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1984); Gayraud S. Wilmore , “The White Church and the Search for Black Power,” Social Progress 57, no. 4 192 Notes to the Introduction (March–April 1967): 11–20. Moreover, see the “Black Power” statement published by the National Committee of Negro Churchmen, as it addresses a section of its message on the relationship between power and love “To White Churchmen” (Renewal 10, no. 7 [October–November 1970]: 14–16; reprinted in Black Theology: A Documentary History, vol. 1, 1966–1979, 2nd ed., ed. James H. Cone and Gayraud S. Wilmore [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993]). 8. Dale P. Andrews, Practical Theology for Black Churches: Bridging Black Theology and African American Folk Religion (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002). 9. James H. Harris, Pastoral Theology: A Black-Church Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991). 10. Forrest E. Harris, Sr., with James T. Roberson and Larry D. George, eds., What Does It Mean to Be Black and Christian? Pulpit, Pew, and Academy in Dialogue (Nashville, Tenn.: Townsend, 1995). 11. Also, see Charles E. Booth, Bridging the Breach: Evangelical Thought and Liberation in the African-American Preaching Tradition (Chicago: Urban Ministries, 2000). 12. See Herbert O. Edwards, “Black Theology: Retrospect and Prospect,” Journal of Religious Thought 32, no. 2 (Fall–Winter 1975): 46–59; and Dennis W. Wiley, “Black Theology, the Black Church, and the African-American Community,” in Black Theology : A Documentary History, vol. 2, 1980–1992, ed. James H. Cone and Gayraud S. Wilmore (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993). 13. In For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church, James Cone proffers an outline of stages in the development of black theology (see chapter 5), including a third stage characterized by “a return to the black church and community as the primary workshop of black theology” (110). However, this conclusion has been challenged by black theologians actively engaged in pastoral ministry, and the question itself is serious enough to warrant a more sustained, systematic, and exclusive examination. See Harris, Pastoral Theology, chap. 3; and Wiley, “Black Theology.” 14. Throughout the text, Andrews uses the term “black theology project” as a shorthand reference to the efforts and orientation of the black theology movement in general. At face value, this is perfectly legitimate. The only problem is that he does not address the actual “Black Theology Project” and its work under the auspices of “Theology in the Americas.” Ironically, James Cone actually credits the Black Theology Project conference, held in Atlanta in August 1977, as a signal moment marking black theology’s return to the black church (For My People, 110). Whether...