Black Church
In order to fully appreciate the Black Church in the 20th Century, one must understand its origins. Historically, black churches have been the most important and dominant institutions in African American communities. They have had more influence in molding the thoughts and lives of African Americans than any other single factor. Until recently, however, the black church was predominantly a rural church. This can be attributed to an 1890 census which indicated that nine out of ten black people lived in the South and more than eighty percent of them in rural areas. Only after the two World Wars and the Korean War did a massive migration of Blacks to the urban north occur.
The Black rural church was characterized by a clergy that often held secular jobs in order to support themselves economically. Much of the black rural congregation was poor and although fiercely devoted to the pastor, could not adequately take care of the pastor's economic needs. The churches did not provide pension benefits or health insurance, and this forced the clergy to work long beyond their retirement age. Due to their lack of resources, black rural churches did not participate in many community outreach programs, and very seldomly supported black institutions devoted to higher learning. Despite these shortcomings, the greatest strength of the black rural church lies in the loyalty of its members towards each other and to the church. Even today, the rural church serves not only as a religious institution, but as a social club, a political arena, an art gallery, and a conservatory of music. In effect, the lives of the black rural church members are centered around their church.
Before the mass migration of Blacks to the north, many Blacks living in the urban cities had already organized independent black denominations, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and their Baptist counterparts. During the period of migrations, the urban churches helped acculturate rural migrants to the urban environment. Participation in social outreach programs that provided services to the poor was spurned on by flamboyant messiahs like Father Divine. Eventually, however, the black urban churches began to reflect the differentiation, stratification, and pluralism which the urban environment encouraged. The secular roles that the black church had traditionally nurtured, including politics, education, economics, and even black culture, came under the guidance of institutions such as lodges, fraternities, and civil rights organizations like the NAACP. Furthermore, the congregation reflected economic and class stratification because of the availability of different kinds of jobs. The urban clergy, therefore, could devote themselves entirely to the church because their economic needs were met by those who were relatively affluent in the congregation. Higher learning was also encouraged, and the churches generously donated funds to Christian black colleges.
Due to the increased educational levels found among members of the congregation and the clergy, as well as new modes of communication, a sense of group identity among Blacks began to emerge. Influential thinkers, such as W.E.B. DuBois, encouraged blacks to associate with one another rather than to try to acculturate themselves into the white American society that always discriminated against them. He believed that organized group action along economic lines would allow blacks to earn a better living which would then allow them to support agencies for social uplift. Other social activists, who were products of the Harlem Renaissance, developed a new concept of the Negro. This "new Negro" had self-respect, self-dependence, a new outlook, and assumed roles of leadership. In effect, this new Negro would no longer subject himself to the humiliation heaped upon him by white America. With such revolutionary ideas emerging and taking root, the seeds for the Civil Rights Movement were quickly planted.
Beginning with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, the Civil Rights Movement was anchored in the Black Church, organized by both activist black ministers and laity, as well as supported financially by black church members. Led by Martin Luther King, who combined his theological scholarship with the social gospel passed on to him by his father, the Civil Rights Movement was aimed at empowering the Negro because "Freedom is participation in power". The Black churches served as the major points of mobilization for mass demonstrations and meetings, and the church members actively helped the civil rights workers because of convictions that were religiously inspired. Although the Black Power Movement, which was seen as a cry of disappointment, was rejected by King because it advocated black separatism, other leaders, such as Malcolm X, advocated black nationalism and urged a revolution.
Both leaders, however, recognized that the black community needed to gain economic independence while eliminating certain social evils, such as drug addiction and adultery.
Since the Civil Rights period, a revolution in consciousness that encompasses all Black institutions, including the Black Church, has emerged. Black liberation theology, the view that religion should be viewed and interpreted from a people’s own experience, has influenced the urban clergy. Black pastors are conscious of the need to provide black role models for their members and to support church-related black colleges. In addition, an interest in politics has reemerged, from the Reverend Jesse Jackson's
presidential candidacy bids in 1984 and 1988 to the election of thousands of black officials in large urban areas and small towns. The Black Church has played a significant role in the politics of the past and will continue to do so even though its political nature may be ambiguous at times because of its double African and American heritage.
• The church has a "critical role" to play in mobilizing the citizens of the new South Africa,
• Part of that role is to work with the government – both critically and supportively – in a way that is unfamiliar to those who lived under the apartheid system.
• "The biggest challenge is for the church to learn to work with a government that is legitimate,"
• "Bringing it out the way they did is a very significant step toward the healing of our land," he said.
• "they are nowhere near seeing the process of reconciliation through."
• Churches and other institutions must continue the process by surrounding those still grieving with loving communities, providing counseling programs and training pastors and lay people to become "healing agents."
Churches have traditionally been viewed as places of stability and strength in the African-American community. From slavery through the long racially segregated history of the United States, when African Americans were prevented from building institutions of their own and precluded from participating in the institutions of mainstream America, churches developed and contained civil society for them. In church, one could find politics, arts, music, education, economic development, social services, civic associations, leadership opportunities, and business enterprises. One could also find a rich spiritual tradition of survival and liberation. Whether their leaders repudiated the "curse of Ham," embraced the revolutionary religious vision of Nat Turner, or preached the more reserved doctrine that "Jesus will fix it after a while," black churches have always accepted securing and guaranteeing the freedom of black people as one of their central missions.
During the 1800s, when blacks were struggling to establish their own denominations and their own places in which to worship, they were rebelling against subordinating themselves to the principal institutions of oppression and racism in the country—white churches. Indeed, as Wilmore contended, the movement to establish independent black churches was, in every sense, the first black freedom movement (1983, 78). Thus, though black religion shares elements of evangelical faith and practice, "the black church itself is a precipitate of its own culture, developed from and in response to its own experience" (Lincoln 1999, xxi). Because, to some extent, all black churches share a common history, the term "black church" is often used by historians to discuss all predominantly black Christian congregations. The fact that thousands of disparate groupings can be referenced with meaning as a single unit is a testament to the important role churches play in the African-American community and the degree to which black churches and their congregations have been separate and distinct from both mainstream religious organizations and white society.
Black churches have been aggregated into the singular institution called "the black church" to the extent that they are united by their cultural, historic, social, and spiritual missions of fighting the ravages of racism by "buoy[ing] up the hopes of its members in the face of adversity and giv[ing] them a sense of community"—regardless of denominational distinction, geographic location, or class composition (Myrdal [1944] 1962, 946). Although some denominational and congregational distinctions can be drawn, most black churches share a very similar religious culture. Similar scriptural analogies, messages, songs, prayers, symbols, rituals, oratorical styles, and themes of equality and freedom—even the "sanctuary red" carpeting of many of the facilities—are familiar from church context to church context. Although black churches operate with a high degree of independence, people going from service location to service location would feel little cultural disconnect. The many different congregations of the black church collectively have had the feel of the same organization.
Still, while much of the research has highlighted the importance of the organizational resources that black churches contributed to the Civil Rights Movement, less attention has been given to how the message of nonviolence was constructed by black church leaders to support collective action or why that message resonated so strongly among followers. What was it about the nature and practice of black Christianity, institutionalized in churches, that facilitated nonviolent politics at both the institutional and individual levels? In this article I address these questions by reviewing the ways that churches were involved in the Civil Rights Movement and looking at how the culture of the black church helped leaders to frame the meaning of the nonviolent message and encouraged churchgoers to respond to it positively. Although most studies of the political effects of religion do not focus on the influence of religious culture, culture is important to political mobilization (Harris 1999; Leege, Lieske, and Wald 1991). Although the study of the relevance of culture to politics has been advanced by the meaningful work of scholars like Almond and Verba (1963, 1989), the manner in which culture—particularly the subcultures of minority groups—affects political action is not well understood. In the case of the Civil Rights Movement, the receptivity of African-American religious culture to the message of nonviolence is what really linked the black church to the movement. Reexamining these relationships may help to identify the contemporary opportunities for and constraints to political mobilization through black churches as well as lead to a more general appreciation of the importance and relevance of religious culture in social and political movements.
Churches as Organizational Resources
That black churches helped bring organization to the Civil Rights Movement has been well documented thanks to the embracing of resource mobilization theory by students of social movements. Before the explication of resource mobilization theory, much of the social movement literature asserted that movements resulted from psychological tension caused by disruptive structural or systemic strains. Until at least the mid-1970s, social movements were generally understood to be efforts to relieve these tensions, not to realize explicitly political goals (see Geschwender 1971; Lang and Lang 1961; Smelser 1962; Turner and Killian 1957).
Resource mobilization theory asserts that discontent is basically constant. What really matters to organizers of a movement is "the amount of social resources available to unorganized but aggrieved groups, making it possible to launch an organized demand for change" (Jenkins and Perrow 1977, 250). Armed with this understanding, later analysts of the Civil Rights Movement focused first on the resources that groups external to the black community brought to the struggle and then on the resources that internal organizations could mobilize (McAdam 1985; Morris 1984; Oberschall 1973). Approached from this perspective, mobilization can be understood as the "process by which a group secures collective control over the resources needed for action. The major issues therefore are the resources controlled by the group prior to mobilization efforts, and the processes by which the group pools resources and direct these toward social change" (Jenkins 1983, 532-33). "In the absence of resources," McAdam explained, "the aggrieved population is likely to lack the capacity to act even when granted the opportunity to do so" (1985, 43). As the most resource-rich institution in the African-American community and the one most closely associated with civil society, the church had much to contribute. The resource mobilization literature notes that the black church could offer social communication networks, facilities, audience, leadership, and money to the movement.
Black churches did support the movement with these things. An examination of the national movement or of any city-specific desegregation effort provides ample evidence of this. At the national level, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference served as the "decentralized political arm of the black church" (Morris 1984, 91). The SCLC's mandate was to coordinate nonviolent direct action activities through churches in various locations and its initial leadership was made up of ministers who led many of the largest nonviolent actions in Montgomery, Tallahassee, New Orleans, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, and Nashville. Emphasizing the minimal differentiation between black churches and civil rights organizations, Wilmore recalled that it used to be a truism in many communities that "the NAACP is the black church on its knees" (1983, 142).
Black churches also worked with student-dominated groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) to organize demonstrations like the 1960 Nashville sit-ins which produced very accomplished mass-movement organizers who would go on to become leaders of those organizations. The Nashville sit-ins drew heavily on the resources of black churches. As John Lewis recalls, "The First Baptist Church . . . became a rallying point, it became the meeting place, it became the place where students, young people, community leaders, could come and discuss, debate and argue about what the city should become" (quoted in Morris 1984, 175).
The First Baptist Church, its pastor, Kelly Miller Smith, and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council (NCLC), of which Smith was president, were all integrally involved in the 1960 sit-in movement. Morris (1981) explained that more than a year before the sit-ins, NCLC Project Committee Chair Rev. James Lawson began holding workshops on nonviolent direct action at churches throughout the city. Through the churches and ministers affiliated with the NCLC, students were equipped and trained for nonviolent action, and the black community was organized to support the students once the sit-ins began. In fact, the NCLC leaders organized mass meetings at the churches during which they raised money for bail, enlisted lawyers to represent the students, and promoted the economic boycott that was designed to reinforce the students' demands that lunch counters be desegregated. In Nashville, as they did throughout the South (and as resource mobilization theory might predict) churches provided the organizational resources needed by participants in the movement.
The Message of Nonviolence
Mobilization, however, requires more than resources. The presence of social movement organizations with resources and the existence of grievances are necessary but insufficient conditions for giving rise to social movements. The major critique of the resource mobilization explanation for the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement has been that its proponents ". . . ignore or gloss over mobilizing beliefs and ideas, in large part because of their presumed ubiquity and constancy, which makes them, in turn, relatively nonproblematic and uninteresting factors in the movement equation" (Snow and Benford 1992, 135). Critics of the resource mobilization model have stressed that the significance attached to grievances as well as the actions proposed to address them are socially constructed. Therefore, much of the work done by a social movement organization involves, literally, making meanings and communicating the appropriate mobilizing messages to its constituents.
The ideas underlying nonviolent action, particularly the notion of the "Beloved Community," have often been given little attention. This is probably because most researchers have taken the relationships among nonviolent direct action, black Christianity, and the black church as a given. To be sure, organizations like the SCLC worked hard in churches to make political activism an expression of practical Christianity, but the fact that many ministries refused to become involved in supporting nonviolent protests for the cause of civil rights demonstrates that the translation of black Christianity through black churches into a nonviolent political movement was by no means automatic. Even Martin Luther King Jr. was critical of the involvement of his fellow clergy members in movement politics. He charged them with being both apathetic and otherworldly (1958, 35). In assessing the Birmingham civil rights campaign, Wyatt Walker estimated that as many as 90% of black ministers shunned the activity of the SCLC there (cited in Fairclough 1981, 183).
Today, nonviolent resistance is frequently characterized as an obvious and rational political strategy for the powerless. According to this logic, blacks advocated nonviolently for social change because they lacked the power to win concessions by force. The church became instrumental in this change primarily because it was the dominant institution in the black community. Of course, blacks, like most people, were not naturally inclined toward nonviolent action. Civil rights activist Hosea Williams poignantly expressed this sentiment by stating, "Nonviolence as a way of life was just as foreign to blacks as flying a space capsule would be to a roach" (quoted in Morris 1984, 158). As E. Franklin Frazier commented concerning the Civil Rights Movement, the ideas of Gandhi had "nothing in common with the social heritage of the Negro" (quoted in Kapur 1992, 156).
Moreover, the church was not uniformly supportive of nonviolent activism. Joseph Jackson, the head of the largest black denomination, the National Baptist Convention, rejected the social gospel. In 1961,
Martin Luther King Jr. and a group of ministers from the National Baptist Convention formed the Progressive Baptist Convention in response to the lack of support for social action among the National Baptists (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990, 36). The fact that Jackson continued as the leader of the National Baptist Convention for another 22 years after this incident is, in part, a testament to the diversity of opinion that existed among the ministers of the black church regarding the appropriate role for the church in securing social change. This, of course, does not diminish the important functions that many black churches, even National Baptist churches, performed during the Civil Rights Movement. However, it does serve as a reminder that the movement did not rise from the church and that, in many instances, the resources and ministers of the church had to be actively recruited into the movement.
Mobilizing For Nonviolence
When considering issues of political mobilization for the cause of civil rights, particular attention must be paid to how the message and meaning of nonviolence were constructed by the black church to support individual and collective action. The black church was able to mobilize people for nonviolent action because church membership provided individuals a frame for receiving the message and meaning of nonviolence. A "frame" is an interpretive schemata or way of understanding the world (Snow et al. 1986). Tarrow (1992) has explained that collective action frames work best when they are connected to the cultural meaning and symbols of a movement's audience. Religious culture is one of the most powerful systems of ritual and symbolic meaning in the black community and actively engaging in the activities of the church was very important to the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
Black religious culture provided such a strong collective action frame because the black church had been a "free space" in the black community for centuries. As a free space, the church offered an "environment in which people [were] able to learn a new self-respect, a deeper and more assertive group identity, public skills and values of cooperation and civic virtue" (Evans and Boyte 1986, 17). This was particularly vital in a thoroughly racist society that tried to deny to blacks all of these things. It was the church, and not simply black Christianity, that helped to shape these attitudes. Although internal religiosity can certainly have independent effects, attitudes and understandings about religious matters are significantly affected by the church to which one belongs. Whether otherworldly or this-worldly, the black church communicated the revolutionary message of equality before God. Its songs, prayers, rituals, and doctrines all reinforced this simple truth.
Morris (1992) explained that the development of this kind of "oppositional consciousness" is an important component in political mobilization. Many of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement attempted to draw upon this religiously based oppositional consciousness by referencing biblical stories that reflected God's willingness to work for the benefit of the oppressed. Citing a quote from Andrew Young, Frederick Harris demonstrates how Martin Luther King Jr. was adept at raising this type consciousness among listeners.
Nonetheless, the fact that the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement could tap into an oppositional consciousness when framing their message of nonviolence does not explain why the message resonated so strongly. Though the black church historically operated as an affirming free space, it had not always embraced sociopolitical movements—even those most ostensibly tied to the church's liberational mission. Indeed, scholars have often characterized the black church in the first half of the twentieth century as "deradicalized" and withdrawn from political and social involvement in their communities (see, e.g., Wilmore 1983, chap. 6).
Harris' model of how religious culture acts as a resource for political mobilization helps to describe why the church served so well as a conduit for the ideas of nonviolent social activism. According to Harris, African-American churches "provide African Americans with material resources and oppositional dispositions to challenge their marginality," and at the same time help members "to develop positive orientations toward the civic order" (1999, 40). Harris called this dualistic orientation an oppositional civic culture. "An oppositional civic culture develops attitudes and behaviors that simultaneously support civil society and oppose a system of domination within that society" (67). Viewed from this perspective, the black church can be seen to have engendered in members an oppositional consciousness that predisposed them to challenging society, and concurrently, served to reinforce their attachment and loyalty to the societal regime. Paris observed that black churches have always stressed to their members a healthy respect for the rule of law. He contended that "the loyalty of the black churches to the nation's laws and customs has often limited [blacks] in the kinds of action that they could advocate" (1985, 30) and has prevented them from engaging in forms of sociopolitical action that might in any way compromise a respect for the law or for the political values of American society.
Most nonviolent protests during the Civil Rights Movement were entirely within the bounds of the law. Boycotts, meetings, parades, and mass demonstrations are all perfectly legal. For example, the March on Washington, even though it involved hundreds of thousands of people, was not an act of civil disobedience but an exercise of constitutional rights. These types of nonviolent protests allowed a person to advocate for social change without violating the norms of the dualistic oppositional civic culture they had absorbed through the church. The act of protest was consistent with an oppositional consciousness, but, because the protest was carried out within the bounds of the law, it did not require disloyalty to the regime. Even in cases where acts of civil disobedience did occur, they did not compromise respect for the law. Civil disobedience was usually undertaken to show that local laws were unjust and opposed to the Constitution. As Martin Luther King Jr. explained
Thus, one of the primary reasons that calls for nonviolent social action resonated so strongly in African-American churches was because it related consistently to the oppositional civic culture that the church cultivated. Through nonviolent protest and demonstration, people could simultaneously challenge systematic injustice and racism and still embrace the principles of the liberal society. Both of these aspirations were valued objectives of the church. The Civil Rights Movement allowed individuals to accomplish both at the same time.
Understanding that black churches fostered development of an oppositional civic culture is also useful for understanding different levels of engagement by individual churches during the movement. If the church is viewed as only inculcating oppositional consciousness then it would be reasonable to expect all black congregations to have been heavily involved in movement politics. If the church is viewed only as a conservative institution that promotes loyalty to the social order, then it would be reasonable to expect all churches to have been alienated from movements directed at social change. In reality, individual black churches occupied every position on the continuum of involvement with the Civil Rights Movement. Though virtually all black churches shared elements of an oppositional culture and a civic culture, the exact balance of these that any individual congregation reflected varied from church to church. Congregational-specific characteristics such as socioeconomic background, educational achievement, age composition, ministerial disposition, and theological orientation were undoubtedly important determinants of the balance.
Culture can significantly influence not only mobilization and the types of activities for which groups are likely to mobilize. In the case of African Americans, the dualistic nature of oppositional civic culture helped to effectively frame what nonviolent social action meant and facilitated participation in it. In studies of the relationship between religion and politics, attention is most often paid to the resources that churches contribute to political action or how religion influences voting behavior, political attitudes, and political motivations. Only rarely has culture been considered an important independent component. Religious culture, however, and particularly the religious culture of minorities in society, may reveal much about the nature and practice of the politics of these groups. Considering culture also emphasizes that the relationship between religion and politics is multifaceted and more complex than is often appreciated. The black church contributed resources to the Civil Rights Movement and also provided a context in which the movement could be embraced and understood. Much of this was contingent on the nature of black religious culture, and it was this culture that affected the operation of nonviolent social actions.
References
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Black Catholics having their say
I never heard my grandmother sing anything but hymns and Christmas carols. Mostly hymns. If I close my eyes I can still see her leaning against the kitchen sink, rinsing collard greens free of grit and starting another chorus of "God Will Take Care of You." Once she got hold of a song she was like a record with a sticky needle, refusing to budge from a too-familiar refrain. Over and over the verses would ring, her raspy alto punctuated now and again by the humming and moaning that characterize black church singing. Her music kept her company the way a radio would. As far as she was concerned, washing clothes, ironing dresses, mopping the floor or cooking dinner all went better with a touch of gospel. So she sang to her heart's content.
I think about this often, particularly when I reach for a hymnal on Sunday mornings. Thumbing my way through red-tipped pages as the organist lays down an introductory chorus, I suddenly realize I already know most of these songs by heart. By osmosis, really. Years of my grandmother's singing have grounded me in the traditions of our church.
Sunday morning means many things to many people: leisurely brunches, the New York Times, house-hunting, "Face the Nation," a fun run. But to me, Sunday morning means one thing — church. Even if I'm not in one. Church penetrates my psyche as deeply as it is woven into the fabric of African America. It is not for nothing that Martin Luther King Jr. called eleven o'clock Sunday morning the most segregated hour in America. Though Time and Newsweek find rising church attendance among aging baby boomers a phenomenon worthy of cover stories, churchgoing has never gone out of style in my neighborhood.
Growing up, preparing for church was like running a marathon, a constant race to get washed, dressed, fed and seated in a pew before the processional played. To meet this goal, hair cleaned and pressed the night before needed curls put in the next morning. A pair of Mary Janes — their patent-leather uppers more shiny and black against the crispness of white, lace-trimmed anklets — had to be strapped on and coordinated with one of several dresses reserved for Sunday only. A hat, often of straw and with an elastic band that unmercifully chafed the chin, respectfully covered my head and decimated my do, while chamois-soft gloves that covered fingers held a tiny purse, into which my mother always slipped a 10-cent offering securely wrapped in a square, cotton hankie.
And so it went, this Sunday morning routine, this weekly test of Job that brought high hosannas if successful, and something more wrathful if not. But more than anything, it continued a tradition.
My mother and her two sisters were raised in the church. They met their future husbands there, married them there, then dutifully brought their own children there. Church was the source of nearly every friendship my grandmother had, and accounted for most of the Christmas cards that clogged our mailbox at holiday time. It gave my mother a place to sing, figured in most of the stories she and my aunts told at family get-togethers, and was the one place I was sure to see my five cousins every week. It was also the primary reason I couldn't sleep late on Sunday. St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church wasn't simply a place to pray. It was a member of the family.
In my mother's day, if you were A.M.E. and lived in Cleveland, Ohio, St. John was the church to attend. Built from the ground up by its congregation and seating nearly 3,000 members, it was the oldest of the A.M.E.s in town. It was always kind of a highbrow church, reserved in demeanor and home to several of Cleveland's black bluebloods. Sermons here were refined; anthems outnumbered spirituals, and the last word of the Lord's Prayer was AH-men, never AY-men.
The bloom was slipping off the rose by the time my cousins and I came along during the Eisenhower era. Even so, St. John was still in full flower: Two or three pastors presided, at least three choirs regularly sang on alternate weeks and the house was always packed because the true reward was as much sensual as spiritual. Folks in their Sunday best sat upon plush velvet seats lining mahogany sculpted pews; they walked to the altar on deep-red carpets; they sang to the glory of God accompanied by a huge pipe organ that spewed majestic sound; and they contemplated goodness and mercy while fixed on stained-glass windows.
From the outside St. John was as intimidating as the God of the Old Testament. Front stone steps insurmountable to child-size legs introduced a structure three stories high from basement to the top of twin turrets. Its brick exterior, the color of dirty cranberries until sandblasting loosed years of grime and warmed its complexion, begged awe. I didn't know it then, but the beauty and grandeur of the church's façade set a standard in my mind for what a house of worship should be, forever spoiling me for anything less.
Pomp and reverence aside, from a child's point of view the church was a playground. Carved staircases everywhere provided alternate routes to just about anywhere. Make one wrong turn and only prayer could deliver you to your starting point. Like a fun house, the church's endless hallways and multitudinous doors were a Pandora's box. Who knew where a door might lead … or what secrets you might uncover?
Looking for my mother after service one morning, I got lost and stumbled upon the room where the deacons tallied the day's offerings. From the doorway I heard paper rustle and pocket change jingle as collection plates were relieved of their contents. I watched those stewards of the church press dollar bills flat with the palms of their hands and stack silver coins into heavy, neat piles. There was nothing surreptitious in this work. After all, the tithes and tokens would pay the church's bills, minister to the sick and shut-in, or advance the missionary program. But fueled with a youthful and TV-steeped imagination, I felt like a fly on the wall of a Brink's robbery payoff, watching thieves divvy up their loot. No matter how many times I wandered St. John's labyrinthine corridors, I never found that room again.
But then, I spent most of my time in the basement.
Perhaps it was our parents' way of ensuring themselves a sermon free of mewling babies or squirming kids. Or perhaps they thought we'd feel more adult-like if we had a service to call our own. Whatever their reasoning, at eleven o'clock sharp they headed upstairs to the main sanctuary while we kids were relegated to the basement for "junior church."
Rows of Mission-style wooden folding chairs, bisected by a center aisle and set before a front podium, did indeed look a lot like "church." Not the one our parents were attending upstairs, but more like a storefront church. We had our own preacher — a junior minister no doubt doing penance for some earlier transgression — and our own pianist. But the true sergeant in this battalion of God's army was Miss Fanny, a zaftig woman whose time-worn Bible hugged her body just a skosh closer than the handbag that dangled from the crook of her elbow. She had a double chin, a large mole on her neck and a disposition you didn't mess with.
Miss Fanny struck fear in the heart of every St. John youth. Why? Because above all she believed kids should be obedient and respectful in church. And she was known to carry a switch. It was said her reign of terror extended to my mother's childhood, and she hadn't mellowed with age. So I steered clear of Miss Fanny because she was very good at her job. When she was present there was absolutely no talking, no snickering, no fidgeting in junior church. And it didn't matter if she wasn't looking directly at you because the eyes in the back of her head were radar-precise: If you acted up she knew it and retribution was swift.
Our only respite from Miss Fanny's tyranny came in the singing portion of service. I loved singing, and the hymns picked out for us were always easy songs of few verses and monosyllabic words. One of my favorite hymns was actually a spiritual, written in the vernacular and disdained by my older cousins. But I was always up for a chorus of "Heb'n":
"I got shoes, you got shoes, all God's chillun got shoes, When I get to heb'n gonna put on my shoes, And gonna walk all over God's heb'n (pause), heb'n (pause), Gonna walk all over God's heb'n."
I think it was the pidgin English that my cousins disliked, for we were always made to speak properly. But the words didn't bother me because I was caught up in the tune. In 1954 gospel giant Mahalia Jackson recorded a version of "Heb'n" that begins with a four-bar walking bass, two- and four-accented drum beat and upper-register piano that together sound more like Memphis blues than gospel. When midway through the recording she engages in a call-and-response with the guitar, her "Heb'n" soars and becomes nothing short of sanctified blues. To hear her sing this is a moving experience. Critics say the arrangement is the closest Mahalia Jackson ever came to jazz. Rest assured the youth of St. John gave a more conservative rendering.
Junior church's saving grace was that it didn't last too long. We said our last "amen" at least a full half-hour before our parents did, giving us just enough time to visit Bill's Sub.
Bill's Sub was not a maritime relic from World War II, but a cramped, dingy mom-and-pop store around the corner from St. John. To enter the store you had to descend below street level; I can only assume the proprietor of this shabby establishment was named Bill. I don't remember what staples were carried in the back of the store because we kids never made it past the front. There, next to a single cash register, was a candy counter without equal. Beckoning and teasing like Christmas presents on December 24 were Snickers, Pay Days, Hollywoods, Hersheys, 3 Musketeers, Milky Ways, Zagnuts, Zeros, Good & Plentys, Heaths, Bit-o-Honeys, Planters Peanuts, Dan-Dee potato chips, salted nuts, pork rinds. Resistance was futile.
Early in my churchgoing life my older cousins schooled me in the logistics of paying homage to God and Bill's Sub. The trick was to get the right coins for the offering. Since my mother gave me 10 cents to put into the collection plate, I needed it as two nickels: That way I could give five cents to the church and five cents to Bill for a Baby Ruth or a Fifth Avenue bar. If my mother gave me a dime I was lost. God got everything.
Like many people and places from my childhood, Bill's Sub exists only in memory. Not so, St. John. The pews these days are not nearly as full as they once were; older members are dying faster than a new generation can replace. Plus, a succession of preachers, economic vicissitudes and the usual petty squabbling and infighting that arise when people gather together to do the Lord's work have hurt the church. Still, St. John survives. Looks like future generations will get to experience its wonders the way I once did.
In the Pipeline
"This project is a response to a growing national interest in the role of religion not only in transforming the spiritual health of America, but in addressing some of the country's long-standing social problems."
The central role that the church has played in the development of citizens, the creation of leaders, the development of communities, and the political empowerment of a people are the continuing threads throughout this history. A short list of the stories suggests the significance of the subject and the richness of the material the role of the Black church in the civil rights movement; in the anti-lynching campaigns and the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaign of the 1930s; and in the community development initiatives of the Great Society programs.
"Black religious life is not only central to African-American history, it is central to American history as well. This series is intended to make that clear by demystifying the Black church. In addition to the educational and economic contributions the church has made to this nation, it has often provided the social justice agenda needed to move America forward."
"Pastors have told us that they feel that the church itself needs to know this history, that some ministers and congregations are not aware of the church's rich accomplishments and the great people that have preceded them. And that's true not just of church folk, but of all Americans. One of the key questions is how can this series be relevant in a way that is beyond an academic exercise?
"Religion has been very often a polarizing force, setting people apart from one another, against each other, putting one group in a kind of self-congratulatory, self-righteous position because they had the true religion.
The Black Church
It is common for persons to talk about the black church as if it were one unified entity. In reality there are many different black churches that serve African-American communities. Generally the most influential churches in many black communities are Baptist, which are independent institutions affiliated with one or more of the major Baptist associations. However, black Methodists are also quite strong. The oldest independent African-American denomination is the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, founded in 1787.
Another important constituent of the black church is Pentecostal. These tend to be the smaller, store-front or movie-theater churches that are focused primarily on evangelism and spiritual service, rather than more "worldly" activities. While ministers of some of the larger Pentecostal churches do play a major role in their communities, they are less likely to become part of community-based networks that do not have a major religious thrust.
In some instances, well-known African-American ministers in a community belong to denominations that are overwhelmingly white--Episcopal, Lutheran, United Methodist, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic. Often these ministers are largely supported by the diocese rather than by income generated by their own churches and may minister to relatively small congregations. These congregations tend to attract a higher percentage of educated, middle-class congregants than other churches that draw their membership primarily from minority communities.
In working with black church leadership, it is important to recognize that the involvement of ministers in secular activities is generally encouraged by the black community. Many powerful black politicians are also ministers. For example, during the 1980s, three African-Americans served as members of Conoress while simultaneously maintaining positions as senior minister for congregations in Philadelphia, New York City and Washington, D.C. Generally the most powerful and influential black churches can be identified by three major criteria:
• Size of congregation;
• Length of time that the church has been in existence;
• Number of influential black leaders (particularly elected and appointed officials) who are church members.
Often an individual African-American minister will gain considerable name recognition, particularly in the broader community, even though he or she has a relatively small congregation. While these individuals can be quite helpful, the most resources generally come from ministers who can speak for congregations with hundreds or even thousands of members and whose networks touch other major institutions, such as city, county and school district boards.
Important Facts of the Black Church
1. The black church in America is primarily female in its membership even though the leadership is generally male.
2. Males who attend church regularly tend to fall into two major age categories: under 14 years old or over 60. Boys come because their mothers make them attend and older men often establish church membership when their health begins to fail. Both groups - boys and older men in ill health -- are inappropriate as volunteers for [Big Brother]programs.
3. Adult men in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are active in black churches also tend to be involved in a variety of other activities in the community and, as a result, are often over-committed. In addition, their congregations often rely heavily on these men -- who are relatively few in number -- for volunteer activities within the church and in the surrounding community, leaving them little time for other volunteer tasks.
4. Adult women, particularly those over 40, form the backbone of many churches. Those who are not heavily committed to church work and do not have small children may be excellent prospects for Big Sisters programs.
5. Women with small children who are concerned about their children's values often establish or re-establish church membership. This is especially true of single mothers who can benefit from the various social and spiritual supports provided by black churches.
Black seek
a more just church
They talked about the sin of racism in the church and society, women's ordination, human sexuality, worship and youth involvement in the church. They said they wanted to see crime, education, poverty -- issues that affect blacks significantly -- to be an integral part of the church's agenda.
• "We need not have a spirit of timidity as we respond to the cries of the poor, to crumbling neighborhoods, to disintegrating families,"
• "We have no time to do anything except live the gospel mandate to stand with and work on behalf of the poor and oppressed."
• to develop some ideas and skills that I can take back and motivate our people so that we can move forward into the new millennium,"
• "Black clergy and lay leaders have to face the issues before us. We cannot be complacent because we have made a few gains,"
• address racism, unemployment, affirmative action, war and crime.
community.
• There is a serious sense of urgency to get done what needs to be done." He urged participants to find the power to see things through.
• Americans living with HIV/AIDS, panel member African-Americans comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population yet account for 53 percent of those infected with HIV. Milan urged participants to become knowledgeable about the disease, both personally and in the community, and to become involved in the issue.
Erica Clifton, 20, a junior at Ohio State University, Columbus,
• addressed women's ordination, human sexuality and youth and young adults in church.
• "We need to stop arguing about women's ordination,"
• "Who did Jesus send to tell he was risen from the dead? Jesus had no prejudice about whom [he sent] to spread the good news."
• to stop arguments about gays and lesbians because "ridiculing is not nice by Christians."
• hopes the black community will work at not being divided on the issue of homosexuality. "The church's ministry to and with gay people has been a subject no one wants to discuss ... there are many gay and lesbian people active in very responsible positions in the church.
• "I hope that the black community will not stay on the sideline and say, 'This is not an issue for us,' but that this is a liberation issue that needs our full attention. The gospel calls us to be involved in all situations where oppression exists."
youth
• "We do not know where we stand. There are resources [for me] with no knowledge on how to get hold of them," said Jennings. "I think the UBE needs to take an active role in helping us if we are the future ... extending a hand to help us get the information we need."
• The black community is divided between citizens of the First and Third Worlds, "to be careful not to get caught up in the old divide-and-conquer strategy that plays racial groups against each other. "Developed and developing worlds should seek to build bridges of understanding instead of walls of separation within our various groups."
• , "When and where I enter, the entire race enters with me." Brown-Douglas then challenged participants "to use these words as an outline as we contemplate who we are and what we are as we move into the 21st century.
• "We need to redefine what it means to be on the margins of the Anglican institutions ... to transform our understanding of what it means to be marginalized," she said. "Are we victims or vanguards on the margins?"
• blacks can increase power on the margins by always being visible. "Most people of the dominant group in the Episcopal Church are people of good will and fairness ... but even people of good will could ignore the pressing problems of those on the margins if we don't make our voices and needs resolutely heard and known.
• hopes blacks will bring their gifts of moral courage and preaching the gospel to call for future change. "We have to call the church to walk its talk. We have to lead others to have the courage to transform the society into places of inclusivity, equity, justice and peace so that we might become a beloved community where racism, sexism, heterosexism and other '-isms' exists no more." |
The Black rural church was characterized by a clergy that often held secular jobs in order to support themselves economically. Much of the black rural congregation was poor and although fiercely devoted to the pastor, could not adequately take care of the pastor's economic needs. The churches did not provide pension benefits or health insurance, and this forced the clergy to work long beyond their retirement age. Due to their lack of resources, black rural churches did not participate in many community outreach programs, and very seldomly supported black institutions devoted to higher learning. Despite these shortcomings, the greatest strength of the black rural church lies in the loyalty of its members towards each other and to the church. Even today, the rural church serves not only as a religious institution, but as a social club, a political arena, an art gallery, and a conservatory of music. In effect, the lives of the black rural church members are centered around their church.
Before the mass migration of Blacks to the north, many Blacks living in the urban cities had already organized independent black denominations, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and their Baptist counterparts. During the period of migrations, the urban churches helped acculturate rural migrants to the urban environment. Participation in social outreach programs that provided services to the poor was spurned on by flamboyant messiahs like Father Divine. Eventually, however, the black urban churches began to reflect the differentiation, stratification, and pluralism which the urban environment encouraged. The secular roles that the black church had traditionally nurtured, including politics, education, economics, and even black culture, came under the guidance of institutions such as lodges, fraternities, and civil rights organizations like the NAACP. Furthermore, the congregation reflected economic and class stratification because of the availability of different kinds of jobs. The urban clergy, therefore, could devote themselves entirely to the church because their economic needs were met by those who were relatively affluent in the congregation. Higher learning was also encouraged, and the churches generously donated funds to Christian black colleges.
Due to the increased educational levels found among members of the congregation and the clergy, as well as new modes of communication, a sense of group identity among Blacks began to emerge. Influential thinkers, such as W.E.B. DuBois, encouraged blacks to associate with one another rather than to try to acculturate themselves into the white American society that always discriminated against them. He believed that organized group action along economic lines would allow blacks to earn a better living which would then allow them to support agencies for social uplift. Other social activists, who were products of the Harlem Renaissance, developed a new concept of the Negro. This "new Negro" had self-respect, self-dependence, a new outlook, and assumed roles of leadership. In effect, this new Negro would no longer subject himself to the humiliation heaped upon him by white America. With such revolutionary ideas emerging and taking root, the seeds for the Civil Rights Movement were quickly planted.
Beginning with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, the Civil Rights Movement was anchored in the Black Church, organized by both activist black ministers and laity, as well as supported financially by black church members. Led by Martin Luther King, who combined his theological scholarship with the social gospel passed on to him by his father, the Civil Rights Movement was aimed at empowering the Negro because "Freedom is participation in power". The Black churches served as the major points of mobilization for mass demonstrations and meetings, and the church members actively helped the civil rights workers because of convictions that were religiously inspired. Although the Black Power Movement, which was seen as a cry of disappointment, was rejected by King because it advocated black separatism, other leaders, such as Malcolm X, advocated black nationalism and urged a revolution.
Both leaders, however, recognized that the black community needed to gain economic independence while eliminating certain social evils, such as drug addiction and adultery.
Since the Civil Rights period, a revolution in consciousness that encompasses all Black institutions, including the Black Church, has emerged. Black liberation theology, the view that religion should be viewed and interpreted from a people’s own experience, has influenced the urban clergy. Black pastors are conscious of the need to provide black role models for their members and to support church-related black colleges. In addition, an interest in politics has reemerged, from the Reverend Jesse Jackson's
presidential candidacy bids in 1984 and 1988 to the election of thousands of black officials in large urban areas and small towns. The Black Church has played a significant role in the politics of the past and will continue to do so even though its political nature may be ambiguous at times because of its double African and American heritage.
• The church has a "critical role" to play in mobilizing the citizens of the new South Africa,
• Part of that role is to work with the government – both critically and supportively – in a way that is unfamiliar to those who lived under the apartheid system.
• "The biggest challenge is for the church to learn to work with a government that is legitimate,"
• "Bringing it out the way they did is a very significant step toward the healing of our land," he said.
• "they are nowhere near seeing the process of reconciliation through."
• Churches and other institutions must continue the process by surrounding those still grieving with loving communities, providing counseling programs and training pastors and lay people to become "healing agents."
Churches have traditionally been viewed as places of stability and strength in the African-American community. From slavery through the long racially segregated history of the United States, when African Americans were prevented from building institutions of their own and precluded from participating in the institutions of mainstream America, churches developed and contained civil society for them. In church, one could find politics, arts, music, education, economic development, social services, civic associations, leadership opportunities, and business enterprises. One could also find a rich spiritual tradition of survival and liberation. Whether their leaders repudiated the "curse of Ham," embraced the revolutionary religious vision of Nat Turner, or preached the more reserved doctrine that "Jesus will fix it after a while," black churches have always accepted securing and guaranteeing the freedom of black people as one of their central missions.
During the 1800s, when blacks were struggling to establish their own denominations and their own places in which to worship, they were rebelling against subordinating themselves to the principal institutions of oppression and racism in the country—white churches. Indeed, as Wilmore contended, the movement to establish independent black churches was, in every sense, the first black freedom movement (1983, 78). Thus, though black religion shares elements of evangelical faith and practice, "the black church itself is a precipitate of its own culture, developed from and in response to its own experience" (Lincoln 1999, xxi). Because, to some extent, all black churches share a common history, the term "black church" is often used by historians to discuss all predominantly black Christian congregations. The fact that thousands of disparate groupings can be referenced with meaning as a single unit is a testament to the important role churches play in the African-American community and the degree to which black churches and their congregations have been separate and distinct from both mainstream religious organizations and white society.
Black churches have been aggregated into the singular institution called "the black church" to the extent that they are united by their cultural, historic, social, and spiritual missions of fighting the ravages of racism by "buoy[ing] up the hopes of its members in the face of adversity and giv[ing] them a sense of community"—regardless of denominational distinction, geographic location, or class composition (Myrdal [1944] 1962, 946). Although some denominational and congregational distinctions can be drawn, most black churches share a very similar religious culture. Similar scriptural analogies, messages, songs, prayers, symbols, rituals, oratorical styles, and themes of equality and freedom—even the "sanctuary red" carpeting of many of the facilities—are familiar from church context to church context. Although black churches operate with a high degree of independence, people going from service location to service location would feel little cultural disconnect. The many different congregations of the black church collectively have had the feel of the same organization.
Still, while much of the research has highlighted the importance of the organizational resources that black churches contributed to the Civil Rights Movement, less attention has been given to how the message of nonviolence was constructed by black church leaders to support collective action or why that message resonated so strongly among followers. What was it about the nature and practice of black Christianity, institutionalized in churches, that facilitated nonviolent politics at both the institutional and individual levels? In this article I address these questions by reviewing the ways that churches were involved in the Civil Rights Movement and looking at how the culture of the black church helped leaders to frame the meaning of the nonviolent message and encouraged churchgoers to respond to it positively. Although most studies of the political effects of religion do not focus on the influence of religious culture, culture is important to political mobilization (Harris 1999; Leege, Lieske, and Wald 1991). Although the study of the relevance of culture to politics has been advanced by the meaningful work of scholars like Almond and Verba (1963, 1989), the manner in which culture—particularly the subcultures of minority groups—affects political action is not well understood. In the case of the Civil Rights Movement, the receptivity of African-American religious culture to the message of nonviolence is what really linked the black church to the movement. Reexamining these relationships may help to identify the contemporary opportunities for and constraints to political mobilization through black churches as well as lead to a more general appreciation of the importance and relevance of religious culture in social and political movements.
Churches as Organizational Resources
That black churches helped bring organization to the Civil Rights Movement has been well documented thanks to the embracing of resource mobilization theory by students of social movements. Before the explication of resource mobilization theory, much of the social movement literature asserted that movements resulted from psychological tension caused by disruptive structural or systemic strains. Until at least the mid-1970s, social movements were generally understood to be efforts to relieve these tensions, not to realize explicitly political goals (see Geschwender 1971; Lang and Lang 1961; Smelser 1962; Turner and Killian 1957).
Resource mobilization theory asserts that discontent is basically constant. What really matters to organizers of a movement is "the amount of social resources available to unorganized but aggrieved groups, making it possible to launch an organized demand for change" (Jenkins and Perrow 1977, 250). Armed with this understanding, later analysts of the Civil Rights Movement focused first on the resources that groups external to the black community brought to the struggle and then on the resources that internal organizations could mobilize (McAdam 1985; Morris 1984; Oberschall 1973). Approached from this perspective, mobilization can be understood as the "process by which a group secures collective control over the resources needed for action. The major issues therefore are the resources controlled by the group prior to mobilization efforts, and the processes by which the group pools resources and direct these toward social change" (Jenkins 1983, 532-33). "In the absence of resources," McAdam explained, "the aggrieved population is likely to lack the capacity to act even when granted the opportunity to do so" (1985, 43). As the most resource-rich institution in the African-American community and the one most closely associated with civil society, the church had much to contribute. The resource mobilization literature notes that the black church could offer social communication networks, facilities, audience, leadership, and money to the movement.
Black churches did support the movement with these things. An examination of the national movement or of any city-specific desegregation effort provides ample evidence of this. At the national level, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference served as the "decentralized political arm of the black church" (Morris 1984, 91). The SCLC's mandate was to coordinate nonviolent direct action activities through churches in various locations and its initial leadership was made up of ministers who led many of the largest nonviolent actions in Montgomery, Tallahassee, New Orleans, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, and Nashville. Emphasizing the minimal differentiation between black churches and civil rights organizations, Wilmore recalled that it used to be a truism in many communities that "the NAACP is the black church on its knees" (1983, 142).
Black churches also worked with student-dominated groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) to organize demonstrations like the 1960 Nashville sit-ins which produced very accomplished mass-movement organizers who would go on to become leaders of those organizations. The Nashville sit-ins drew heavily on the resources of black churches. As John Lewis recalls, "The First Baptist Church . . . became a rallying point, it became the meeting place, it became the place where students, young people, community leaders, could come and discuss, debate and argue about what the city should become" (quoted in Morris 1984, 175).
The First Baptist Church, its pastor, Kelly Miller Smith, and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council (NCLC), of which Smith was president, were all integrally involved in the 1960 sit-in movement. Morris (1981) explained that more than a year before the sit-ins, NCLC Project Committee Chair Rev. James Lawson began holding workshops on nonviolent direct action at churches throughout the city. Through the churches and ministers affiliated with the NCLC, students were equipped and trained for nonviolent action, and the black community was organized to support the students once the sit-ins began. In fact, the NCLC leaders organized mass meetings at the churches during which they raised money for bail, enlisted lawyers to represent the students, and promoted the economic boycott that was designed to reinforce the students' demands that lunch counters be desegregated. In Nashville, as they did throughout the South (and as resource mobilization theory might predict) churches provided the organizational resources needed by participants in the movement.
The Message of Nonviolence
Mobilization, however, requires more than resources. The presence of social movement organizations with resources and the existence of grievances are necessary but insufficient conditions for giving rise to social movements. The major critique of the resource mobilization explanation for the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement has been that its proponents ". . . ignore or gloss over mobilizing beliefs and ideas, in large part because of their presumed ubiquity and constancy, which makes them, in turn, relatively nonproblematic and uninteresting factors in the movement equation" (Snow and Benford 1992, 135). Critics of the resource mobilization model have stressed that the significance attached to grievances as well as the actions proposed to address them are socially constructed. Therefore, much of the work done by a social movement organization involves, literally, making meanings and communicating the appropriate mobilizing messages to its constituents.
The ideas underlying nonviolent action, particularly the notion of the "Beloved Community," have often been given little attention. This is probably because most researchers have taken the relationships among nonviolent direct action, black Christianity, and the black church as a given. To be sure, organizations like the SCLC worked hard in churches to make political activism an expression of practical Christianity, but the fact that many ministries refused to become involved in supporting nonviolent protests for the cause of civil rights demonstrates that the translation of black Christianity through black churches into a nonviolent political movement was by no means automatic. Even Martin Luther King Jr. was critical of the involvement of his fellow clergy members in movement politics. He charged them with being both apathetic and otherworldly (1958, 35). In assessing the Birmingham civil rights campaign, Wyatt Walker estimated that as many as 90% of black ministers shunned the activity of the SCLC there (cited in Fairclough 1981, 183).
Today, nonviolent resistance is frequently characterized as an obvious and rational political strategy for the powerless. According to this logic, blacks advocated nonviolently for social change because they lacked the power to win concessions by force. The church became instrumental in this change primarily because it was the dominant institution in the black community. Of course, blacks, like most people, were not naturally inclined toward nonviolent action. Civil rights activist Hosea Williams poignantly expressed this sentiment by stating, "Nonviolence as a way of life was just as foreign to blacks as flying a space capsule would be to a roach" (quoted in Morris 1984, 158). As E. Franklin Frazier commented concerning the Civil Rights Movement, the ideas of Gandhi had "nothing in common with the social heritage of the Negro" (quoted in Kapur 1992, 156).
Moreover, the church was not uniformly supportive of nonviolent activism. Joseph Jackson, the head of the largest black denomination, the National Baptist Convention, rejected the social gospel. In 1961,
Martin Luther King Jr. and a group of ministers from the National Baptist Convention formed the Progressive Baptist Convention in response to the lack of support for social action among the National Baptists (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990, 36). The fact that Jackson continued as the leader of the National Baptist Convention for another 22 years after this incident is, in part, a testament to the diversity of opinion that existed among the ministers of the black church regarding the appropriate role for the church in securing social change. This, of course, does not diminish the important functions that many black churches, even National Baptist churches, performed during the Civil Rights Movement. However, it does serve as a reminder that the movement did not rise from the church and that, in many instances, the resources and ministers of the church had to be actively recruited into the movement.
Mobilizing For Nonviolence
When considering issues of political mobilization for the cause of civil rights, particular attention must be paid to how the message and meaning of nonviolence were constructed by the black church to support individual and collective action. The black church was able to mobilize people for nonviolent action because church membership provided individuals a frame for receiving the message and meaning of nonviolence. A "frame" is an interpretive schemata or way of understanding the world (Snow et al. 1986). Tarrow (1992) has explained that collective action frames work best when they are connected to the cultural meaning and symbols of a movement's audience. Religious culture is one of the most powerful systems of ritual and symbolic meaning in the black community and actively engaging in the activities of the church was very important to the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
Black religious culture provided such a strong collective action frame because the black church had been a "free space" in the black community for centuries. As a free space, the church offered an "environment in which people [were] able to learn a new self-respect, a deeper and more assertive group identity, public skills and values of cooperation and civic virtue" (Evans and Boyte 1986, 17). This was particularly vital in a thoroughly racist society that tried to deny to blacks all of these things. It was the church, and not simply black Christianity, that helped to shape these attitudes. Although internal religiosity can certainly have independent effects, attitudes and understandings about religious matters are significantly affected by the church to which one belongs. Whether otherworldly or this-worldly, the black church communicated the revolutionary message of equality before God. Its songs, prayers, rituals, and doctrines all reinforced this simple truth.
Morris (1992) explained that the development of this kind of "oppositional consciousness" is an important component in political mobilization. Many of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement attempted to draw upon this religiously based oppositional consciousness by referencing biblical stories that reflected God's willingness to work for the benefit of the oppressed. Citing a quote from Andrew Young, Frederick Harris demonstrates how Martin Luther King Jr. was adept at raising this type consciousness among listeners.
Nonetheless, the fact that the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement could tap into an oppositional consciousness when framing their message of nonviolence does not explain why the message resonated so strongly. Though the black church historically operated as an affirming free space, it had not always embraced sociopolitical movements—even those most ostensibly tied to the church's liberational mission. Indeed, scholars have often characterized the black church in the first half of the twentieth century as "deradicalized" and withdrawn from political and social involvement in their communities (see, e.g., Wilmore 1983, chap. 6).
Harris' model of how religious culture acts as a resource for political mobilization helps to describe why the church served so well as a conduit for the ideas of nonviolent social activism. According to Harris, African-American churches "provide African Americans with material resources and oppositional dispositions to challenge their marginality," and at the same time help members "to develop positive orientations toward the civic order" (1999, 40). Harris called this dualistic orientation an oppositional civic culture. "An oppositional civic culture develops attitudes and behaviors that simultaneously support civil society and oppose a system of domination within that society" (67). Viewed from this perspective, the black church can be seen to have engendered in members an oppositional consciousness that predisposed them to challenging society, and concurrently, served to reinforce their attachment and loyalty to the societal regime. Paris observed that black churches have always stressed to their members a healthy respect for the rule of law. He contended that "the loyalty of the black churches to the nation's laws and customs has often limited [blacks] in the kinds of action that they could advocate" (1985, 30) and has prevented them from engaging in forms of sociopolitical action that might in any way compromise a respect for the law or for the political values of American society.
Most nonviolent protests during the Civil Rights Movement were entirely within the bounds of the law. Boycotts, meetings, parades, and mass demonstrations are all perfectly legal. For example, the March on Washington, even though it involved hundreds of thousands of people, was not an act of civil disobedience but an exercise of constitutional rights. These types of nonviolent protests allowed a person to advocate for social change without violating the norms of the dualistic oppositional civic culture they had absorbed through the church. The act of protest was consistent with an oppositional consciousness, but, because the protest was carried out within the bounds of the law, it did not require disloyalty to the regime. Even in cases where acts of civil disobedience did occur, they did not compromise respect for the law. Civil disobedience was usually undertaken to show that local laws were unjust and opposed to the Constitution. As Martin Luther King Jr. explained
Thus, one of the primary reasons that calls for nonviolent social action resonated so strongly in African-American churches was because it related consistently to the oppositional civic culture that the church cultivated. Through nonviolent protest and demonstration, people could simultaneously challenge systematic injustice and racism and still embrace the principles of the liberal society. Both of these aspirations were valued objectives of the church. The Civil Rights Movement allowed individuals to accomplish both at the same time.
Understanding that black churches fostered development of an oppositional civic culture is also useful for understanding different levels of engagement by individual churches during the movement. If the church is viewed as only inculcating oppositional consciousness then it would be reasonable to expect all black congregations to have been heavily involved in movement politics. If the church is viewed only as a conservative institution that promotes loyalty to the social order, then it would be reasonable to expect all churches to have been alienated from movements directed at social change. In reality, individual black churches occupied every position on the continuum of involvement with the Civil Rights Movement. Though virtually all black churches shared elements of an oppositional culture and a civic culture, the exact balance of these that any individual congregation reflected varied from church to church. Congregational-specific characteristics such as socioeconomic background, educational achievement, age composition, ministerial disposition, and theological orientation were undoubtedly important determinants of the balance.
Culture can significantly influence not only mobilization and the types of activities for which groups are likely to mobilize. In the case of African Americans, the dualistic nature of oppositional civic culture helped to effectively frame what nonviolent social action meant and facilitated participation in it. In studies of the relationship between religion and politics, attention is most often paid to the resources that churches contribute to political action or how religion influences voting behavior, political attitudes, and political motivations. Only rarely has culture been considered an important independent component. Religious culture, however, and particularly the religious culture of minorities in society, may reveal much about the nature and practice of the politics of these groups. Considering culture also emphasizes that the relationship between religion and politics is multifaceted and more complex than is often appreciated. The black church contributed resources to the Civil Rights Movement and also provided a context in which the movement could be embraced and understood. Much of this was contingent on the nature of black religious culture, and it was this culture that affected the operation of nonviolent social actions.
References
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Colaiaco, James. 1988. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Apostle of Militant Nonviolence. New York: St. Martin's.
Evans, Sara, and Harry C. Boyte. 1986. Free Spaces: The Sources of Democratic Change in America. New York: Harper and Row.
Fairclough, Adam. 1981. "The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Second Reconstruction, 1957-1973." South Atlantic Quarterly 80:177-94.
Frazier, E. Franklin. 1964. The Negro Church in America. New York: Schocken Books.
Geschwender, James. 1971. "Explorations in the Theory of Social Movements and Revolutions." In The Black Revolt, ed. James Geschwender. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Harris, Fredrick. 1999. Something Within: Religion in African American Political Activism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jenkins, J. Craig. 1983. "Resource Mobilization: Theory and Study of Social Movements." Annual Review of Sociology 49:527-53.
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Kapur, Sadarshun. 1992. Raising a Prophet: The African American Encounter with Gandhi. Boston: Beacon Press.
King, Martin Luther Jr. 1958. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. New York: Ballantine Books.
Lang, Kurt, and Gladys Lang. 1961. Collective Dynamics. New York: Crowell.
Leege, David, Joel Lieske, and Kenneth Wald. 1990. "Toward Cultural Theories of American Political Behavior: Religion, Ethnicity, Race and Class Outlook." In Political Behavior, Political Science: Looking to the Future, Vol. 3, ed. William Crotty. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Lincoln, C. Eric. 1999. "Introduction." In Mighty Like A River: The Black Church and Social Reform, au. Andrew Billingsley. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Morris, Aldon. 1981. "Black Southern Sit-In Movement: An Analysis of Internal Organization." American Sociological Review 46:744-67.
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Myrdal, Gunnar. [1944] 1962. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.
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Black Catholics having their say
I never heard my grandmother sing anything but hymns and Christmas carols. Mostly hymns. If I close my eyes I can still see her leaning against the kitchen sink, rinsing collard greens free of grit and starting another chorus of "God Will Take Care of You." Once she got hold of a song she was like a record with a sticky needle, refusing to budge from a too-familiar refrain. Over and over the verses would ring, her raspy alto punctuated now and again by the humming and moaning that characterize black church singing. Her music kept her company the way a radio would. As far as she was concerned, washing clothes, ironing dresses, mopping the floor or cooking dinner all went better with a touch of gospel. So she sang to her heart's content.
I think about this often, particularly when I reach for a hymnal on Sunday mornings. Thumbing my way through red-tipped pages as the organist lays down an introductory chorus, I suddenly realize I already know most of these songs by heart. By osmosis, really. Years of my grandmother's singing have grounded me in the traditions of our church.
Sunday morning means many things to many people: leisurely brunches, the New York Times, house-hunting, "Face the Nation," a fun run. But to me, Sunday morning means one thing — church. Even if I'm not in one. Church penetrates my psyche as deeply as it is woven into the fabric of African America. It is not for nothing that Martin Luther King Jr. called eleven o'clock Sunday morning the most segregated hour in America. Though Time and Newsweek find rising church attendance among aging baby boomers a phenomenon worthy of cover stories, churchgoing has never gone out of style in my neighborhood.
Growing up, preparing for church was like running a marathon, a constant race to get washed, dressed, fed and seated in a pew before the processional played. To meet this goal, hair cleaned and pressed the night before needed curls put in the next morning. A pair of Mary Janes — their patent-leather uppers more shiny and black against the crispness of white, lace-trimmed anklets — had to be strapped on and coordinated with one of several dresses reserved for Sunday only. A hat, often of straw and with an elastic band that unmercifully chafed the chin, respectfully covered my head and decimated my do, while chamois-soft gloves that covered fingers held a tiny purse, into which my mother always slipped a 10-cent offering securely wrapped in a square, cotton hankie.
And so it went, this Sunday morning routine, this weekly test of Job that brought high hosannas if successful, and something more wrathful if not. But more than anything, it continued a tradition.
My mother and her two sisters were raised in the church. They met their future husbands there, married them there, then dutifully brought their own children there. Church was the source of nearly every friendship my grandmother had, and accounted for most of the Christmas cards that clogged our mailbox at holiday time. It gave my mother a place to sing, figured in most of the stories she and my aunts told at family get-togethers, and was the one place I was sure to see my five cousins every week. It was also the primary reason I couldn't sleep late on Sunday. St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church wasn't simply a place to pray. It was a member of the family.
In my mother's day, if you were A.M.E. and lived in Cleveland, Ohio, St. John was the church to attend. Built from the ground up by its congregation and seating nearly 3,000 members, it was the oldest of the A.M.E.s in town. It was always kind of a highbrow church, reserved in demeanor and home to several of Cleveland's black bluebloods. Sermons here were refined; anthems outnumbered spirituals, and the last word of the Lord's Prayer was AH-men, never AY-men.
The bloom was slipping off the rose by the time my cousins and I came along during the Eisenhower era. Even so, St. John was still in full flower: Two or three pastors presided, at least three choirs regularly sang on alternate weeks and the house was always packed because the true reward was as much sensual as spiritual. Folks in their Sunday best sat upon plush velvet seats lining mahogany sculpted pews; they walked to the altar on deep-red carpets; they sang to the glory of God accompanied by a huge pipe organ that spewed majestic sound; and they contemplated goodness and mercy while fixed on stained-glass windows.
From the outside St. John was as intimidating as the God of the Old Testament. Front stone steps insurmountable to child-size legs introduced a structure three stories high from basement to the top of twin turrets. Its brick exterior, the color of dirty cranberries until sandblasting loosed years of grime and warmed its complexion, begged awe. I didn't know it then, but the beauty and grandeur of the church's façade set a standard in my mind for what a house of worship should be, forever spoiling me for anything less.
Pomp and reverence aside, from a child's point of view the church was a playground. Carved staircases everywhere provided alternate routes to just about anywhere. Make one wrong turn and only prayer could deliver you to your starting point. Like a fun house, the church's endless hallways and multitudinous doors were a Pandora's box. Who knew where a door might lead … or what secrets you might uncover?
Looking for my mother after service one morning, I got lost and stumbled upon the room where the deacons tallied the day's offerings. From the doorway I heard paper rustle and pocket change jingle as collection plates were relieved of their contents. I watched those stewards of the church press dollar bills flat with the palms of their hands and stack silver coins into heavy, neat piles. There was nothing surreptitious in this work. After all, the tithes and tokens would pay the church's bills, minister to the sick and shut-in, or advance the missionary program. But fueled with a youthful and TV-steeped imagination, I felt like a fly on the wall of a Brink's robbery payoff, watching thieves divvy up their loot. No matter how many times I wandered St. John's labyrinthine corridors, I never found that room again.
But then, I spent most of my time in the basement.
Perhaps it was our parents' way of ensuring themselves a sermon free of mewling babies or squirming kids. Or perhaps they thought we'd feel more adult-like if we had a service to call our own. Whatever their reasoning, at eleven o'clock sharp they headed upstairs to the main sanctuary while we kids were relegated to the basement for "junior church."
Rows of Mission-style wooden folding chairs, bisected by a center aisle and set before a front podium, did indeed look a lot like "church." Not the one our parents were attending upstairs, but more like a storefront church. We had our own preacher — a junior minister no doubt doing penance for some earlier transgression — and our own pianist. But the true sergeant in this battalion of God's army was Miss Fanny, a zaftig woman whose time-worn Bible hugged her body just a skosh closer than the handbag that dangled from the crook of her elbow. She had a double chin, a large mole on her neck and a disposition you didn't mess with.
Miss Fanny struck fear in the heart of every St. John youth. Why? Because above all she believed kids should be obedient and respectful in church. And she was known to carry a switch. It was said her reign of terror extended to my mother's childhood, and she hadn't mellowed with age. So I steered clear of Miss Fanny because she was very good at her job. When she was present there was absolutely no talking, no snickering, no fidgeting in junior church. And it didn't matter if she wasn't looking directly at you because the eyes in the back of her head were radar-precise: If you acted up she knew it and retribution was swift.
Our only respite from Miss Fanny's tyranny came in the singing portion of service. I loved singing, and the hymns picked out for us were always easy songs of few verses and monosyllabic words. One of my favorite hymns was actually a spiritual, written in the vernacular and disdained by my older cousins. But I was always up for a chorus of "Heb'n":
"I got shoes, you got shoes, all God's chillun got shoes, When I get to heb'n gonna put on my shoes, And gonna walk all over God's heb'n (pause), heb'n (pause), Gonna walk all over God's heb'n."
I think it was the pidgin English that my cousins disliked, for we were always made to speak properly. But the words didn't bother me because I was caught up in the tune. In 1954 gospel giant Mahalia Jackson recorded a version of "Heb'n" that begins with a four-bar walking bass, two- and four-accented drum beat and upper-register piano that together sound more like Memphis blues than gospel. When midway through the recording she engages in a call-and-response with the guitar, her "Heb'n" soars and becomes nothing short of sanctified blues. To hear her sing this is a moving experience. Critics say the arrangement is the closest Mahalia Jackson ever came to jazz. Rest assured the youth of St. John gave a more conservative rendering.
Junior church's saving grace was that it didn't last too long. We said our last "amen" at least a full half-hour before our parents did, giving us just enough time to visit Bill's Sub.
Bill's Sub was not a maritime relic from World War II, but a cramped, dingy mom-and-pop store around the corner from St. John. To enter the store you had to descend below street level; I can only assume the proprietor of this shabby establishment was named Bill. I don't remember what staples were carried in the back of the store because we kids never made it past the front. There, next to a single cash register, was a candy counter without equal. Beckoning and teasing like Christmas presents on December 24 were Snickers, Pay Days, Hollywoods, Hersheys, 3 Musketeers, Milky Ways, Zagnuts, Zeros, Good & Plentys, Heaths, Bit-o-Honeys, Planters Peanuts, Dan-Dee potato chips, salted nuts, pork rinds. Resistance was futile.
Early in my churchgoing life my older cousins schooled me in the logistics of paying homage to God and Bill's Sub. The trick was to get the right coins for the offering. Since my mother gave me 10 cents to put into the collection plate, I needed it as two nickels: That way I could give five cents to the church and five cents to Bill for a Baby Ruth or a Fifth Avenue bar. If my mother gave me a dime I was lost. God got everything.
Like many people and places from my childhood, Bill's Sub exists only in memory. Not so, St. John. The pews these days are not nearly as full as they once were; older members are dying faster than a new generation can replace. Plus, a succession of preachers, economic vicissitudes and the usual petty squabbling and infighting that arise when people gather together to do the Lord's work have hurt the church. Still, St. John survives. Looks like future generations will get to experience its wonders the way I once did.
In the Pipeline
"This project is a response to a growing national interest in the role of religion not only in transforming the spiritual health of America, but in addressing some of the country's long-standing social problems."
The central role that the church has played in the development of citizens, the creation of leaders, the development of communities, and the political empowerment of a people are the continuing threads throughout this history. A short list of the stories suggests the significance of the subject and the richness of the material the role of the Black church in the civil rights movement; in the anti-lynching campaigns and the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaign of the 1930s; and in the community development initiatives of the Great Society programs.
"Black religious life is not only central to African-American history, it is central to American history as well. This series is intended to make that clear by demystifying the Black church. In addition to the educational and economic contributions the church has made to this nation, it has often provided the social justice agenda needed to move America forward."
"Pastors have told us that they feel that the church itself needs to know this history, that some ministers and congregations are not aware of the church's rich accomplishments and the great people that have preceded them. And that's true not just of church folk, but of all Americans. One of the key questions is how can this series be relevant in a way that is beyond an academic exercise?
"Religion has been very often a polarizing force, setting people apart from one another, against each other, putting one group in a kind of self-congratulatory, self-righteous position because they had the true religion.
The Black Church
It is common for persons to talk about the black church as if it were one unified entity. In reality there are many different black churches that serve African-American communities. Generally the most influential churches in many black communities are Baptist, which are independent institutions affiliated with one or more of the major Baptist associations. However, black Methodists are also quite strong. The oldest independent African-American denomination is the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, founded in 1787.
Another important constituent of the black church is Pentecostal. These tend to be the smaller, store-front or movie-theater churches that are focused primarily on evangelism and spiritual service, rather than more "worldly" activities. While ministers of some of the larger Pentecostal churches do play a major role in their communities, they are less likely to become part of community-based networks that do not have a major religious thrust.
In some instances, well-known African-American ministers in a community belong to denominations that are overwhelmingly white--Episcopal, Lutheran, United Methodist, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic. Often these ministers are largely supported by the diocese rather than by income generated by their own churches and may minister to relatively small congregations. These congregations tend to attract a higher percentage of educated, middle-class congregants than other churches that draw their membership primarily from minority communities.
In working with black church leadership, it is important to recognize that the involvement of ministers in secular activities is generally encouraged by the black community. Many powerful black politicians are also ministers. For example, during the 1980s, three African-Americans served as members of Conoress while simultaneously maintaining positions as senior minister for congregations in Philadelphia, New York City and Washington, D.C. Generally the most powerful and influential black churches can be identified by three major criteria:
• Size of congregation;
• Length of time that the church has been in existence;
• Number of influential black leaders (particularly elected and appointed officials) who are church members.
Often an individual African-American minister will gain considerable name recognition, particularly in the broader community, even though he or she has a relatively small congregation. While these individuals can be quite helpful, the most resources generally come from ministers who can speak for congregations with hundreds or even thousands of members and whose networks touch other major institutions, such as city, county and school district boards.
Important Facts of the Black Church
1. The black church in America is primarily female in its membership even though the leadership is generally male.
2. Males who attend church regularly tend to fall into two major age categories: under 14 years old or over 60. Boys come because their mothers make them attend and older men often establish church membership when their health begins to fail. Both groups - boys and older men in ill health -- are inappropriate as volunteers for [Big Brother]programs.
3. Adult men in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are active in black churches also tend to be involved in a variety of other activities in the community and, as a result, are often over-committed. In addition, their congregations often rely heavily on these men -- who are relatively few in number -- for volunteer activities within the church and in the surrounding community, leaving them little time for other volunteer tasks.
4. Adult women, particularly those over 40, form the backbone of many churches. Those who are not heavily committed to church work and do not have small children may be excellent prospects for Big Sisters programs.
5. Women with small children who are concerned about their children's values often establish or re-establish church membership. This is especially true of single mothers who can benefit from the various social and spiritual supports provided by black churches.
Black seek
a more just church
They talked about the sin of racism in the church and society, women's ordination, human sexuality, worship and youth involvement in the church. They said they wanted to see crime, education, poverty -- issues that affect blacks significantly -- to be an integral part of the church's agenda.
• "We need not have a spirit of timidity as we respond to the cries of the poor, to crumbling neighborhoods, to disintegrating families,"
• "We have no time to do anything except live the gospel mandate to stand with and work on behalf of the poor and oppressed."
• to develop some ideas and skills that I can take back and motivate our people so that we can move forward into the new millennium,"
• "Black clergy and lay leaders have to face the issues before us. We cannot be complacent because we have made a few gains,"
• address racism, unemployment, affirmative action, war and crime.
community.
• There is a serious sense of urgency to get done what needs to be done." He urged participants to find the power to see things through.
• Americans living with HIV/AIDS, panel member African-Americans comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population yet account for 53 percent of those infected with HIV. Milan urged participants to become knowledgeable about the disease, both personally and in the community, and to become involved in the issue.
Erica Clifton, 20, a junior at Ohio State University, Columbus,
• addressed women's ordination, human sexuality and youth and young adults in church.
• "We need to stop arguing about women's ordination,"
• "Who did Jesus send to tell he was risen from the dead? Jesus had no prejudice about whom [he sent] to spread the good news."
• to stop arguments about gays and lesbians because "ridiculing is not nice by Christians."
• hopes the black community will work at not being divided on the issue of homosexuality. "The church's ministry to and with gay people has been a subject no one wants to discuss ... there are many gay and lesbian people active in very responsible positions in the church.
• "I hope that the black community will not stay on the sideline and say, 'This is not an issue for us,' but that this is a liberation issue that needs our full attention. The gospel calls us to be involved in all situations where oppression exists."
youth
• "We do not know where we stand. There are resources [for me] with no knowledge on how to get hold of them," said Jennings. "I think the UBE needs to take an active role in helping us if we are the future ... extending a hand to help us get the information we need."
• The black community is divided between citizens of the First and Third Worlds, "to be careful not to get caught up in the old divide-and-conquer strategy that plays racial groups against each other. "Developed and developing worlds should seek to build bridges of understanding instead of walls of separation within our various groups."
• , "When and where I enter, the entire race enters with me." Brown-Douglas then challenged participants "to use these words as an outline as we contemplate who we are and what we are as we move into the 21st century.
• "We need to redefine what it means to be on the margins of the Anglican institutions ... to transform our understanding of what it means to be marginalized," she said. "Are we victims or vanguards on the margins?"
• blacks can increase power on the margins by always being visible. "Most people of the dominant group in the Episcopal Church are people of good will and fairness ... but even people of good will could ignore the pressing problems of those on the margins if we don't make our voices and needs resolutely heard and known.
• hopes blacks will bring their gifts of moral courage and preaching the gospel to call for future change. "We have to call the church to walk its talk. We have to lead others to have the courage to transform the society into places of inclusivity, equity, justice and peace so that we might become a beloved community where racism, sexism, heterosexism and other '-isms' exists no more." |