That question has dogged me for the last two weeks.  It came up two weeks ago during a prayer and planning meeting with fellow African-American pastors in Atlanta.  The question arose again while meeting last week with African-American pastors and college students in Los Angeles.  I notice that it’s a topic being addressed at a conference sponsored by Anthony Bradley.

It was also the subject of a roundtable discussion sponsored by Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS) and Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life in October 2010 at Union Theological Seminary.  My man Louis Love sent the link to me. The discussion takes place in 12 YouTube parts and features several academics and pastors, including:

Reverend Otis Moss III, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago
Reverend Eboni K. Marshall, Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York
Josef Sorett, Assistant Professor of Religion at Columbia University
Anthea Butler, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania
Eddie Glaude, William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Princeton University
Fredrick C. Harris, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University
Obery Hendricks, Jr., Professor of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University.

Eddie Glaude called the question in a post at the Huffington Post in February 2010, and the roundtable picks up where Glaude left off. You can find the audio here. Below are the YouTube segments.

Part 1–Introductions and Opening Question

Part 2–One Thing the Black Church Struggles to Do

Part 3– [Video missing]

Part 4–”Theological Exotic Dancers” (End of opening remarks), and the Substance of Being “Black and Christian”

Part 5–”You May Own My Body but God Owns My Soul”

Part 6–Rev. Ike Won the Battle with Dr. King

Part 7–What Is the Mission of the Church?

Part 8–Church, Class, Community, Gender, and Love in Action

Part 9–Sexual Ethics and Hermeneutics in the Black Church

Part 10–”Allowed to Be James Brown at Least Once Per Week”

Part 11–”Too Many Christians Take Too Much Pride in Being Christians… The New Heavens and the New Earth Means All of Humanity”

Part 12–Final Remarks; Is the White Evangelical Movement Over in 20 Years?

Based on this panel, I’d say the Black Church is indeed dead. What do you think? Can these bones live again?

Interesting conversation here:

Theological Imperialism and the Black Community from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Thanks to C.E. Moore for this kind review of The Decline of African American Theology.  Here’s Moore’s opening paragraph:

Thabiti Anyabwile’s The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity is a triumph. Let’s admit it—theology isn’t a very sexy topic. When you couple the subject of theology with the subject of history, you’re likely in for a mind-numbing experience. But,The Decline was a book I couldn’t put down. As far as I know, there are no books about this topic in the popular market. Anyabwile has helped fill that void and hopefully this book will spark some much-needed dialogue on such an important matter.  Read the entire review.

If you’re not familiar with cogito/credo, you might want to check out their site.  Some very helpful and interesting things offered there.

Have you heard?  That’s the controversial title of an essay written by Princeton professor of African-American church historian Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.  The New York Times covers the controversy here.  The Huffington Post has the original essay.

Apparently another member of the church family has died as well.  Anthony Bradley pens the obit for the emergent church.

I’m off to do some reading, but I’d thought I’d let you know that a eulogy and funeral took place when I wasn’t looking.  If you get a chance to read these pieces, drop by and let me know what you think.  But it seems clear: the only church that lives is the church that faithfully preaches the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

HT: Kellemen

Bob Kellemen at RPM Ministries offers a gracious review of Glory Road: The Journeys of Ten African-Americans into Reformed Christianity.  Kellemen is a good student of African-American theology and church history and offers a warm critique of Glory Road.

For my part, I think Glory Road could be one of the most important, helpful, and encouraging books published in the last ten years on African-American Christianity.  I think its warmth, humor, honesty, and theological integrity

could be a winsome tool in capturing the hearts of many people who have not come to know the wonderful truths and history of the Reformed tradition.  If you haven’t read this book, rush out and make it a stocking stuffer or New Year’s read.  It’ll reward you.

HT: Phoenix Preacher

This is a video clip from Cone’s appearance at Tavis Smiley‘s State of the Black Union a few years back. I can agree with some of Cone’s critique of the predominantly African-American (and for that matter, American0 church, but notice the distortions. How many can you count in this 7-minute clip?

And it’s the stuff that he almost gets right that is the most poisonous and dangerous. Can anybody seriously maintain that this man, a professor of systematic theology, inadvertently misquoted Matthew 16:25 at the end of his comments? What he distorts is so critical to understanding everything that the misquote is sinister.

Vincent Bacote, Associate Professor of Theology at Wheaton College, has published a kind and helpful critique of The Decline of African American Theology. Bacote’s review is an example of the kind of charitable discussion, disagreement, and nuancing that I hoped the rather blunt critique in The Decline would be met with. So, it was a joy to read even as the author being critiqued. Thank you, brother Bacoste.

Bacote thinks that the “postmodern” era that concludes each chapter needed definition earlier in the book. I agree. Fair critique.

He also thought very important historical figures were so lightly treated as to appear insignificant in the story line. The omission of some figures is owing more to the book’s methodology than to oversight or cherry-picking. Because I wanted to work with original sources, persons in their own words, certain historically key figures were omitted. To my knowledge, for example, almost nothing of Richard Allen’s preaching ministry survives to be examined. He was committed to extemporaneous preaching, which means the founder of the first African-American denomination may be studied as a historical and sociological figure, but not very well studied as a theological figure. We await someone like Bishop D.A. Payne before we’re able to look closely at an AME leader’s theological positions. So, this is a weakness in the work but also a legacy of the history. A more complete tome might include more fragmentary comments from such figures.

Only two points in Bacote’s critique missed the mark, in my opinion. First, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that I “chose to forgo any engagement with the major African American denominations. How can one assess African American theology without making much reference to the Church of God in Christ, the National Baptist Convention, the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, and many others?” The book engages with Elias Camp Morris, the first president of the National Baptist Convention, who left a fair collection of sermons and addresses. Also, I’ve already mentioned the book’s coverage of Bishop D.A. Payne of the A.M.E. Church. Payne is prominent in a number of chapters, and is arguably the denomination’s first reformer exercising considerable theological influence on that group.

If I were to write a revision of The Decline at some point, I would like to spend more time thinking about Mason and others from the C.O.G.I.C tradition. As Bacoste points out, it would be helpful to not leave the reader thinking Pentecostal and Charismatic are one flat movement. Featuring Azusa Street and William Seymour so prominently inadvertently creates that impression, but it’s not what I hold.

Secondly, Bacote finds it “dubious” that I would suggest a regulative principle for worship as part of how the decline might be reversed. Practically, every Christian body that takes the Bible seriously has at least some form of “regulative principle” in play. In some way or another, the Bible serves as rule for faith and conduct, even if there is variety in how the rule plays out or gets defined. That seems inescapable to me. Yet, I don’t want folks to think that the book reduces church reform to an application of the regulative principle. Certainly much more than a regulative principle is needed, and I hope The Decline offers some suggestions to that end.

I’m thankful for Bacote’s review. Read The Decline and read his review. May a thousand conversations bloom.

Related posts:
Why Write “The Decline of African American Theology”?
The Legacy of the African American Church: Faith
The Legacy of the African American Church: Justice
Can the Predominantly African American Church Be Reformed?

the potential “resurrection” of Henry Lyons inside the National Baptist Convention, the largest African-American denomination in the U.S., is ridiculous.

From the story:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The ousted former president of a national organization of black Baptist churches is running for the position again, a decade after he was sent to prison for stealing millions of dollars from the group. The Rev. Henry J. Lyons was forced out as leader of the National Baptist Convention USA in 1999 after an investigation revealed he abused his power in the convention to steal about $4 million. He used the money to buy luxury homes and jewelry, and to support his mistresses.

With my silence or inactivity on this series, you’d be right to wonder if I didn’t have much to say about the African-American church in her heyday. You’d be right to wonder, but you’d be wrong to conclude that.

I’m in Birmingham, AL currently, enjoying the sweet fellowship and hospitality of Harry Reeder and the saints at Briarwood Presbyterian. I’m in the heart of the South, and the literal stomping grounds (marching grounds) of the Civil Rights Movement. Fifty years ago, a revolution rang out from this place. The society Americans now live in was unimaginable just a generation or so ago. What happened?

Lots of things happened. Television entered the American home and for the first time Americans saw graphic images of wars abroad and of church bombings, attacking dogs, water hosed children and so on. The pictures of good looking, promising young men like Goodman, Cheney, and Schwartz were flashed on the screen. Television changed how America saw itself. It shrank the country so that families in Ohio could readily see the happenings in Selma and Atlanta and Montgomery. And many, many people, black and white, did not like what they saw.

Television happened. But that wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the African-American church hadn’t happened as well. It’s a well-worn fact that the African-American church was home base and launching pad for the Civil Rights Movement. There would not have been a movement if there had not been a Black Church. And not just a Civil Rights Movement, but arguably an Abolitionist movement either. Through most of her long and storied history, the African-American church has maintained a tenacious grip on justice as a necessary outworking of the gospel.

This is what makes men like James Cone so nearly right when they write about liberation as the gospel. But in being nearly correct they are completely wrong. Liberation is not the gospel. Whether folks are ever liberated or not, the gospel remains. And the freedom that Christ came to give us (Gal. 5:1) is not bound in chains or behind bars or paroled with out bodies. Justice, liberation, mercy are outworkings of the gospel but not the gospel itself. In her prime, the African-American church knew this and lived this.

We seem to put social justice at odds with gospel proclamation. Many today don’t think these can easily coexist. They think that to fight for justice as the Christian church inevitably means the abandonment of the gospel. They may be correct. For since the Civil Rights Movement, the gospel has been thoroughly confused by too many in the African American church with liberation and justice itself.

But even if that caution is correct, to preach the gospel and have no concern and take no action in the cause of justice is as much an abandonment of the gospel as mistaken the gospel. How can a faithful gospel preacher preach the gospel before slaves and never wince at the gross barbarity of that peculiar institution? How can a man claim to live the gospel with fellow brothers in Christ and yet uphold laws that disenfranchise, marginalize, and oppress those same brothers? They may gospel doctrine down pat, but they don’t have gospel living at all! Having a form of godliness, they deny the power thereof.

Not so with the African-American church and the many faithful Christians she birthed who laced up worn but shined shoes, straightened their ties and their backs, and marched in love for justice. At her best, she not only understood the gospel but felt the irresistible impulse of the gospel to do something consistent with the gospel in the face of injustice. Today, to many gospel preachers preach and teach in such a way that the fine edges of the gospel are shaved, sanded, and smoothed until the gospel only tickles rather than pierces. We need to learn from the African-American church how to pursue justice precisely because we understand and live the gospel. And we need to learn from the African-American church that justice and liberation are not idols to worship, or themes to supplant the gospel. Black Church history has enough in it to teach both sides of the issue, to keep us from falling off either side of the horse.

Consider Jupiter Hammond, a slave all his life, addressing fellow slaves on this very dynamic:

My dear brethren, we are many of us seeking for a temporal freedom, and I pray that God would grant your desire. If we are slaves, it is by the permission of God. If we are free, it must be by the power of the most high God. Be not discouraged, but cheerfully perform the duties of the day, sensible that the same power that created the heavens and the earth and causeth the greater light to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night can cause a universal freedom. And I pray God may give you grace to seek that freedom which tendeth to everlasting life.

Hammon continued:

My dear brethren, let not your hearts be set too much on the pleasure of this life. For if it were possible for one man to gain a thousand freedoms and not an interest in the merit of Christ, where must all the advantage be? “For what is a man profited if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (See, Hammon, An Evening’s Improvement, in Sondra O’Neale, Jupiter Hammon and the Biblical Beginnings of African American Literature (Meutchen, N.J.: American Library Association, 1993), pp. 172-73)

I know many free men who reject out of hand Hammon’s reasoning. They do so never having known the lash and the chain as Haynes did. What a convenient place from which to judge a better man–knowing all the advantages he didn’t and none of the oppression. But Haynes is sure correct when he wrote “that liberty is a great thing and worth seeking for if we can get it honestly and by our good conduct prevail on our masters to set us free,” but finally concluded that physical freedom “is by no means the greatest thing we have to be concerned about. Getting our liberty in this world is nothing to our having the liberty of the children of God.”

Consider how Lemuel Haynes reasoned from the gospel outward to the illegality of slave-keeping (original spellings):

But now our glorious high priest hath visably appear’d in the flesh, and hath Establish’d a more glorious Oeconomy. He that not only visably Broken Down that wall of partision that interposed Between the offended majesty of Heaven and rebellious Sinners and removed those tedeous forms under the Law, which savoured so much of servitude, and which could never make the comers thereunto perfect, By rendering them obsolete: but he has removed those many Embarisments, and Distinctions, that they were incident to, under so contracted a Dispensation. So that whatever Bodily imperfections, or whatever Birth we sustain, it Does not in the Least Debar us from Gospel previlege’s. Or whatever hainous practice any may be gilty of, yet if they manifest a gospel repentance, we have no right to Debar them from our Communion. And it is plain Beyond all Doubt, that at the comeing of Christ, this curse that was upon Canaan, was taken off; and I think there is not the Least force in this argument than there would Be to argue that an imperfect Contexture of parts, or Base Birth, Should Deprive any from Gospel previleges; or Bring up any of those antiquated Ceremonies from oblivion, and reduce them into practice.

But you will say that Slave-keeping was practiced Even under the Gospel, for we find paul, and the other apostles Exhorting Servants to be obedient to their masters. To which I reply, that it mite be they were Speaking to Servants in minority in General; But Doubtless it was practiced in the Days of the Apostles from what St. paul Says, 1 Corin. 7 21, art thou called, being a servant? care not for it; but if thou mayest Be made free, use it rather. So that the Apostle seems to recomend freedom if attainable, q.d. “if it is thy unhappy Lot to be a slave, yet if thou art Spiritually free Let the former appear so minute a thing when compared with the Latter that it is comparatively unworthy of notice; yet Since freedom is so Exelent a Jewel, which none have a right to Extirpate, and if there is any hope of attaining it, use all Lawfull measures for that purpose.” So that however Extant or prevalent it might Be in that or this age; yet it does not in the Least reverse the unchangeable Laws of God, or of nature; or make that Become Lawfull which is in itself unlawfull; neither is it Strange, if we consider the moral Depravity of mans nature, thro’out all ages of the world, that mankind should Deviate from the unerring rules of Heaven.

Haynes grew up an indentured servant as well. Served in the American Revolution. Was largely self-taught. Didn’t have the advantages of many of us today. And yet he saw clearly that the gospel and justice go together like hand in glove.

Sometimes I wonder if in the comfort western Christians almost universally enjoy we don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be. How about Zech. 7:9-10. We may learn this from the best of the African-American church tradition.

How would you define “faith”? How would you know faith when you see it?

Though I think many people could give some general definition of faith, I think it remains a misty concept for many others. It’s an intangible. Most folks think you either have it or you don’t. Even though we may talk of little faith or great faith, do you feel that sometimes “little faith” is simply a nice pseudonym for “no faith in reality”?

Sometimes life is harder than steel. Sometimes life mangles and twists us like so many guard rails smashed by speeding, out-of-control vehicles. And in those times of hardship, we discover what faith is and whether we have it.

I’m convinced that perhaps the greatest example of genuine faith in American Christian history is the example left by African Americans who love the Lord. The situation most African-Americans live in now was the stuff of dreams just 50 years ago. Recede further into the history, past Jim Crow, past Reconstruction, past the abolitionist movement, on back to Jamestown and you find a people dragged into “history as terror” or “daemonic dread” as one author put it. He asked, “Who do you pray to in the bowels of a slave ship?”

It’s a good question.

In time, many Africans sold as chattel in the New World prayed to the One True God through Jesus Christ His Son and entered into eternal life. Howard Thurman, a famed theologically liberal African-American pastor and educator, had it right when he pointed out that the greatest irony of American history was that the slaves should pray to the master’s God.

But that irony is why the African-American church’s legacy of genuine, biblical, God-centered faith is so rich and necessary to recover and esteem. Read slave conversion testimonies in a work like Clifton Johnson’s God Struck Me Dead, or the poetry of Phillis Wheatly, and all you find is soul-deep, God-longing faith in the face of life as hard as steel, as stinging as the lash, as cruel as pregnant bellies ripped open, as horrendous as black bodies burned and swinging from trees, as tragic as young men hobbled and amputated, as wrenching families split and wives raped.

How do you survive such an existence? How do you survive such an existence without checking out of reality? How do you survive such an existence without checking out of reality while knowing that “trouble won’t last always”? How do you survive such an existence without checking out of reality while knowing that “trouble won’t last always” and simultaneously working for a better day? How do you endure such an existence without exploding in hate toward others? How do you endure such an existence and make any sense of “love your enemies”? How do you endure such an existence and sing and dance and love and create and laugh?

Only by believing that God is good, that He controls all events, that His justice will prevail, that vengeance belongs to Him, that He hears the cry of the oppressed, that social standing is no proxy for God’s love, that life in His image is infused with dignity even when others don’t think you’re human. Only by believing those things and trusting God himself do you survive such atrocities, and not only survive but thrive and contribute.

It was faith in God through Jesus that sustained the African-American church. I sometimes think we don’t know how to trust God deeply because we’ve not suffered deeply. In fact, God thinks that of us. That’s why suffering is such a central part of the Christian experience. It breeds trust in God and distinguishes genuine faith its superficial counterparts.

So where does a rich and largely suffering-free generation like ours look for instruction in persevering faith? We have to look to those who have suffered horrifically yet trusted God implicitly. Modern examples exist. But as the U.S. celebrates African-American history month, the domestic parable so glaring and glorious is that of the African-American church which by faith endured bombings, lynchings, cross burnings, sharecropping, Jim Crow, Bull Connor, the Ku Klux Klan, chattel slavery, disenfranchisement, Black Codes, auctions, marches, sit ins, ghettos in the north, plantations in the south with no visible means of support, only a sometimes quiet, sometimes singing, sometimes mourning, sometimes active, sometimes ridiculed, sometimes shut out, sometimes demonstrating, all the time preaching faith in God.

If Hebrews 11 were still being written today, the chapter would be twice as long for its inclusion of now forgotten black faces that would have to be included for their heroic faith in God. What did Moses have on Harriet Tuman, Abraham on Jupiter Hammond, Gideon on Nat Turner, Isaac on Denmark Vesey, or Sampson on George Liele? Nothing.

At her finest, the African-American church offers the most compelling example of centuries-long persecution-triumphing trust in God. May we learn from her and live like her.