The fear of a black church, from many whites’ viewpoint, is likely not even racial so much as it is economic. Having an investor's mindset, many whites view the arrival of blacks at their church in terms of value depreciation. The very best sense of multi-culturalism never needs to be announced. A truly multicultural church never has to actually call itself “multicultural.” A truly multicultural church will be all things to all people, that all visitors might find something of themselves there in your worship, in your smile, in your love. And they’ll know they’ve come home. Meanwhile, the black church whites should fear is the black church of Martin Luther King. The black church of Rosa Parks and James Meredith. But that black church is long gone now.
It
all starts with the music.
We may believe white folks go to white churches because there
are white people there. I don't think that's the case. I believe
white people go to white churches because there is white
music there. Or, more accurately, there is white culture, or
a culture that is familiar and comforting to them, there. What I
am discovering along my way is white folk, in general, can't
abide black music. Oh, sure, they'll invite us over every once
and again for a time of "special" music where we perform like
circus animals and everybody gets a kick out of the good ol'
Gospel hollering. But after we pack up, they go right back to
the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or Jars of Clay or whatever their
thing is. The segregation of God's church certainly does not end
with music, but it surely begins there. I get restless and
squirrely at white churches not because of the white people so
much as the white music. Music sets the tone and creates the
atmosphere of worship. It's been the exceedingly rare church
I've visited that played successfully to both sides of the
aisle. Usually the closest we can manage is Joel Osteen, whose
Israel Haughton-led praise team sounds like, well, Israel
Haughton—white music sung by black people. I've known precious
few blacks who could sing white folks' music with any real
authority or vice versa. We usually get overly soulful
renditions of Third Day or anemic and embarrassing stabs at Fred
Hammond.
I do not believe this to be a race war so much a clash of
cultures. We just use skin color as a shortcut, figuring,
accurately, that most white churches are going to appeal to this
crowd and most black churches to this other crowd. Whites who
enjoy a charismatic Gospel experience will, theoretically, feel
just as at home in a black church as a white one. Blacks who are
into Sandi Patti will likewise feel comfortable at a white
church. There is a tribal awkwardness when someone new wanders
into our midst. New black folk can often fly under the radar at
a black church, but new white folk at a black church will glow
like sea plankton. The reverse is also true, with white folks
swarming to me, I suppose, in a misguided effort to make me feel
comfortable (think about that—bum rushed by a bunch of white
folks. Yeah. That'll make me feel comfortable). In one church,
these folks spoke to me slowly, like I didn't understand
English, and loudly, like I was deaf.
ARE—YOU—HAVING—A—GOOD—TIME?
It was okay, I wasn't part of their tribe. And, next week, I was
back in my tribe and life went on in theirs and that was that.
Only, here's the difference: blacks aren't threatened by white
folks coming to their church. We doubt very many whites will
want to stay. In fact, many black churches would, frankly, love
to have more whites join. But, in my experience, there's been an
undercurrent of hostility present in white churches. Like,
make yourself comfortable. But not too comfortable. There's
this forked tongue thing going on: a cold welcome. An odd
tension that seems present at any white church I visit. A
paranoia that I might just take them up on their invitation and
actually stay.
Which leads me to wonder what, exactly, are they afraid of.
Sabbath Apartheid
Sunday is the most segregated day of the week. Each week,
Christian believers, united by a common faith, nonetheless move
toward polarized cultural spaces at the Sunday worship hour.
While there are, indeed, a growing number of “multicultural”
churches, here in Ourtown, at least, those churches tend to be
white churches, founded by whites, led by whites, with white
folks in the key power positions. These are ministries led by
men and women who, following the conviction of the Holy Spirit,
have made strides to reach out to the community at large, no
longer satisfied by clear racial and cultural demarcations.
Black churches, on the other hand, do almost no work in reaching
out to whites. I’ve observed black churches being fairly hostile
to or, best case, indifferent to whites, as we blithely go about
our business of hollering and wailing.
I was greeted by a Latino pastor at one powerful multicultural
church in the Denver area, who warmly greeted me and took me on
a tour of the facility. Winding through the office complex, we
saw all manner of ethnicities in the staff and leadership. But,
the closer we got to the executive wing, the fewer minorities we
saw. When finally arriving at the Bishop’s wing, the Bishop’s
executive secretary and the top tier leadership offices were all
staffed by whites—a clear signal of who was really in charge
here.
I’m not sure why, in our city at least, blacks have continually
failed to build anything even reasonably close, even a fraction
of the size of even the most modest of modern white churches.
Our buildings are, with low-single-digit exception, small, old,
run-down, raggedy remnants of glories past. Every so often we
slap on a coat of paint and reupholster some pews, but our
finances are only a fraction of white churches because our
incomes are lower to begin with. Whites can and often do write
bigger checks because their disposable income is so much greater
than ours. Whites tend to donate out of their excess, while, in
the aggregate, blacks tend to donate out of their need. Many
middle-class whites tend to focus on investment, while most
lower-middle class blacks tend to focus on survival.
The fear of a black church, from many whites’ viewpoint, is
likely not even racial so much as it is both cultural and
financial. Opening their doors to us might invite a flood of
benevolent fund applicants. Poorly-disciplined youth who wear
down or damage the facility. Pushy, arrogant church ladies
making demands. Well-meaning mothers frying chicken. And the
music, what a headache. Gone is the soft strumming of acoustic
guitars and the even tones of their praise ensembles, replaced
by screaming Hammond organs and banging drums. White churches
have no bass. $50,000 state-of-the-art sound systems and no
bass. It's how you know you're in a white church.
Many whites become anxious about their property values when they
see blacks move into the neighborhood. Having an investor's
mindset, many whites view the arrival of blacks at their church
in terms of value depreciation; perhaps fearing too many black
faces will signal an exodus of their white congregants (and
their checkbooks), replaced by blacks who will give little or
nothing, or worse, will line up for handouts from the church's
benevolent fund.
Long Gone: Abernathy and King: the church we emulate while lacking the courage to actually be.
The Black Church Whites Should Fear
Multiculturalism, in practical application, is usually lip
service. It’s usually surface. It usually has little or no
teeth. To my observation, multiculturalism is simply a structure
set in place to relieve white folks’ conscience while protecting
their interests. Following unwritten rules safeguarding their
investment, they open their doors to us, they warmly receive us,
perhaps even recruit us to sing and dance and what have you. But
the glass steeple is firmly in place. We are welcome there, to
be sure, but are welcome much the way a houseguest is welcome:
we are extended every gracious thing, but the house clearly
belongs to someone else.
The black church of today is nothing for whites to fear. We have
no unified message. We do not, by and large, preach Jesus or
even offer salvation. We have no demonstrable economic or
political clout. White conservatives virtually run the tables at
every election because politics are not widely discussed in the
black church, and black Christians are easily as disenchanted
with the political system as black non-Christians. The black
church poses zero economic threat as the church is so fractured
that no organized boycott of anything is reasonably sustainable
anymore. Remember Black Solidarity Day, when Black America is
supposed to point out its economic and political clout by taking
the day off—literally boycotting everything and not spending
money on anything that is not black-owned? Whatever happened to
that?
Whatever happened to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s national holiday?
Many if not most businesses either do not observe that day or
force their employees to take a vacation day. And that’s just
fine with the black church of today, having long ago forgotten
the sacrifices of our fathers and mothers and all that blood
shed to gain us the most basic of human dignity. We just go to
work like it was a work day. Shamefully, I know churches—black
churches—that don’t even close their church offices on MLK day.
It’s just another day. At my former church, MLK Day came and
went one year without one word, not one, mentioned about it from
the pulpit.
This is not, by any stretch, an institution whites should have
any reason to fear. They outnumber us. They outspend us. They
out-vote us. And, even in their most benign “multicultural”
configurations, they hold all of the power. All of which makes
the anxiety of the average white believer just silly and
foolish. Other than our occasionally screaming at the top of our
lungs and racing around the sanctuary, there’s not a lot of harm
we can do to their church.
The black church whites SHOULD be afraid of is the black church
of Martin Luther King, Jr. The black church of Charles K. Steele
and Fred L. Shuttlesworth and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. The black church of Rosa Parks and Ralph Abernathy.
The black church of James Meredith, Emmet Till, and the Little
Rock Nine. The black church of Maya Angelou and W.E.B. Dubois.
The black church of Medgar Evers and Thurgood Marshall. We
should all fear the black church of Denise McNair, Cynthia
Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins who were killed
while attending Sunday School when a bomb exploded at the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963.
Ironically, this is a black church most white churches would
actually welcome, with open arms. That black church, that
effective black church, that powerful black church, could
actually be a threat to white churches in a way the black church
of today never could be. But the discipline, integrity, and
genuineness of that institution likely would have made it a
welcome addition to most white churches today. This isn’t a
church today’s white church would fear, though they should. The
black church many white churches fear is one they have
absolutely no reason to fear—the black church of today.
The black church of faith, the black church of sacrifice, the
black church of risk, of integrity—that church has evolved into
the Crefloe Dollar clown school and the Juanita Bynum makeup
academy. That church, which once polarized the entirety of the
free world, has spiraled into pathetic self-parody,
fighting amongst itself while fleecing the flock. Careening off
into “prosperity” doctrines at one extreme while desperately
clinging to the 1960’s at the other—with both extremes being
completely wrong.
I do understand the anxiety. I do understand the hesitation, and
I do understand the safeguards white ministries put in place
before “welcoming” blacks and other minorities, conditionally,
into their midst. That hesitation is fair condemnation of not
our culture, not our race, but of our failure to honor the proud
legacy of men and women who suffered and died to make our
materialistic, petty, lazy, selfish way of life possible.
Separate But Equal: Whites head to air-conditioned cathedrals, blacks to run-down hand-me-down buildings.
Celebrating Differences
I have become all things to all men so that by all possible
means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the
gospel, that I may share in its blessings. -- I Cor 9:22
Diversity is a gift. Differences of opinion. Differences of
doctrine. Not to fuss and fight but to win all to Christ. We
should celebrate those differences, not use them to divide us
and to paralyze the work. The very best sense of
multiculturalism never needs to be announced. A truly
multicultural church never has to actually call itself
“multicultural.” A truly multicultural church will be all things
to all people, that all visitors might find something of
themselves there in your worship, in your smile, in your love.
And they’ll know they’ve come home.
Christopher J. Priest
October 2000
28 January 2007
editor@praisenet.org
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