The New Black
Our Cultural Elimination
Gilligan's Island
For the last few months, I’ve been surveying local churches
here, and this is what I am seeing. The black church remains
largely unchanged from what I remember before I more or less
dropped out of the local scene several years ago. They are still
singing the same—exact same—handful of old, dusty songs from
these choirs’ extremely limited repertoire. The old, dusty
deacons are still grinding the worship service to a halt ten
minutes into it by insisting on lining up and conducting their
dreary and completely useless “devotion.” Everybody is still
over-dressed and ridiculously so, with many of the elder men
matching their shoes to their belts and wearing incredibly loud
pastel-colored suits. Our dear sisters are still spending a
small fortune on ever more gregarious, huge, stupid-looking hats
that make them appear to be wearing lamp shades on their heads,
along with shiny skirt suits a size or two too small and gapping
at the buttons, along with stiletto “Eff Me” shoes that make
them look more like Madams at a whorehouse than “saints.”
What has changed, though, is, to my observation, attendance at
these places is shrinking somewhat dramatically. There are
several reasons for this. The main reason is the time warp these
places are stuck in. As a kid, as a poor kid, summer left me
with two choices: go outside and play (which we were not allowed
to do; my single mom worried about us being on the street while
she was at work) or lie around the house all day watching reruns
of Gilligan’s Island, perhaps the most insipid show ever made. I
found Gilligan’s Island ultimately very depressing because, no
matter what those folks did, they could not get off of that
island. I did not find it funny in any way, and the futility of
their efforts literally depressed me. But it was on every day
and every day my sister watched it (or, more accurately,
selected that channel and then took the knob to the TV with
her).
Black churchgoers, here, are similarly tiring of the rerun their
local churches are offering them. The harsh reality of the
country’s economic downturn impacted our families in terrible
ways, while the black churches, here at least, failed to flex or
adjust to the crisis confronting so many of their members.
Facing joblessness and possible homelessness is a huge wake-up
call, one which I suspect left many of our families desperate
for more meaning and more substantiality from their local house
of worship, only to discover there was no “there” there. It was
just Gilligan’s Island, the church going through its weekly and
annual motions, the pastor driving his luxury car, his wife
waddling down the aisle in her fur coat. But I’m losing my
house. Where is God in all of that?
Paradoxically in the white churches here, many of which dwarf
the black churches by an easy factor of five to ten, I am seeing
a dramatic un-clenching of butt cheeks. I am seeing white
churches, once a little too tight, a little too snooty, having
now been converted to something more evocative of a dance club,
with laser shows and theater lighting and loud—extremely
loud—rock music, wailing guitars and people, young and old, in
jeans and wrinkled, oversized shirts jumping up and down while
the drummer hammers away. Huh?! What the heck happened here?!? I
am seeing more and more white churches becoming more Spirit led
and more open to free worship, people crying out, raising hands.
Most of these places have rigidly-timed worship services which,
on their face, seem diametrically opposed to the nature of free
worship. Yet I’ve found most of these worship services to be,
oddly, fulfilling. Quick, yes, but they don’t feel quick when
you’re there. There is a genuine and well-planned, efficient
service that includes both Holy Communion and a thoughtful and
often in-depth sermon. I’ve left these places feeling quite full
while glancing at my phone and realizing it’s still quite early
in the day, which allowed me to then drive to a black church,
one of which had a total of thirteen people in attendance, its
worship beginning at 10:00 and the benediction not arriving
until 1:15 PM. The guest evangelist there kept referring to the
Ephesians as “The Church at Edifice.”
I’m seeing more and more black faces at these white
churches. Jeans and sneakers, cappuccinos in hand,
clusters of blacks appear throughout the warehouse-sized
sanctuaries, nodding to the CCM-style (i.e. “white” contemporary
Christian) music and amening the pastor, who just as often looks
like he just rolled out of bed as he idly paces back and forth
beneath huge, glitzy high-definition monitors. I tend to think of these
places as Entertainment Churches. I also think of them as Low Investment
Churches because they require very little of us. There is an
appeal but very little pressure and absolutely no guilt-tripping
over tithes and offering. There are numerous opportunities for
involvement but, with typically no mass choir and just a small
rhythm section, many onlookers likely despair about getting
involved with worship. Besides, they’re not playing our song,
anyway. Most of these places preach inclusion but they actually
mean racial tolerance and not a genuine inclusivity which would
include LGBT persons and even persons of other faiths. The
lack of diversity in their music is a dog whistle that signals
their openness is conditional: we are welcome but welcome as
visitors. Should we wish to make these places our home, we must
abandon who we are.
All of which seems perfectly fine for an increasing number of
black families here. I say “black” because Latino Christians
have it going on, here. Evangelical Latino churches is an
enormous growth industry in Ourtown, with several Latino
churches now approaching MegaChurch status. There is only one
black church in town that has seemingly escaped the time warp
and achieved mini-Mega, on its way to MegaChurch. It has
achieved this largely on the strength of its pastor being wholly
unconcerned about fitting into the Good Ol’ Boys club or about
breaking traditional dreary customs (like the singing deacons
and so forth) while remaining disciplined and focused on
building families and lives. The church is both revered and
hated on and her pastor routinely criticized not for any
professed acceptance of LGBT persons but by his staunch refusal
to turn them—or anyone else—away. Several smaller churches here
privately grouse that this church is stealing their members,
which is not true, their members are leaving. There’s a
difference. Some are surely heading to this fast-growing
ministry, but many are also heading to the white Entertainment
Churches as well. Their departure has less to do with any other
ministry “stealing members” as it has to do with the absence of
Jesus from their own house. They’ve replaced Jesus with the
singing deacons and the vain pastor’s wife and with Gilligan’s
Island reruns. The recession was the defibrillator jolt that
dislodged many black churchgoers from their home base and sent
them out surveying, as I have been surveying, the landscape in
search of a more meaningful Sunday experience. But, at what
cost? What does the migration of blacks to white MegaChurches
mean for our tradition and culture?
Harder Than It Looks: Real diversity means everybody gets something, everybody gives up something..
Seat Fillers
I am seeing lots of persons of color in these churches. I am not
seeing them sitting with white people so much as sitting with other black
people surrounded by white people. What I am not seeing are persons of
color in executive positions at these places. I am not seeing cultural
diversity in their graphic presentations, in their branding, not hearing
it in their music. I have seen no sincere effort put forward to truly
open any of these places to blacks in the sense of having a black pastor
on staff or any black music as part of their worship. We are, at best,
guests, welcome so long as we park our culture and tradition at the
door. We are welcome to join, to become a part of their family, like
the adopted Vietnamese girl who is loved and cherished by her new American family who then
systematically erase all aspects of the child’s
heritage.
In a more cynical sense, many of these churches use blacks as
seat-fillers. We are welcomed and encouraged to come—perhaps through
some outreach or, as one Denver church smartly devised, a community
choir—but we have no actual voice in the church’s decision-making. The
rationale behind recruiting minority groups is largely to make the place
look fuller. People want to come to a full church. Like dance clubs,
most people become suspicious of half-empty churches. It’s likely many
white church leaders know or suspect blacks won’t contribute much
financially to the church, but are welcome to take up space in the
sanctuary because that helps the place look fuller and paints the church
as inclusive.
The shot callers at many large white churches are near exclusively
white. Several have black worship leaders, but a worship leader is a
safe gig to give to a black person because worship leaders are not
usually a deciding voice in church administration. But he’s there every
Sunday, down front, making the church seem inclusive when it is anything
but.
I was recruited as co-pastor of a white church, here, given the specific
mission of increasing diversity. But every effort I made to do that made
the lead pastor uncomfortable. Every idea tabled, every objection or
concern about choices the church was making dismissed. The lead pastor’s
failure to take me seriously became the model for the church, which
continued to operate as if I wasn’t there because, for all practical
intents, I wasn’t. These weren't bad people. They certainly weren't mean
or evil people. Change simply made them incredibly nervous, proving it's
far easier to intellectualize cultural diversity than it is to institute
it in a practical and meaningful way.
Shout To The Lord: Not our music, not even concerned about it.
Know Your Purpose
Real diversity requires sacrifice. Lip service diversity says, “Come be
our seat-fillers,” while we have our service just as we’ve always done
and just as we like it. Real diversity allows all involved to get
something and causes all involved to give up something. An inclusive
church will have at least two persons of color in key executive
positions; a real minority voice in decision-making.
Real diversity moves beyond tolerance and into patience. Patience
means wait your turn, or, more specifically, Everybody Gets A Turn.
You don’t get to run your white program dominated by your exclusively
white pastoral staff and call your church “diverse.” Blacks may be
filling seats at your white church, but that’s all they’re doing.
Somewhere, on some level, many of those people are wishing, every
Sunday, for just a crumb from the table; one song, one guest speaker,
that connects to them in a meaningful way.
I digress to underscore the exact reverse is true of black churches,
stuck in their 1965 time warp, here. There is no serious effort that I
am aware of to multiculturally evolve our black experience. Whites are
welcomed, but they’re also stared at as we wonder what they’re doing
here. Whites are welcome to sit and watch US have OUR service.
I've known some white churches who attempt a kind of cultural neutrality,
which means, essentially, Nobody Gets Nothin.' Which isn't entirely true
because, in American culture, neutral defaults to white. A culturally
neutral recital of a popular hymn, scrubbed of any possible stylistic
interpretation, will sound white. Thus, even a decision to forego any
cultural accretions at all is a decision to promulgate white culture.
This leaves many black seekers in a real bind. Far too many black
churches simply aren't getting it done. Crumbling infrastructure,
egregiously bad and, worse, irrelevant preaching, consistently
oppressing people for money, loud, mean divas running everything, always
crying broke while the pastor lives in relative luxury. Many of us are
simply tired of that; we want off Gilligan's Island. Which leaves
us with the choice of perhaps starting our own church and struggling
through overwhelming stress or giving up on church altogether and
staying home. In that view, many blacks who wash up on the shore of
these white churches are a kind of refugee class, desperate for a
meaningful experience with Christ and, finding little or no alternative,
willing to abandon everything that makes them unique and special in the
eyes of God in exchange for a reasonable and stable church life. For me,
this is a false choice. First, our own churches need to get in the game
but, beyond that, all churches—of all ethnic persuasions—need to go
back to the bible and repent of being so culturally constipated.
Jeans And Flip-Flops: Doesn't look like church, doesn't sound like church..
The Fix
So, what’s the answer? As I get older (and older, and older) I am
realizing the answer to complex questions often lies in the simplicity
of the scripture, The source of most Christian conflict is our failure
to place Christ at the center of our lives. Instead, our own ego resides
in the space where Christ should be. For, if Christ were there, we
wouldn’t have the dead Gilligan’s Island churches or the exploitative
White Entertainment Churches using minorities as seat-fillers. Instead,
we’d have church; an inclusive and diverse experience modeled in the
second chapter of Acts. This group of people were incredibly diverse,
"God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven," who'd assembled in
Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks. "When they heard this sound, a crowd
came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in
his own language." [Acts 2:5-6]
This was the practical need for the phenomena of
speaking in tongues. This spiritual gift first appeared not to convince
anybody of God’s presence or to lord it over people who do not speak in
tongues. The gift was given—write this down someplace—to communicate.
Most people today use this gift as a cheap trick to convince others of
their holiness or their connection to God, but this is an improper use
of tongues because our contemporary usage fails to communicate
anything to anyone. It is, at best, a mystery. At worst, it is
gibberish. I assume an overwhelming number of the faithful babbling in
"tongues” are simply faking it or are repeating a genuine experience
they once had by repeating fragments they’ve heard or learned over and
over. This is not a genuine move of God, and as Paul taught in 1
Corinthians 14, it is an inappropriate distortion of this particular
gift.
The gift of tongues was given to increase diversity.
Diversity was important to God and, by biblical model, ordered from the
very birth of the Church. It is the height of
vanity and, yes, stupidity for churches—black or white—to run around
screaming in “tongues” while doing nothing to increase their diversity,
since diversity is what tongues was all about. It was a practical gift
given, write it down, to communicate with vast numbers of people from
many lands who spoke many languages and dialects within those languages.
The early church was all about diversity, about unconditional acceptance
and love, giving to each other as they had need.
We don’t do this anymore. Nobody’s going to sell their house and pool
their money with the church because the church can no longer be
unconditionally trusted. Pastors will line their pockets or will send
the money overseas to fix potholes in Uganda (not joking) while people
around the corner from the church go hungry. But this is the model: we
work together. Nobody owns anything, nobody is in over their head with
some crazy mortgage or healthcare costs. Everybody helps everybody.
There is no “them” or “us,” and, rather than homogenize or eliminate, the church spoke to each one in
his or her
own language, in their own culture.
Today, churches white and black practice something much closer to
cultural elimination. All are welcome, but all are welcome to speak our
language and embrace our culture and values. I’ve seen virtually no
effort in the black church to make itself in any way relevant to whites,
and I am seeing mostly half-hearted lip service from white churches
unwilling to make diversity a real priority because, let’s face it,
there’s no upside to it. Blacks aren’t going to contribute to the church
in significant amounts to make much difference if they all walked out en
masse, and the white majority is largely indifferent to black culture or
the moral imperatives of cultural inclusion. This sounds like I am
excoriating whites, but blacks are so much more guilty of this behavior.
Any given Sunday, your average black churchgoer thinks not at all, I
mean not even one bit, about addressing the cultural iterations of
whites or modifying their Sunday experience in any way to accommodate
them. Neither extreme has anything to do with the biblical model or the
personal example of Jesus Christ.
Until we are willing to humble ourselves, to stop being so culturally
selfish and myopic, we can only expect the reruns to continue.
Christopher J. Priest
19 May 2014
editor@praisenet.org
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