Expressions of Faith: Black Church, White Church, Style, Substance, and Ways Forward

Today we again consider our spiritual practices.  Given the role of the church in the African American experience, race and religion often become entangled.  Presently, we examine our history with the black church and where we stand with it now.

Woodson’s ideas

Which way America:  The black church and liberation theology, or the white church and maintenance of a segregated society?  Perhaps the multi-ethnic church?  Should homogeneous black and white churches become relics?  I see a compelling case for the proposition they both should.

My family and I belong to Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas, a multi-ethnic, socio- economically diverse church in Little Rock.  Henry, who worships at all-black Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, recently sent me a recording of a sermon by his pastor, Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley.  Rev. Wesley’s sermon content and how he connected scripture to a call for compassion and justice for the marginalized caused me to think about the history of the black church, its role in the struggle for social justice, and my personal history with the black Baptist church.

Though my faith is rooted in the black Baptist church, I left after fifty years to join Mosaic.  Why?  I now believe the multi-ethnic, socio-economically diverse church represents the last, best hope for solving America’s racial problems.  We will solve many of America’s other problems only when we solve her racial problems.

In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois wrote that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”  The color line remains the problem even into the twenty-first century.  I now believe we can’t solve the problem of race in this country until men and women of different racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds learn to worship together.  Only then will we learn to work together.  As Bryan Stevenson, founder and Executive Director of the

Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama suggests, magical things occur by putting people in proximity of each other.  We learn from each other.  We “de-other” others.  We see common humanity.  This is the core of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  While teaching the redemptive power of that gospel, Mosaic relentlessly pursues social justice – feeding the hungry, mentoring inner city children, providing immigration services, and more.

As much as black spirituals and black prophetic preaching still resonate with me, I willingly sacrifice that cultural preference in order to help the church overcome racial, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic divisions.

Participating in a multi-ethnic church often requires giving up central cultural preferences associated with historical worship experiences – “ethno-sectarian identity” if practiced in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan.  It is the same here and just as destructive.  Being a part of a diverse church like Mosaic, with its United Nations flavor, requires sacrificing cultural preferences by all worshipers.  That sacrifice elevates the culture of Christ above all contrary “ethno-sectarian” cultures, and allows practicing the true gospel, calling men and women of diverse backgrounds to worship, walk, and work together as one.

Henry’s thoughts

As I’ve said in a previous post referencing religion, I prefer expressing my love in a place where diversity reigns and understanding abounds.  So, Woodson has it right, and I cannot disagree with him.  I believe, however, the realities of

Alfred Street Baptist Church

today do not always make that personal choice practical.  As long as ministries focusing on the black community remain essential to the spiritual, material, and social needs of many black people, the “black church” (though usually open to all ethnicities) remains where I find fulfillment.  The community service these churches render demonstrates the continuing need for such places.  Perhaps those needs will be met in the future in other ways but, for now, I find an Alfred Street Baptist Church the kind of place where my needs, and the needs of the communities it serves, blend harmoniously.

Rob’s View

I’m not speechless in response to Woodson’s missive about the cultural aspects of expressing faith.  I’m seldom speechless about anything.  But, I can’t add much.  His approach emanates from a place of high moral and spiritual virtue.  Woodson, in effect, says multi-ethnic worship serves his fellow human beings.  That service, not stylistic presentation, matters most.  It strikes me if religion doesn’t promote such service, it’s really not worth much.

I come from a similar, if not identical, faith tradition as my co-authors (the black Methodist church, not Baptist).  I’ve gone a different direction, coming to rest in progressive Christianity as practiced in some Unitarian Universalist churches and in the United Church of Christ.  By involving myself in these mostly white denominations, I stated that whatever cultural affinity I once had for the black church, it took a back seat to the theology I found in my new spiritual homes.  Woodson makes a similar statement with his commitment to the theology of the multi-ethnic church.  He finds his “true gospel” in the “United Nations” of his church’s makeup, as I’ve found mine in progressive Christianity.  I believe the proper response to both our paths is:  AMEN!

A Matter of Faith: Three Approaches to Religion

We haven’t spent much time writing about it yet, but as will become evident as this blog continues and in our memoir, all three of us take matters of religion and faith quite seriously.  Though we grew up in traditional, all-black, Protestant (Baptist and Methodist) churches, each of us has taken a spiritual journey that puts us in a different place from where we began all those years ago. With this piece, we start periodic exploration of our journeys in an effort to convey the faith experiences that have taken us to the spiritual spots in which we now reside.

Who we worship with represents one issue we think many may find interesting, given where we started. The issue isn’t insignificant. One of us views the ethnic and racial composition of a congregation as a defining factor in the substance of his faith.  Another of us finds himself torn between an ideal and the practical when it comes to the need for and function of congregations composed of certain kinds of people.  Finally, one of us puts his focus on the theology of his places of worship, sacrificing undoubtedly desirable demographic characteristics for theological purity. None of these approaches is necessarily “right” or “wrong.”  They are just “different” and explain an important component of our religious and spiritual existence.

Woodson’s Mosaic Woodson attends and participates actively in a multi-ethic, multi-cultural, socio-economically diverse church.  Mosaic of Little Rock operates from a decidedly Christian perspective and its members, by and large, strongly profess a belief in redemption and salvation through Jesus Christ as personal lord and savior.  They present varying denominational histories and, most important, arrive at the church from a potpourri of racial and ethnic backgrounds, widely varying economic and social strata, and lacking the homogeneity typically associated with churches in the United States.  If 11 a.m. Sunday remains, as Martin Luther King once said, the most segregated hour in America, Mosaic’s members opted out of that circumstance some time ago.  

Mosaic’s big tent character, for Woodson, includes a substantive theological component.  He says, “Worshiping in a multi-ethnic church demonstrates our commitment as co-laborers with God in bringing the Peace of heaven to earth.” He adds, “If the Kingdom of Heaven is not segregated, then why should the local church on earth be? Failure to overcome racial division within the church makes us less credible witnesses to the faith.” He roots in scripture his view that worshiping in a diverse church means something real spiritually. He cites John 17:21-22, quoting Jesus speaking to God: “That all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. [22] And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them: that they may be one, even as we are one.”   An adherent of the multi-ethnic church sees joining together different kinds of people in worship as a way of bringing people together spiritually, economically, and politically and, therefore, to bring God to all people.

That Old Time Religion Mosaic, and fast growing churches like it (many Christian denominations stagnate or shrink now), may represent a new ideal that connects different cultures. Henry, however, still sees a need for “a place that offers rest for the weary.” Despite his hope and wish that congregations “care not at all about skin colors or the diverse cultures within,” a need remains for churches that primarily serve the spiritual and practical needs of particular ethnic populations. Given what he calls “cultural reality,” he acknowledges settling for a place called “the black church,” despite his desire for a different world. In other words, the practicalities of race and racism demand the continuing existence of places that primarily serve the needs of a historically disenfranchised group. These churches, for example, help preserve a history too often overlooked.

Henry prefers “to express my love in a place where diversity reigns and understanding abounds.”  But, he knows, the realities of America, even in 2017, do not always make that possible. Ministries that focus on the black community remain essential to the spiritual needs of many black people.  Community service that black churches render represents a significant part of the continuing need for such places.  So, Henry attends Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, an iconic black church that traces its history to 1803. According to Henry, it serves a need and that’s just a fact.

Purity   Rob, for the majority of his adult life, has attended Unitarian Universalist Churches.  He’s been a member at Northwoods UU in The Woodlands, Texas since 1991. In the last few years, as his interest in and affinity for progressive Christianity deepened and expanded, he has sometimes attended United Church of Christ (UCC) churches.  These UU and UCC churches are overwhelmingly white, raising the issue of how much it matters what one’s fellow travelers should look like. Theology, not demographics, determines his answer.  That theology makes God as an all-encompassing concept with no all-powerful deity ruling the world and envisions Jesus not as savior but as a human, historical figure who walked the earth for an all-too-brief period teaching timeless lessons that remain models for living.        

Having attended Mosaic with Woodson, Rob finds that church’s diversity amazing, almost seductive.  Mosaic “looks like America,” to quote a former President. He admires the ministerial outreach and commitment to social justice at Alfred Street that Henry reports.  But, he knows, he could never attend either on a regular basis because the theology doesn’t match. The theology at his UU and UCC churches defines church for him. Nothing about the color of the people in the pews changes that.

So, there are three ways of looking at this. How do you look at it?