Reflections on the Scope and Function of a Black Evangelical Black Theology
William H. Bentley with Ruth Lewis
Bentley
I. Dynamics and Stages in the Making
of a Particular Black Evangelical
Black evangelicals, like their white counterparts, are a many-splendored thing, ranging on the spectrum from Fundamentalists of the right to Evangelicals of the left! In my own experience of passing from Fundamentalism to Evangelicalism, I remember how some of my fondest views were tested at the secular university which opened the door to the initial stage of my experience of academia! I had to submit myself and my church-inculcated beliefs to the rigorous analyses and intellectual acid baths which were the trademarks of modern thought customary at that university.
Thankfully, I had already struck out on my own to acquire sufficient knowledge of the world of modern thought so as to be able to answer questions continually plied by my teen-age Sunday School class. I could not answer them at the time despite my sound working knowledge of the Scriptures, and I would not fake answers. Fortunately, I was often counseled by an understanding Christian couple, who were concerned with the holistic development of all children. They encouraged me not to waste the mind
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that God had given me. Such advice was quite revolutionary during the late 1940's, at least in the denomination in which I first learned Christ. Most Pentecostals I was acquainted with had little use for what they called "educated fools." I set myself to become educated but not to become a fool in the process. In this way, I could advance myself, and simultaneously give aid to the youth of my people.
I had already begun to search for written materials which could meet my insatiable quest for knowledge. I felt that such knowledge, no matter what its source, could profitably interact with the ultimate truths of Scripture. I thank God that He led me to the kind of materials which Edward John Carnell, Wilbur Smith and Carl Henry were producing at that time. The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism1 especially opened my eyes wide to a kind of intra-Christian warfare that became basic to my growing knowledge of Fundamentalism, with which I identified — even though I was to later understand that Fundamentalists did not consider me and my kind as one of their own! Pentecostals had not yet been elevated to the status of legitimate Fundamentalists! I also gained insight into some of the reasons why Fundamentalists took certain positions on social issues, especially the one concerning Black-white relations. It was the beginning of my struggles to gain understanding of how one could be doctrinally correct and, at the same time, hold backward attitudes toward such an important issue as race in America. I am still trying!
My subsequent educational experiences at the university unsettled me in yet another way. I had difficulty grasping how men and women with whom I had little in common Scripturally were so openly warm, friendly, and accommodating — despite
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obvious racial differences! My mind was greatly stretched, though not blown, by these antinomies.
Time, learning, and maturation, however, have helped me to understand things much better now. I have come to see, if not to fully understand, how deeply rooted American racial prejudice is, and how myopic many otherwise good people can be to its prevalence! It infests and infects all of us — Fundamentalist, Evangelical, liberal, neo-liberal, secularist, etc. Throughout American secular and church history, it has proven thus far to be inseparable from both secular education and theological theory and practice. I did not escape racism and its deadening effects when studying at Roosevelt University, but I did come to understand many of its subtle, and not so subtle, nuances. I learned there something that would be amply reinforced when I undertook evangelical studies — how much education can conceal even as it reveals. Some of the most scholarly studies on racism in American secular and religious life have been done by the most brilliant men and women around; and yet these same studies have manifested ideas that very clearly evidence racial bigotry.
In this awareness of ubiquitous racial prejudice, I went beyond W.E. B. DuBois, one of my most revered mentors. At this point, it is important for your understanding of where I am coming from on Black evangelicalism for me to give some background on DuBois and the importance of his contribution to the world. DuBois never seemed to have grasped the lessons mentioned above. Throughout his long life span, beginning with his high school studies in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and continuing through his Harvard doctoral studies, and concluding with post-doctoral studies at the University of Berlin, DuBois ever seemed to be in
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pursuit of the rainbow, at the end of which would be found the precious pot of gold — the humanists' ultimate belief that proper education in its broadest sense and the applications thereof to the human situation would bring uncompromised benefits to all mankind. Because of his undying faith in this undeniably worthy idea, he willingly and selflessly sacrificed himself in the cause of racial justice and human rights. Even though he received a Harvard education (one of the earliest Black American recipients of the coveted Harvard Ph.D.) and studied in world economics at the University of Berlin, under the illustrious A. Schmoeller, no American college or university, with the exception of Wilberforce and Atlanta, would hire him. Though he was a colleague of William James and other Harvard greats, initiator of the famed Harvard Historical Series (with the still-valued Suppression of the African Slave Trade to America), the University of Pennsylvania hired him as assistant professor of sociology only long enough for him to complete a study of the Black population of Philadelphia. The study known as The Philadelphia Negro broke new ground in the emerging discipline of sociology and was the first example of modern social survey method as applied to the study of an American city. To many it was the first empirical study of its kind at a time when even the prestigious University of Chicago had still not distinguished social work from empirical sociology!2
For a time, DuBois taught at Atlanta University and from there he issued the little-known "Atlanta Series," a number of monographs which were fairly detailed studies of such basic institutions within the Black American world as the church, businesses, and the family. DuBois' study of the church, called The Negro Church, antedated Carter Woodson's book by the
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same name by at least two decades (and Woodson is rightly called the father of the Black history movement). In this, he further demonstrated his status as a pioneer in sociology.
But DuBois died, in spite of a faith which did not desert him at the end — tired, exhausted by decades of what must have seemed unrewarded dedication to the cause of Black freedom. He was disillusioned by what he considered the falling away from him on the part of his own Black compatriots. He died expatriate, buried in a lonely undistinguished roadside grave, which my wife, Ruth, accidentally stumbled upon during a visit to Ghana!
With readiness of mind, I confess that few humans have as deeply affected me as this great Afro-American. In numerous ways, he stretched my mind to possibilities that are mind-blowing. From DuBois, I absorbed my love for my people; but I cannot follow him into the path of blind faith in the possibility of a native goodness in man, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, or otherwise that can of itself inevitably do good simply because they have been educated to do so!
Unfortunately, this man's negative experiences with aspects of Black institutional Christianity ill-disposed him to trust in Supernaturalism or God. He had a cultured despiser's disdain for anything resembling an evangelical approach to Christian faith. In my measured opinion, this was a supreme tragedy in the life of this man whose influence on the very conception of Black Studies is, seminally speaking, greater than that of any other man. His work will not die, so long as inquiring Black people live! And though he is dead, his works, as it was said of Caesar, live on. We can only speculate what his life could possibly have been had he come to place his undying trust in Jesus Christ as beginner and finisher of all things!
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DuBois wrote at least three autobiographies, one of which is called Dusk of Dawn. The subtitle is called "Autobiography of A Concept of Race." It was so entitled because he regarded the span of his life as co-developmental with the emergence of the modern study of race and racism in America. I have chosen to open this essay on a similar autobiographical note — not because I invented Black evangelicalism, nor because of any supposition that I am solely responsible for its development. Black evangelicalism is practically as old as is the appearance of Africans on this continent. Of course it was not as developed at the first as it has come to be; but in a real sense, the maturation of myself as a believing Black Christian has, in some areas, coincided with the growth and development of American Christianity's awareness that the existence and viability of Black evangelicalism is something qualitatively different from that of being a mere clone of white evangelicalism. In some respects, my growth and development has paralleled that of this vital part of the evangelical family.
Again, I do not want to even suggest that I speak for all of Black evangelicalism. As I said before, black, like white, can be a many-splendored thing! Some of my views are simply not acceptable to some other Black leaders. Like the fabled story, The Blind Men and the Elephant, full truth is undoubtedly much greater than any one particular point of view or perspective. "We know in part."
In the twenty-six years I have been a member of the National Black Evangelical Association,3 I have played a number of parts. In our formative years, when the "big three" were missions, evangelism, and youth ministries, I asked for, and was given, the position of Commissioner of Social Action. For six years, until I was elected National President, I acted to inform, dramatize, and
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to make our constituency across America aware of major social and theological issues which affect Black life. I stood then, as I have ever continued to stand, on the ground that Black evangelicalism is by virtue of its white counterparts, but also is an undeniable and inseparable component of the entire span of Black American humanity. We laugh, or cry, at the same justice or injustice. We are not spared from being Black in America just because we are Christians. And if we believe that racial identity proceeds from the creative fiat (or otherwise) of Almighty God, then we must pay attention to the fact that before we became Christians, we were born Black! Christ coming into the heart reorients the human person in the experiences and values of the coming kingdom of God that all men might live transformed lives, not change the color of the skin nor abnegate racial heritage — except insofar as a given element in that heritage cannot be made subject to the Lordship of Jesus Christ! I have continued to promulgate that view in my present capacity as Head of the Commission on Theology.
A word needs to be said concerning the format and content of the major portion of this paper. Let me begin by saying what I cannot do because of time and space limitations. I wish that I could give an historical sketch of the genesis of Black evangelicalism, tracing its rise from mainline white denominations to (and through) what Frazier called "the invisible institution"4 (the Black Church) through the establishment of its first institutional expression in individual African Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian groups. Likewise, a discussion of the phenomena of antebellum Black institutional Christianity and how it
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related to post-bellum rapidity of growth would also be helpful. I cannot explore urban Black Christianity and how Black evangelical Christianity related to the major bodies as I would like. I must limit myself to the scope and function of Black Evangelical Theology as a solution to the ills that face us as a people, and I will offer some suggestions as to where I believe Black evangelicalism must go — if it is to fulfill its God-given potential — and how it can get there. Although oppression is prevalent in other minority contexts, I have chosen to center this essay on the Black group because it is at the ideological extreme of the racial continuum — from white to black.
Documentation will not be exhaustive, but its presence will certainly be evident. For post-World War Black evangelism, I lean on some of my own materials, supplemented, where possible, by other available resources. This is to be regarded as an important feature of the essay, for it will make use of some original materials from an era when, so far as I was able to determine, writings of any quality were scarce. During this time, most of what was extant emerged from discussions from the National Black Evangelical Association's Commissions on Social Action and Theology. The essay is not primarily a polemic, but an irenic Black evangelical affirmation!
II. A Definition of the Scope and Function
of a Black Evangelical Black Theology
Black evangelicalism itself, though based upon the same Scriptural mandates as its larger, more explicitly defined sister — white evangelicalism — nevertheless makes use of historical
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existential data that are qualitatively different from the socio-culturo-political heritage out from which traditional Euro-America emerged.5 The scope and function of Black American Black evangelicalism, therefore, is at major points to be contrasted with that of its larger, more visible white counterpart.
Historically, Euro-American theology emerged from the interaction and confrontation of Hebrew-based incarnational theology (or Scripture-based basic teachings with a clearly understood value system that sprang from, and was totally expressive of, the redemptive work of God which has reached attained form in the Incarnate One, Jesus the Christ). The conferred responsibility to proclaim the message caused the disciples to evangelize first at Jerusalem and in ever-widening circles, progressively to the non-Jewish, classical world surrounding them (as set forth in the Book of Acts). In a theological way, therefore, the teachings of Jesus, Paul, John, and the others, confronted the Gentile world head-on, and the logical result for the following centuries was the first attempts at systematic formulation of theology, focused especially on the world from which developed historically the European family of nations and peoples. Even though the missionary mandate was "to the uttermost parts of the world," special concentration on this European emergent nationalism, virtually transformed a Gospel with originally world-based appeal into a Euro-dominated theology, causing that universal Gospel to become a virtual prisoner to classical-based European culture, values, and norms.
It is worthy of speculation, at least, that had the basic facts of the Gospel been allowed to confront other older non-Christian world cultures and been allowed to indigenize itself within those
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cultures and worldviews, as it so thoroughly did in the case of the European (Western) civilizations and cultures, the Eastern world opinion would not so deeply regard Christianity as the white man's religion. After nearly two thousand years, much of it filled with world missions activity of the highest order, Christianity is still overwhelmingly viewed by virtually all non-Western man as essentially a religion for and of the white man. When one reads church and world history, especially that of the most formative eras of the emergence of Christian theology, it is easy to understand why God and His divine providence cannot be entirely to blame for the relative non-spread of the universal Gospel to all parts of the non-Christian world and its imprisonment, for all practical purposes, within the white, Western world.
Although the Gospel did enjoy (within the first four Christian centuries at least) a wide hearing on parts of the African continent, it was as far as is known almost an exclusive hearing on that portion of Africa that was, for almost time immemorial, a part of the Mediterranean world around which much of world civilization moved. Whatever incursions that were possibly made into Saharan, western, and southern Africa, they were soon eclipsed by the emerging world-conquering religion of the Prophet Mohammed. By the time the Moslem conquest had been accomplished, whatever traces of indigenous African Christianity that might have been planted rapidly disappeared. Centuries later, when the white men began to invade that portion of Africa from which the modern African slaves came, there appear to have been no real evidences of the Gospel ever having penetrated those tribes and nations. When western slave enterprise began, therefore, (at least by the fifteenth century), Africans brought with
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them no discernible traces of a knowledge of the Christ who came and died for all! When, therefore, Christianity was introduced to the African-turned-slave, the identity of the Christ was unknown. To the Christian Gospel, imprisoned within white western culture and civilization, the African was a tabula-rasa! But not necessarily religiously so!
To Africans, the concept of an all-powerful God, even though not directly known and purely worshipped as such, was known, and to some extent, variously believed in. The concept of mediatorship also was known. That, as in other similar religions, is the function of departed ancestors, demi-gods, etc. It seems that man almost instinctively knows that because of his present state, he cannot go directly to the High God except through some form of mediatorship. This, then, the African-made-slave brought with him to the white western world! It undoubtedly facilitated the hearing of the Gospel when it was presented to him. His subsequent understanding and embracing of Jesus, though clearly recognizing the Divinity of Jesus as presented in the Gospel, nevertheless most clearly enabled him to recognize his own sufferings. Truly, the new-world slave especially embraced the full humanity of Theanthropos, the God-man! This special identification of those who were to become Black Americans with the humanity of Jesus, while simultaneously recognizing his kinship with Almighty God, is a key to understanding how, despite the blighting destructive assaults on their humanity, Black creativity could produce among other gifts to the nation, spirituals, blues, gospel songs of their own specific genre, and of course, world-conquering jazz.
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As already noted above, the scope of Black evangelicalism is inclusive of latent assumed evangelicalism of the traditional Black institutional church (more explicit especially in the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Pentecostal groups) — as well as the more clearly defined Black evangelical churches that consciously grew out of the Bible school movement which emerged in the wake of the religious wars called the Fundamentalist controversies of the late twenties and early thirties. This is not to deny the existence of amorphous dissatisfaction with traditionalists Black denominations. Most of the impetus for this conscious Black evangelicalism came from radio broadcasts with their well thought out Bible teachings and their ardent defense of the evangelical fundamentalist faith. Later, as Christian conscience, the Civil Rights Movement and government goadings caused the opening of many Bible schools to Blacks, increasing numbers of Black Christians became involved in the establishment of groups separating themselves very self-consciously from traditional Black denominations. This is essentially the roots and origins of the "Bible Church" movement among Black Christians. To some extent, there is the possibility of unacknowledged evangelicalism among certain members of what was in the late sixties called "The Black Caucus Movement" — so called to explain the positive presence of a significant element of unassimilated Black Christians in the major white denominations. This is a possibility even though they almost totally accepted advance "higher critical" views of the biblical revelation. It must be remembered that in certain significant cases and until fairly recently, numbers of Blacks were summarily denied entrance into evangelical schools. More than one Black would-be seeker of theological training
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could truly bemoan the fact that it was easier to go through the eye of Harvard, Chicago, and Yale than it was to enter a certain world renowned and leading Bible school! A significant number of potential Black evangelicals were lost to the movement simply because the doors of traditional white Bible schools and certain theological seminaries were locked tight against them because of their color!
James Cone's Black Theology appeared in 1964. It was concerned with the contextualization of theology that would make it relevant to Black people. Although I had not published by that time, my own embryonic theological reflections, which eventually issued in my specific approach to Black evangelical theology, had rather independently reached a stage similar to Cone's thought even before his book was published. Subsequent books, articles, and learned position papers further developed and expanded ideas and formulations, as Cone and those who followed, added to the growing list of materials expounding the "new" interpretation of an essentially American-based theology. My own critical interactions, though highly sympathetic, nevertheless came face to face with the fact that my evangelical thought and background made me increasingly dissatisfied with certain assumptions and propositions which dealt with the basis of authority in the system. It was, in part, this irresolution that sent me on a more extensive quest for a system with which I could be more theologically compatible. The basic essentials of what I have thus far arrived at are outlined in several parts of this paper.
The function and scope of a Black evangelical approach to a Black theology is to understand, articulate, and expound the
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nature of a Black-centric Christianity, hampered as little as possible by certain entrapments of traditional white theology, but more specifically reflective of the totality of Black experience, both within and outside of American history and culture. The apparent inability of American Christianity to assimilate the Black religious experience without destroying certain of its basic assumptions and foundations, seems to this author, as well as some others, to call for a theological posture which is designed to deal more adequately with Black humanity and that dignity and viability to which, as creatures of God, it is entitled. This theological posture seeks to maximize the Black American experience to the extent that it can take its legitimate place of equality in America, alongside the dignity of all others!
It is possible, therefore, for Black evangelicals to engage in doing theology which focuses in a special way on the essence of the Afro-American experience. And it is possible to do this without inadvertently or mistakenly making the Black experience normative for that theology. The Black experience is but one source from which such a theology springs. The norm of a theology is not self-generated but comes from the otherness from which comes the drive to create theology. In some theological systems, the theology itself is viewed as virtually sacrosanct and inviolable. Yet even though theology deals with divine things, and in may systems, has a divine subject, it is nevertheless, at bottom, a human endeavor. Even evangelical theology is a human endeavor. It is, in its western form at least, the result of the biblical revelation impacting upon, and being expressed in, western culture. William Frend, in a monumental volume on The Rise of Christianity — the First Six Centuries, describes with great clarity
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the results of the Gospel's invasion of Gentile culture and how it "divinizes" while simultaneously being "humanized" by it. Divine truth, if it is to have its fullest significance, must become incarnated within human experience. Viewed from this perspective, western theological systems are no more normative than is the Gospel incarnated (not imprisoned!) within any other world culture. In a guarded sense, therefore, we should not preach pure theology independent from the Word of God. The Word alone is absolutely normative. It is the Scriptures which are inspired, not the best or worst of theological systems.
This is not said in any way to attempt to escape from the fact of the ubiquitous presence of western theology. After all, Blacks in America are Americans even though that very fact is a major part of our identity problem. Black "is-ness" is always a hyphenated affair. The accursed "two-ness" that DuBois especially and many other discerning commentators wrote or spoke of is, after all, a "two-ness" for which resolution (if there is one) must be finally attained not in Africa, but only in America! In this sense, Black "two-ness" is a perennial problem for finally establishing the content of the American identity. America can never become the America that it is possible for it to be until America satisfactorily resolves her Afro-American problem. Certified Black evangelicals cannot retreat from this and are committed by the very dynamics of American reality to follow it to its logical end — whatever that is. As committed believers, we feel that it can be resolved under God, with liberty and justice for all! We need a theology which will enable us as Black Americans to deal with our total experience here. We are not calling for a new Bible, or a new Christ, or a different Almighty God. For all of us who so believe,
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the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the biblical revelation given to us through the Holy Spirit are in every way sufficient; but western theology has notoriously failed Black people and virtually all non-European-based people by them as functionally lesser peoples. In so doing, it tends to afford a certain aid and comfort to political, economic, and racial oppression. As the religion of western man, western theology has either preceded him, joined him or followed him in all missions of world colonialization or conquest. It has singularly been unable to wean western man from his white tribalism or nationalism. There is a real sense in which Christianity (not Christ) is a white man's religion.
Black American theology, evangelical or otherwise, cannot avoid interacting with, impacting and being impacted by western theology (American variety), if for no other reason than the very fact of the "two-ness" of racial identity. To the mind of this writer, there exists no extant system of Black theology which at the present stage of development can fully accomplish this task. It must be done, however, since American theology evinces little tendency to correct its mistakes. The speedy retreat of the country from such high ground as it took in the attempts to correct the errors and mistakes of the past has taken only twenty years to return to business as usual. The resulting devastation has wondrously up-tempoed in the past eight years. Evangelicalism may not follow in the van of retreat, but certainly Black evangelicals must not do so!
III. Black Evangelicalism: Prospects for the Future
First of all, Black evangelicalism must continue to examine and reexamine itself in order to be as certain as possible that it not
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only has its ear to the heartbeat of Black America, but that its perceptions are always informed by the realities of Black life in America, and that its resultant assessments are judiciously arrived at in the light of the ultimate standards of the Word of God! This will necessitate its continually looking backward at where we have come from in order to better assess current realities and chart future directions. Surely, it must continue to fashion a theology which speaks most comprehensively to the totality of the needs of its people, but it must also run checks on that theology to assure that it does not run afoul of that Word! Black chauvinism is as detestable as is white!
At the heart of this theology must be a clear definition of terms in which salvation, personal and social/institutional, must never be less than the Scriptural definition of those terms. Blacks as evangelicals cannot be found guilty of denigrating liberation down to only human dimensions. After all, salvation has always meant at least two things in our slave ancestors' existence. Salvation is the biblical sense of God's deliverance from human evil through Jesus Christ, and always, never far from consciousness, is also salvation by foot through the underground railroad or by any means necessary. That is why the slave narratives, such as have been passed down to us, are so incredibly rich in detailing exactly what salvation meant to them. If they read with requisite displeasure Paul's admonitions for slaves to be subject to their masters, they likewise became equally familiar with the epistle to Philemon, as well as other equally authoritative biblical statements such as "If you can obtain your freedom, make use of it." (1 Cor. 7:21). No matter what authoritative statements came from Paul or their masters, slaves were not ignorant of the fact that the
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ultimate meaning of salvation is total freedom anyway! The essence of the Gospel is liberation. Black evangelicals need to be sure that they do not short-change themselves or anyone else in understanding and proclaiming that divine liberation! In this same connection, it is helpful to understand that although numerous methods were used by slaves over periods of time to effect the human side of liberation, they always subjected to their conscience what they found necessary to do to achieve freedom in the light of what they believed about God, man, and the world. It is far easier to charge John Brown, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, and Harriet Tubman with fanaticism than it is to evaluate and searchingly criticise the system of slavery and the violence with which it was enforced. On the walls of the Lincoln Memorial are enshrined the words of "The Great Emancipator" — the undying words that allowed that the Civil War itself may very well be a righteous judgment of the Lord as a consequence of the many years of violence and bloodshed against the slave! Somewhere in the writings of Thomas Jefferson are to be found the words that he trembled when he considered that God was a just God, and that the country would sooner or later have to pay a heavy price for the inhumane system of slavery!
It is true that slavery as a system is no longer with us, but the inescapable aftermath of it continues down to the present day. Reconstruction lasted less than ten years, and it was largely the radical Republicans like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens rather than the regulars who pushed for and supported it. Black people in America, under slavery or freedom, have seldom benefited from the tender mercies of the Republican Party. Consequently, with consistent regularity, they have voted against it
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from the early thirties to the present time. It is an expression of extremist frustration, if nothing else! How can one cooperate with the Party that denies you?
The repeal of Reconstruction was the equivalent of the betrayal, as Rayford Logan described it in his book by that name, of the Negro! Restoration of the South to the Old Guard of the South returned Blacks to conditions of peonage and social suppression; and the Ku Klux Klan and lynching became a favorite method of making certain that Blacks got the message of white business as usual.
This is also the period of Jim Crow, which systematically applied ensured the virtual collapse of the Southern agricultural economy and the beginning of the Black "Exoduster Movement" from states like Alabama and Tennessee to Plains states such as Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri. By the turn of the 20th century, the trickle from the South had increased to a stream which World War I sped up to a swelling tide, which almost immediately increased the Black population of cities like Detroit, Chicago, and New York to populations ranging in the hundreds of thousands. World War II and its aftermath brought such cities to their present state of overcrowding and consequent urban misery.
Recent changes in the direction of economic plenitude and the resultant population shifts indicate that the post-World War socio-economic situation no longer holds firm. Instead of the urban North, it is now the newly-enriched urban South (and the suburban North) that enjoy the economic expansion. Although numbers of Black Americans have followed the trail back to the South, racial prejudice, class prejudice, and other equally unwelcome concomitants, effectively prevent meaningful numbers of
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Black Americans from exercising this option to their advantage. It is more than a joke that in numerous cases the suburbs exist like white doughnut rings strangling the economic growth of center cities from one coast to the other!
The virtual collapse of a viable leadership cadre, coupled with the virtual disappearance of the stable Black family and the decline and near disappearance of an historic Black working class cannot be wished away despite the unprecedented advances achieved by a Black middle class that is undoubtedly far larger and more financially sufficient than at any other time in the nation's history. The perennial plight of the Black underclasses, if it has changed at all, has prolifically increased; and the fact of national employment rates, as the present administration boasts, being higher now than before, cannot gloss over the chilling fact that Black unemployment remains at an all-time high.
Class consciousness among Blacks, as among others, has always existed; but the very success of integration decreased the dependency of Black middle-classes upon the Black masses. Intentional or not, along with the new independence of such middle-classes, went the simultaneous loss of much of the historical Black leadership. This loss of leadership, along with the loss of physical presence in many cases, is a major factor in the collapse of the Black communities. In far too many cases, Black professionals and other members of the Black nouveau riche no longer find it necessary to live among their people; and many of them admit to finding it unnecessary to feel responsible to fill leadership roles. Black role models, no longer present in the community, pass on the view that the best thing one can do for the community is to get out of it. This leads to hopeless despair on the
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part of many who feel either that the community is not redeemable or that their future is not to be found there. Such hopelessness often is masked by an apparent abandonment to mindless hedonism and self-destructive behavior.
Black evangelicalism, however, need not call, Marxist-like, for a Black classless society! It, like the Gospel, can work together with equal dedication in cooperation with any and all classes; but it must do so with a passion-filled demand for fair play and justice. Civil rights are precious, but God has called men to an even higher calling — human rights! It is the God-endowed right of every man, woman, girl, or boy! When, in a given society, culture, or civilization, civil rights are not based upon full acceptance of the image of God in every one of us, there is something basically and morally wrong with that country which cannot validly be dismissed by applying a liberal dosage of blaming the victim. It would be quite a feat for anyone in this ethnic group, to pull themselves up by non-existent "boot straps," especially when virtually all other immigrant groups in America have had liberal assistance in getting where they are today!
Black evangelicals, and all other fair-minded people, must call attention to the determinative fact that of all groups who share the benefits, Blacks remain the only group brought to this country to make others wealthy rather than themselves. All others, no matter how lowly their American beginnings, came here to better themselves. For them alone, of all American minority groups, they did not leave oppression but were brought into it! No other group has stood in such sharp contrast, in terms of custom, culture, and physical appearance as have Blacks! Black Americans are the major group whose rights have had, and continually
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needs to have, special legislation and executive orders perennially drawn up and passed to guarantee us rights that virtually all others enjoy even without citizenship status! Excellent studies have been made to account for the racial antipathy in which Europeans held Africans. When their descendants were brought to the land of the free and the future home of the slave, antipathetic views were so deeply rooted that it has been impossible for most whites, whatever their ethnic background, to break themselves loose from such deeply ingrained attitudes which evolve easily into codes of behavior. Herskovits,6 Dubois, and others have shown that many Americans operate on the basis of myth when it comes to really knowing the humanity of most Black Americans. Even education, despite an almost superstitious contemporary belief in it as a solver of all problems, ultimately does not shield one from acceptance of such myths as the natural inferiority of Black people. Perhaps a major reason why white extremist groups cannot be destroyed by white people is that they speak for many less vocal people who cannot be brought to entire disagreement with at least some of the extremist views. Perhaps that is also the reason why, despite the many reams of words that are righteously spoken by the "free nations" against racist South Africa, its existence and perpetuation will never be brought to an end by any European nation, or even by Israel itself! South Africa is the logical conclusion for ideas or outlooks of white supremacy — whether they originate or become perpetuated in America, England, Germany, France or Russia. Incidentally, when did anyone recently take a good long look at Australia and her racial exclusivist policies within her own borders? What about its treatment of its own aborigines?
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Others may opt out if they wish, but Black evangelicals are under real obligation to raise such questions as these. Black evangelicals must really challenge the American church to examine itself, especially that portion of it that considers itself to be most historically and contemporarily true to the Scriptures. It can properly be argued that seldom in the history of the American church have significant numbers of this group really led the way to social and economic reforms which would have guaranteed Black Americans a more equitable share in the nation's bounty. For those who undeniably have so distinguished themselves in this and related matters, if by some modern miracle they could rise from the grave and speak to us, given the present-day identification of white evangelicalism with the "mid-stream status quo," such leaders might well not be welcome at the very institutions they either founded or with which they were affiliated. Indeed, to many observers, Christian and otherwise, the contemporary American church, whether evangelical or sub-evangelical, has reversed the observation of Paul that "not many mighty, not many noble are called!" Hard questions!
Although Black Americans are the only people of African ancestry who do not have a clearly definable homeland to which they can return or which can provide them with a national frame of reference to which Americans can attribute some measure of respect, they nevertheless occupy a certain posture of prominence such as no other Black group has yet attained. In some cases hated, or at least despised by other co-members of Black ancestry, at the same time their position within American society causes them to be grudgingly admired. In the 1940's and 50's, freedom movements suddenly filled the pages of world history; but the freedom
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struggles of American Blacks began with their introduction into the land that eventually became America. Because they were a racial minority in this land, they were less able to maintain high degrees of Africanism. As it was, skin color and strange customs and habits set them permanently off from the white majority. Self government, to the extent that dominion status allowed it, was thus more possible in both the African and Caribbean worlds. Yet world leadership in the Black struggle for freedom was sparked here in the United States in a way and on a scale that was the inspiration for oppressed peoples of all colors around the world. The Civil Rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome," is known and understood all around the world; and despite what evangelicals first thought about Martin Luther King, Jr., Sweden admired him and his accomplishments so much that in 1964 they honored him with the Nobel Peace Prize!
There are, of course, plenty of other Black religious leaders than Black evangelicals. It cannot be gainsaid that a great majority of effort and production in the area of the religious responsibility "to cry aloud and spare not" against modern man's mistreatment of his fellow-man is to be laid at the door of such religious, and other leaders. As is so often the case, Black fundamentalists and, later, evangelicals were so under the spell of white views of their own humanity that they were never free, until now, to see themselves through their own eyes — and even more importantly, through God's eyes!
Black evangelicals as a group owe a debt of undying gratitude to these hearty (and hardy) forerunners. James Cone, Deotis Roberts, and Shelby Rooks did much to begin the process of liberating our minds to this very most important area of our
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experience. Gayraud Wilmore, Joseph Washington, John Blassingame, and Franklin Frazier have told the story of Black Radicalism and Black Religion and how they have mutually influenced each other to help bring Black Americans to the place of acceptance of a willingness to contemporarily struggle for full freedom. Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton taught us about the necessity to determine to define ourselves as a people. The legacy of American Negro slavery left us a whole trick bag of self-hate and negative definitions of ourselves that few of us have cleanly escaped today.
Finally, we owe a debt of gratitude to the great pioneer, William Edward Burghardt DuBois, whose self-sacrificing labors were detailed earlier. Both he and the dogged Carter G. Woodson taught us our history and warned as many as would hear to beware of miseducation! For those who are fortunate enough to know him and to have read both his essays and poetry, Haki Madhubuti's deep dedication to the welfare of his people is an inspiration.
Nevertheless, these have but helped us to recognize the path of manhood and to strive for it. There remains an unfinished task, which only we Black evangelicals can do. No matter how valid and essential the Black experience is, there is nothing in it that can save us in the fullest sense, a fullness which our slave ancestors earnestly sought. If we would be truly free, then we must first be set free by Him who fulfilled that purpose when He came and did God's will! The evangelical affirmation is that there can be no true freedom unless the Son sets free! One need not be either obscurantist nor naive to recognize that other lords claim dominion over man's mind, body, and soul; but the evangelical Christian (there is intended no denial that Christians of other than evangelical
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persuasion may also believe in the ultimacy of the Lordship of Jesus Christ) is as fully persuaded as it is possible for mortal, finite man to be, that there is salvation in no other. This saving faith persists in spite of the non-persuasion of others who cannot bring themselves to accept it in the face of very challenging modern alternatives and substantive arguments against the viability of such conviction. Much modern philosophical and so-called theological scholarship and investigation raises the most searching and demanding questions. Indeed, far more questions are raised than are answers given. When answers are in shortest supply, however, the position and affirmation of the evangelical is that given the existence, personality, and nature of the Creator, Maintainer, and Preserver of man and the world, such a God would not leave even modern man adrift ever in the sea of relativity and, worse, tentativity that is the undeniable result of much human thought! Christian experience, though far from infallible, provides a sound basis, grounded on the revealed truths of the Scriptures, that still stand the test and acids of continuing generations of uptempoing modernity. The evangelical is well aware that truth can never be finally decided by counting noses, which is another argument in his arsenal of confidence. Probability might well be the best that unregenerate man can settle for, and as the trusting Christian is a citizen of this world as much as he is of the one to come, it is not altogether possible to escape from the human limitations of such. His trust, however, is in what he had come to know as the Word of God, and he is persuaded that he in whom he trusts is able to, and will, demonstrate his truth when all men will have come to that time in human history when faith will become fulfilled certainty and the thoughts and intents of all hearts will be
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revealed. This is the supreme evangelical, and it is fondly hoped that all Christians will come to this position. This is the Black Evangelical affirmation!
1. Carl F.H. Henry., The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. Chicago: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1947.
2. The University of Chicago virtually ignored DuBois and his scholarly potential. This author undertook a systematic search through the first ten years of the American Journal of Sociology, the University of Chicago's organ, and did not encounter a single article on or by Dubois until about 1911, when a book review of one of his publications was listed. The racial attitudes there towards Blacks were not too far ahead of the prevailing myths widely held. Franklin Frazier was one of their earliest Sociology students, and Carter Woodson earned a Masters degree in history from there. It is difficult to understand why such a leading school did not recognize or at least acknowledge the work of this undeniably competent scholar if race was not a factor. Nathan Hare and other Black scholars press the same point.
3. The national umbrella group organized in Los Angeles, California, in 1963. Its initial purpose was to form a network of fellowship and joint ministry for Black Christians located in predominantly white organizations. It later came to include being a collective spokesperson in the name of Black evangelical Christians, a status it has enjoyed for over twenty-six continuous years. It was open then, as it is now, to all persons who respect and work for the ideal of reaching primarily the Black Christian agenda.
4. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church in America (N.Y.: Schocken Books, 1966), pp. 16-19.
5. Historically, Blacks have looked at the Euro-American data as humiliating to their humanity in some respects because only truth from the Euro-American perspective was considered valid. What is African in his make-up was not held in the same regard. This "two-ness" of the American Black is difficult to be accounted for under any other assumption.
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6. Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1941). Herskovits notes six myths that underlie the American attitude toward the Negro. It is a quality of myths that some truth, though not the whole of it, is enshrined in them. White Americans see far more truth in these Myths than Blacks. They included the notions that the Negro slave came from inferior stock which had contributed nothing of value to world history and, hence, was without a past; that he was a "happy darkie," and, therefore, had no present or future sense of reality. In short, he was handicapped by nature and was qualitatively inferior to whites. Education could not alter his inferior state.
ADDENDUM
Books by Black evangelical writers have been forthcoming for at least a decade or more. One of the earliest in print was Shall We Overcome (1966) by Howard Jones of the Billy Graham organization. Bobby Harrison, also for a time a member of that organization, followed with his When God Was Black (1971). Columbus Salley's (and Ronald Behm's) Your God Is Too White (1970) and William Pannell's My Friend the Enemy (1968) were expressions of two of Black Evangelicalism's most astute and articulate spokesmen. Few, however, have had the impact of Tom Skinner's works. Controversial to some, they nevertheless stirred widespread readership. Both Black and Free (1968) and How Black Is The Gospel? (1970) still stir debate worldwide.
