Browsing by Author "Goatley, David E"

This project seeks to introduce a model for revitalizing urban churches that have experienced decline (i.e., membership, money, and morale). Social Justice, Prophetic Preaching, Missional Stewardship, Intergenerational Ministry, and Progressive Pastoral Leadership functions as the central pillars of the project. My research has led me to engage the contributions of theologians, sociologists, social critics, activists, researchers, biblical scholars, homileticians, historians, politicians, church growth experts, political scientists, statisticians, community advocates, journalists, and civil rights leaders to explore the collaborative efforts that can be taken to revive black churches in impoverished communities in Urban America.

This project seeks to introduce a model for revitalizing urban churches that have experienced decline (i.e., membership, money, and morale). Social Justice, Prophetic Preaching, Missional Stewardship, Intergenerational Ministry, and Progressive Pastoral Leadership functions as the central pillars of the project. My research has led me to engage the contributions of theologians, sociologists, social critics, activists, researchers, biblical scholars, homileticians, historians, politicians, church growth experts, political scientists, statisticians, community advocates, journalists, and civil rights leaders to explore the collaborative efforts that can be taken to revive black churches in impoverished communities in Urban America.

Despite the significant contributions made by African American women since the Black Church's founding, titles like pastor, bishop, and reverend for centuries have been freely awarded to men while being restricted to women. The leadership of black clergywomen in these roles traditionally held by men helps to challenge the stereotypes of what it means to be a leader. Black clergywomen's contributions to religious institutions like the Black Church are frequently only remembered through the prism of deconstruction. In an effort to not only deconstruct but also reconstruct the church into a more equitable organization, this study explores how the ministries of black clergywomen from the early 19th to the late 20th century undermine male domination and patriarchal normativity within Christianity. Using memoirs, interviews, sermons, and lectures, assumes that black clergywomen's transformative leadership is disruptive epistemologically, politically, and anthropologically. This study will demonstrate how different leadership avenues were altered or established as a result of the experiences of these African American preaching women by evaluating their lives and ministerial work. This essay intends to demonstrate how black clergywomen's ministries challenge orthodox beliefs, rituals, and theologies, opening up new avenues of leadership for themselves and others.

The care of creation is the responsibility of all Christians. Consequently, the Black Church has a role to play and must attend to its responsibilities seriously. In this thesis, I take a comprehensive look into rituals of the Black Church related to death—funerals, memorials, and burial practices—and how the church can take ownership and be more responsible in the care of creation. For instance, the Black Church could benefit from a new aesthetic of beauty related to funeral processing. Currently, the Black Church funeral concept of aesthetics is tightly coupled with visuals and preservation of the corpse—shiny gold coffins and embalming. As a chaplain, director of bereavement, and minister of the Gospel, I focus on the Black Church’s relative silence and insufficient attention given to how our practices around death go against the foundational principle of covenant relationship and therefore distort our perceptions of Christian beauty. This thesis engages aesthetics and ecological commitments that lead to introducing practices of ministry that honor God and contribute to the care and sustainability of the earth.

“Building Community Across Walls: A History of an Integrated Church Amid a Gentrifying Neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina” is a study focused upon the integrated history of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, the congregation I serve in downtown Charleston. The church, which was an African American congregation for much of the twentieth century, integrated in the late 1980’s following the gentrification of our Ansonborough neighborhood. This ethnographic study, centered upon formal interviews with both black and white members of my church who experienced this integration together, in addition to clergy and community leaders, is an attempt to both accurately share this history and to critically examine it to mine how it might inform St. Stephen’s present and future. This study makes the argument that St. Stephen’s history of integration must be understood amid the backdrop of urban gentrification and the ways in which this social phenomenon is impacting downtown congregation’s like my own.

This project will therefore be critically examining the intersection of race and gentrification and the ways in which these forces impact any church trying to build community across the “walls” of various social boundaries in urban areas. The argument of this thesis is that no such community can be sustained without awareness of these forces and an ongoing and intentional commitment to diversity, to combating racism and the ongoing reality of white supremacy in our country.

This thesis will have four parts. The first part will aim to offer critical background meant to put St. Stephen’s story into proper context. Chapter one will detail a short overview of the issue of gentrification and focus specifically on its impact upon African Americans. Chapter two will offer a brief reflection on the significance of the black church to African American identity, culture, and collective memory. This chapter intends to impress upon the reader what is at stake and what is potentially lost when an all-black church wrestles with whether to integrate. These chapters will enable a better understanding and more accurate interpretation of St. Stephen’s story of integration.

The St. Stephen’s story will be explored through a series of ethnographic interviews I’ve conducted with nearly twenty-five black and white members of the church – lay and ordained – who lived through that history together. Archival material will also be utilized and woven into a reflection on the interview responses to deepen learnings and glean insights. Prior to parts two, three, and four pertaining to St. Stephen’s, a brief author’s note will appear. This note will include a fuller description of my interview sample and size along with an acknowledgement of potential biases and the fallibility inherent in a project based upon memory.

The second part will outline and detail St. Stephen’s history leading up to integration. It will include a third chapter that consists of a short early history of my parish and a fourth chapter laying out St. Stephen’s eventful African American history from the early decades of the twentieth century to the late 1980’s. Chapter five will include a description of the gentrification of the church’s Ansonborough neighborhood through historic preservation efforts, spearheaded by the Historic Charleston Foundation, that led to the integration of the parish.

Part three will focus on the parish’s intentional integration. Chapters six through thirteen will constitute the heart of this thesis: an accounting of St. Stephen’s late 1980’s to early 1990’s collective experience and a critical reflection upon its successes, points of tension, and missed opportunities.

Part four will consist of a detailed accounting of St. Stephen’s story since its integrative period in chapter fourteen and fifteen. Chapters sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen will include reflections upon the what the lessons of our past offer us today. I will then highlight a few significant questions for further study and reflection in chapters nineteen and twenty followed by a conclusion.

ABSTRACTThis thesis examines Black preaching themes appearing to yield influence on Black Millennial-Xennial males. The prospective connection of this demographic giving ear and response to certain preaching motifs, is approached in this study from multiple perspectives. The thesis’ research methodology is designed to summarize scholarship of traditional and contemporary Black homileticians and place those assumptions in conversation with traditional and contemporary developmental psychology and sociology on the internal and external motivations of Black Millennial-Xennial males. This study assesses the following: Black preaching scholarship assertions regarding effective Black preaching; Developmental description of Black Millennial-Xennial males, Sociodynamics this demographic must negotiate to survive and thrive; Black preaching themes of contemporary Black preaching appearing to reach this demographic; and to conclude, comparison and contrast between Black academic and preaching homileticians. My research examines a corpus of leading traditional and contemporary Black homileticians. The Black homileticians’ assertions on effective Black preaching establish a foundation upon which Black preaching themes can be built. This thesis engages from a developmental perspective, social science to discuss the Millennial brain. Cerebral characteristics of Black Millennial-Xennial males address behaviors and assist in explaining Black Millennial-Xennial males’ indifferences and motivations. The study then pivots to consider key social factors that affect Black Millennial-Xennial males. This research project explores the dynamics of technology, social media platforms, “life markers,” incarceration and social inequities in relation to Black Millennial-Xennial males. These sociodynamics are placed in conversation with assertions from leading Black homileticians, academicians, and theoreticians. The study next moves to a case study featuring a leading church appearing to reach Black Millennial-Xennial males. Fifteen sermons from one pastor are examined to identify recurring Black preaching themes—themes compelling my study’s demographic. My central argument of existing Black preaching themes that are compelling Black Millennial-Xennial males concludes with comparative and contrasting examination of academic, homiletical theory versus preaching praxis. For example, the study’s analysis seeks to answer the question of whether the assertions of traditional and contemporary homileticians regarding tenets of effective Black preaching translate to the sermons examined that seem to be producing compelling Black preaching themes for Black Millennial-Xennial males. The study will evaluate whether and to what degree the theory of effective Black preaching concepts appears in the sermons of preaching practitioners. Conclusions drawn in this study aim to inform sermonic approaches to engage Black Millennial-Xennial males.

On January 16, 2016, I was installed as the pastor of Cary First Christian Church in Cary, NC. Cary First Christian Church was founded in 1868 as a congregationalist congregation for the African American community in Cary, NC. Since then, the church has sought to be a relevant community presence by addressing the challenges that face the surrounding community. As a pastor, I sought to build upon this legacy to be communally engaged by introducing a vision to the congregation to complete the design production of a community senior center and affordable housing complex that would seek to serve seniors, especially those who identify as low to moderate-income, African American, and Latino/Latinx, in the Cary Community.

This thesis will examine the theological framework that supported my pastoral vision of community development by drawing on a historical analysis of the ecclesiology of the Black Church, demonstrating the need for senior affordable housing in Cary, NC, and highlighting the ministry practices utilized to inspire collective participation in this vision. This thesis will demonstrate how a contextual exegesis of one’s context is essential in understanding the local community's needs, the congregation's capacity, and the network of resources available to determine a possible solution to a problem.

In the case of Cary First Christian Church, the problem was rising housing costs and the elimination of seniors aging in place. This problem was identified through members of the Cary First Christian Church serving seniors through a meal delivery program and witnessing the need for ongoing services to assist seniors in aging in place. Such a problem mirrors that of those in the early church, where members of the faith community needed vital resources, such as access to food and shelter. The New Testament church demonstrated intentional and organized support for those in need. Communities of faith should take a learning journey to determine how they can be sites of hospitality - meeting the needs of the most vulnerable. While some communities are not always willing to express radical hospitality - relinquishing control and being open to the improvisational move of the Holy Spirit, when communities commit themselves to being sites of hospitality, we begin to see the abundance of resources that are connected to us. This spirit inspired Cary First Christian Church as we recognized that we were blessed with assets that might be able to be deployed to help meet critical housing needs for seniors in our community.

This project seeks to present a model that will strengthen national non-denominationalchurches’ capacities for reaching, retaining, and assimilating Generation Z and Millennials. The central pillars of this project examine who Gen Z and Millennials are socially, psychologically, and spiritually, and identify strategies that churches nationally are utilizing to effectively reach, retain, and assimilate this demographic. This thesis uses an interdisciplinary strategy and engages pastoral leaders, consultants, and scholars.

Considerable attention is being given to the growing problem of the racial wealth gap in the United States of America. Understanding this chasm requires a critique of the government’s imprimatur on the institution of slavery, the legalization of Jim Crow, and the myriad of ways institutional racism has been suffused into the fabric of America , directly impacting African Americans ability to acquire and accumulate wealth. After the official end of slavery in 1865, the Emancipated were promised a type of reparations in the form of “40 acres and a mule.” However, with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, his successor Andrew Johnson rescinded the order, forcing blacks into quasi-slavery in the form of vagrancy laws, sharecropping and convict leasing. Then, the next fifty years of Jim Crow segregation effectively allowed the country to improvise new ways to subjugate blacks into a new caste system with alternative laws at the hands of the political and economic elite, this was especially prevalent in those areas once reliant upon slave labor. Blacks were routinely subjected to literacy tests, black codes, vagrancy laws, poll taxes and grandfather clauses, which were meant to restrict political participation, economic inclusion and social integration, lasting from 1877 well into the 1950s. This research proposes that the commodification of black bodies served as the underpinning of American capitalism, and demonstrates how slave labor across the South, benefitted other parts of the country, even the world, and served as the driving force behind an emerging national economic system. The amalgamation of two-hundred and forty-six years of enslavement, ninety years of legalized Jim Crow segregation, sixty years of separate but equal and thirty-five years of racist housing policies, locked generations out of economic opportunity and gave rise to ubiquitous pathologies across the nation. These and other injustices were supported by local municipalities and bolstered by the United States Federal Government, which warrants a substantial justice claim. In 1989, the late John Conyers (D-MI.) began presenting a bill before the House of Representatives to develop a commission to merely study the social effects of slavery, segregation and its continuing economic implications. The bill has remained tabled in the House of Representatives for the past thirty years. In a historic move in 2019, a group of panelists were able to present cogent arguments before the House of Representative, debating the pros and cons of reparations, however since the landmark hearing, no further action has been taken on the matter. This research aims to justify a reparations program by establishing the myriad of ways historical kleptocracy, state-sanctioned segregation and federally supported laws set the stage for the current and ever-growing racial wealth gap. To construct this argument, I draw upon historical, sociological, theological and political scholarship, in an effort to establish the United States of America has yet to atone for the moral injury of slavery and should be held culpable for its lingering effects. Therefore, I propose the federal government should be held responsible for acknowledging, redressing and bringing closure to these and other reprehensible acts, and a mea culpa is only one step toward national healing and wholeness. I utilize Walter Rauschenbusch’s work, Christianizing the Social Order which examines the symbiotic relationship between Christianity and social reform, as he critiqued the economic conditions of his day and argued for radical social, political, and economic changes in the structures that crippled the vulnerable and the underserved. His understanding of reform and justice could play a vital role in moving the Church and the nation toward penance. In this work, I propose that reparations are not only a moral claim but a biblical and theological mandate, that will be analyzed and synthesize through past and contemporary scholarship. I will conclude with the idea that reparations are the only actionable recourse that will effectively close the racial wealth gap, in order to facilitate wholeness for the American descendants of slaves. This research will conclude that cumulative injustices leveraged against Blacks have had damaging effects on the present, and many of the injustices were supported and sanctioned by the United States Federal Government and executed by state legislatures. Therefore, my research argues that the federal government should be held culpable for the current social, political and economic damages experienced by contemporary African Americans.

Considerable attention is being given to the growing problem of the racial wealth gap in the United States of America. Understanding this chasm requires a critique of the government’s imprimatur on the institution of slavery, the legalization of Jim Crow, and the myriad of ways institutional racism has been suffused into the fabric of America , directly impacting African Americans ability to acquire and accumulate wealth. After the official end of slavery in 1865, the Emancipated were promised a type of reparations in the form of “40 acres and a mule.” However, with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, his successor Andrew Johnson rescinded the order, forcing blacks into quasi-slavery in the form of vagrancy laws, sharecropping and convict leasing. Then, the next fifty years of Jim Crow segregation effectively allowed the country to improvise new ways to subjugate blacks into a new caste system with alternative laws at the hands of the political and economic elite, this was especially prevalent in those areas once reliant upon slave labor. Blacks were routinely subjected to literacy tests, black codes, vagrancy laws, poll taxes and grandfather clauses, which were meant to restrict political participation, economic inclusion and social integration, lasting from 1877 well into the 1950s. This research proposes that the commodification of black bodies served as the underpinning of American capitalism, and demonstrates how slave labor across the South, benefitted other parts of the country, even the world, and served as the driving force behind an emerging national economic system. The amalgamation of two-hundred and forty-six years of enslavement, ninety years of legalized Jim Crow segregation, sixty years of separate but equal and thirty-five years of racist housing policies, locked generations out of economic opportunity and gave rise to ubiquitous pathologies across the nation. These and other injustices were supported by local municipalities and bolstered by the United States Federal Government, which warrants a substantial justice claim. In 1989, the late John Conyers (D-MI.) began presenting a bill before the House of Representatives to develop a commission to merely study the social effects of slavery, segregation and its continuing economic implications. The bill has remained tabled in the House of Representatives for the past thirty years. In a historic move in 2019, a group of panelists were able to present cogent arguments before the House of Representative, debating the pros and cons of reparations, however since the landmark hearing, no further action has been taken on the matter. This research aims to justify a reparations program by establishing the myriad of ways historical kleptocracy, state-sanctioned segregation and federally supported laws set the stage for the current and ever-growing racial wealth gap. To construct this argument, I draw upon historical, sociological, theological and political scholarship, in an effort to establish the United States of America has yet to atone for the moral injury of slavery and should be held culpable for its lingering effects. Therefore, I propose the federal government should be held responsible for acknowledging, redressing and bringing closure to these and other reprehensible acts, and a mea culpa is only one step toward national healing and wholeness. I utilize Walter Rauschenbusch’s work, Christianizing the Social Order which examines the symbiotic relationship between Christianity and social reform, as he critiqued the economic conditions of his day and argued for radical social, political, and economic changes in the structures that crippled the vulnerable and the underserved. His understanding of reform and justice could play a vital role in moving the Church and the nation toward penance. In this work, I propose that reparations are not only a moral claim but a biblical and theological mandate, that will be analyzed and synthesize through past and contemporary scholarship. I will conclude with the idea that reparations are the only actionable recourse that will effectively close the racial wealth gap, in order to facilitate wholeness for the American descendants of slaves. This research will conclude that cumulative injustices leveraged against Blacks have had damaging effects on the present, and many of the injustices were supported and sanctioned by the United States Federal Government and executed by state legislatures. Therefore, my research argues that the federal government should be held culpable for the current social, political and economic damages experienced by contemporary African Americans.

AbstractThe correctional system in the United States has long demonstrated an unequal system that affects people of color, especially the Black male. This system has created a new form of slavery that continues to plague the Black male to find a place in the socalled land of the free and the brave. The prison pipeline created in the United States contributes to one out of three Black males being under some sort of supervision, probation, or parole in their lifetime. The problems on the inside of prison result in mental disorders, depression, anger, bitterness and a continue to destructive behavior. After incarceration, the challenges continue to plague the Black male when re-entering society. The Black male faces obstacles of employment, voting, housing, family, and adjustment. These barriers help contribute to recidivism. The majority who return to society have a high recidivism rate because of these challenges. This research dwells on the importance of the Black church regarding rehabilitation, along with family- and community. This research follows my own experience within this system and evidence of the role a church can play in reducing recidivism