Browsing by Subject "Black Church"

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.

Abstract

In the Black Church tradition, community and connection are the bedrocks on which the culture stands. Much of what is known to be Black culture today was established in the heart of Black religion and the Black Church. This evidence can be found in the way Black religion is expressed. Within the Black Church, religion is expressed in cultural forms like music and song styles, content of preaching, and modes of worship that reflect the overall Black culture.

A good way to understand how people connect, form, and maintain community is by examining their belief system or religious orientation. Although a study of a people’s religion may not answer all the questions about their culture, it would point to a common core of values on which the culture is founded. Conversely, if leadership within religious organizations are viewed through the lens of culture, then perhaps some insight would be gained to why leaders lead the way they do.

Understanding and interpreting Black Church culture is key to effective leadership within that context. Although successful culture may look, and feel, like magic, the truth is that it is not. Culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. The decisions that are made by a few determine the culture experienced by many.

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.

Deep societal trends impact the religious fervency and participation of millennials in the Black Church. Many young adults, though remaining Christian, have fallen away from their faith communities, finding them irrelevant for their daily lives. Even the most religiously committed have shown signs of waning faith, as evidenced by limited participation, and theological and ideological dissonance with the Black Church. Historically strong across all indicators, the Black Church is ideally positioned to stave off the attrition of youth and young adults, having a missional mindset toward this cohort—prioritizing them in their ministry development and programming. African American congregational leaders must develop disciples who have cohesive identities, live integrated lives, and experience an infusion of their personal vocation and the mission of the Church. Thus the future of the Black Church depends on the development of millennials who have an integrated faith life, which is distinguishable by its practices, disciplines, and virtues that are nurtured by an understanding of the Church’s mission and their role in it. Key will be establishing mentoring relationships that allow for questioning, exploration and discovery. To enact the changes necessary the church must understand the cultural worlds of young adults and engage them in holistic ministry that is reflective of the mission of God through Christ (missio dei)—activity that culminates with reaching the world with God’s redemptive plan for humanity.

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.

Out of the crucible of racism, pain, dehumanization, subjugation, marginalization, discrimination, enslavement, and death inflicted upon Black bodies, Black persons responded with a hermeneutic of freedom and prophetic proclamation in the North American context. Amidst a death-dealing system of oppression and chattel slavery, Black persons through proclamation—sermons, stories, songs, spirituals, modes of worship, words, lived experiences, and embodied acts of resistance—utilized their faith to challenge the heresy of white supremacy. Black religion and spirituality were conceived and birthed in response to existential pain, suffering and death. Black religion and the Black Church were rooted in a proclamation that not only utilized Christianity in the West, but also refashioned it in order to liberate the mind, body, and soul of Black people from the pangs of unwarranted death – prophetic proclamation.

Undoubtedly, today, in a nation that is scorched by hate, systemic oppression, and injustice, the Black Church of the 21st century is in dire need to recover its ministry of prophetic proclamation in the face of death and evil powers. Although the Black Church’s conception is formed out of prophetic proclamation and resistance to perpetual crisis and death, a number of Black congregations have forgotten the history and tradition of the Black Church. Messages of prosperity have seemingly replaced prophetic proclamation. In this project, I suggest that the survival of the Black Church hangs on the tradition of prophetic proclamation. I suggest that the Black Church will only survive if its mission and ministry are rooted in addressing and responding to the pervasive reality of death inflicted upon Black bodies through varying forms of prophetic proclamation as seen through resistance in the Middle Passage to the modern-day Black Lives Matter Movement.

Given the monumental changes brought about by the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, and the continual and perpetual threat of death and oppression upon the Black body in today’s society, the Black Church has been forced to explore ‘church’ in a different way – beyond the four walls of a church building. This new reality shows the Black Church that we must embrace the fluidity and intricacy of proclamation which moves from traditional, pulpit-centered discourse to diverse, enlivened, and embodied discourse which will ultimately transform the lives of Black peoples.

This study discusses the strengths, weaknesses, and implications of the Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick’s life-situation preaching for young preachers in mainline churches in general and African-Americans in particular. Contemporary preaching in mainline churches does not get at the personal and social problems that people face. Ineffective and irrelevant preaching has plagued today’s preaching enterprise. Life-situation preaching addresses this problem by giving the preacher an approach that starts with listeners’ urgent practical needs and offers a practical solution.This study consults Fosdick's major works and that of select life-situation proponents. His writings on sermon composition and delivery are indispensable to this study. Although different perspectives are considered in this study, the primary focus has been on Fosdick’s thinking regarding life-situation preaching and personal counseling as a means to address the issues that are disrupting lives, troubling minds, and burdening consciences. This study concluded that life-situation preaching has some weaknesses but it is nevertheless an effective approach to preaching for contemporary young practitioners in general and preachers of African-American listeners in particular when used intelligently and creatively.

June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States, ruled that same sex marriage was constitutional, extending the right and its accompanying benefits to millions of persons to whom legal recognition of their marriages were denied on a federal level. With a sense of urgency, several of the Black Church denominations put out statements affirming that marriage is only recognized in a heterosexual frame. And while expressing love for the Queer community, each statement from these Black Church denominations stated that same sex marriage was against the Bible. The response of the Black Church concerning same sex marriage illustrates its weaponization of the Bible against Queer members of the Black Church who, are often unequipped to blunt the weaponization of the Bible against them, opting for either a rejection of affectional orientation, or a passive existence both which reinforce shamed based pathologies and correlates with unsafe practices which fester in contexts where communal accountability is absent. This project aims to provide Queer members of the Black Church with a manual for biblical interpretation, one which is rooted in the interpretative strategies of the Church, and particularly that of the Black Church whose interpretative strategies blunted the weaponization of the Bible in support of slavery and Black inferiority. Available research from historians, biblical scholars, theologians, social scientists, and journalist were utilized in support of this project. This project examines: the taboo framing of Black sexuality, how the Bible was developed, biblical interpretative strategies, Black Church interpretative strategies, and the importance of self-awareness in biblical interpretation.