Say Amen Somebody

Tomorrow, I and more than 2.5 million other African-Americans will make our way to somebody’s church somewhere.  Church for me has always been a warm welcomed sanctuary from a world oft-times cold and unwelcoming. This has been a particularly stormy week as the winds of ignorance have blown wildly and racism’s toxic rain has blanketed our nation. I have become very senstive to the current social and political climate and now can recall the words of those who offered a forecast of such during the campaign of then Presidential candidate Obama. No matter how desperately I and others had hoped that his election would usher in a post-racial America, there are others who are simply not having it.

One of the saddest moments of last year’s campaign was the negative attention and endless news coverage that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ received. As a result, the Black Church and its prophetic preachers were scrutinized and in some cases demonized. Those who were quick to do so were unfamiliar with the historical and present role of the Black Church in African American life and culture and of the historic treatment of some black Christians by  some white churches and their denominational governing bodies. You will not get a proper and balanced view of the Black Church by showing up one Sunday out of the year, watching a snipet on television or the Internet, and listening to a few words of a recorded sermon.

The attitudes, thoughts and opinions of African American churchgoers do not have their genesis in the church on Sunday morning as a result of a gifted homiletician, but it is forged on the anvil of life during the week, hours before one puts on his or her sunday go-to-meeting clothes. So, it is with heavy hearts African Americans will head to church with the pain of having watched and heard parents passionately talk about how they did not want their children subjected to listening to the duly elected 44th President of the United States after having recited the Pledge of Allegiance which includes the words “one nation under God indivisible.”

Their views on race and civility are now damaged by the spectacle of having seen and heard a U.S. Congressman break years of tradition and protocol and with premeditation blurt out “You lie!”  Their opinions have been impacted by the media accounts of the thousands who showed up in Washington on today wearing t-shirts with a picture of the President on it with the caption “just another bum looking for change” and waving signs that use the word socialism as a code word for welfare which is a code word for lazy which is a code word for black people. The black preacher is not responsible for these images and does not plant them in the hearts and minds of parishioners, they are a part of their somber reality. The preacher is well aware of this. For their experiences are his and her experiences.

People go to church on Sunday morning to hear a word from the Lord; a word that speaks to their condition and circumstance. On Sunday morning the preacher holds court and speaks to the congregation about those conditions and circumstances hoping to reverse the effects of racism, the challenges of materialism and the notion of their nothingness. He reminds them in the words of the Jewish theologian, Martin Buber, that they are made in the image of God and that they are Somebody. In the Black Church, there exists something called a “call and response” and on Sunday morning when those who have gathered hear a truth that speaks to them, you will hear a chorus of Amens and see a sea of waving hands. The preacher understands that what may be good news for members of his flock may be bad news to those seeking to fleece them.

The preacher’s motivation comes from the one to whom allegiance is ultimately due. The one who Luke says took his cue from the Prophet Isaiah and states in his inaugural sermon, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” (Luke 4:18)

-Thomas Bowen