The Spiritual State of Black America

Thirty-two years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., African-American clergy are revisiting the unfinished agenda of the civil rights movement and discussing trends that have emerged in black churches and their communities.

In May, hundreds of seminarians, pastors, theologians, civil rights leaders, and grassroots people from across the United States and Great Britain gathered at Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta for a conference on "The Spiritual State of Black America." (ITC is the largest predominantly African-American graduate theological consortium of Protestant seminaries in the United States.)

Black preachers and theologians are especially curious, some even anxious, about a wide variety of issues: the growing appeal of Islam in the African-American community; the emergence of independent megachurches; the federal government's expectation that local congregations expand their role in providing social services; the exodus of men and youth from traditional congregations; the feminist and womanist demands for equal opportunities in ministry; and--perhaps the most unexpected and inexplicable phenomenon--a new generation of Baptist clergy, Dr. King's proteges, who go by the title "bishop."

Most of these Baptist bishops are dynamic, entrepreneurial, neo-Pentecostal ministers who have developed megachurches and understand themselves to be reappropriating the clerical titles and styles of the New Testament. Although this practice has raised the ire of traditional Baptists, who eschew such trappings, it has clearly differentiated the new Baptist pastors as spiritual and institutional innovators.

Setting the tone for the series of plenary addresses and panel discussions was John Hurst Adams, senior bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Adams declared that since the post-civil rights movement period, African-Americans have been "damaged by excessive assimilation" into corrupting core values--individualism, materialism, and ethical relativism--of late capitalist culture.

Consequently, black churches risk losing their distinctive historical mission as the conscience of America and the hope for oppressed people worldwide. Bishop Adams reminded participants that America has grown to tolerate (often begrudgingly) and occasionally celebrate the ethnic and cultural distinctiveness of its many sub-populations, especially when these "nonconformists" contribute to the economic and cultural vitality of the entire nation. He noted that black gospel singers, blues artists, jazz musicians, virtuoso preachers, novelists, poets, and politicians have all helped to elevate and transform the quality of American public life.

Continued on page 2: »