God's Gonna Trouble the Water

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Second, black faith also offers a stirring critique of the racial and class elements swept to the surface by Katrina. As Martin Luther King, Jr., was fond of quoting the prophet Amos, we must work for a world where "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." The biblical mandate of Jesus to care for "the least of these," and to visit prisoners, care for widowers, and preach hope to the poor, reinforces the black church's mission to address these salient social issues.

It is clear that the vast majority of victims of this catastrophe were black and poor. While God's grace may account for why some poor folk lived, it appears that class position and skin color kept others from facing the fury of the storm. Those who were able to escape before the wind and water did its worst were richer, and often whiter, than those who were left behind to sink or swim.

Black religious faith offers prophetic criticism of the contemporary American social, racial, and economic arrangements that perpetuate inequality and which make millions of our fellow citizens more vulnerable to natural disaster. That is why the sorrow song from slavery, "Go Down Moses," still resonates in black sacred circles, as it instructs the leader to "tell ol' pharaoh to let my people go," and to release them from the brutal conditions that cause their suffering.

Not all potential victims of Katrina were created equal. 120,000 folk in New Orleans make less than $8,000.00. The lower 9th ward, where a great deal of damage was done, is 94 percent black and 40 percent poor. 100,000 people in New Orleans owned no transportation, making their escape less likely. Most of them couldn't afford a plane or bus ticket even if they could have made it to the airport or bus terminal. Neither did many of the poor have relatives or friends who could help them financially.

Long before the wind and water battered them, the black and poor had been blown away by a society and government that refused to attend to their plight or needs. Black prophetic religious faith relentlessly speaks against the social injustice and economic inequality that reinforces disparities that are just as deadly as the natural disaster that drowned the poor. From Henry Highland Garnett to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Frederick Douglass to Jesse Jackson, and from Sojourner Truth to Bishop Vashti McKenzie, black prophet leaders have argued that the gospel must be used to transform society and bring the Kingdom of God closer to our time and community. And long before the government abandoned the black and poor in New Orleans-it is inexcusable the way President Bush and the federal government neglected to make it to the Gulf States in a timely fashion to stem the tide of death and suffering-it had already pushed them to the margins of our society through joblessness and severely low wages. Even as right-wing evangelical faith sanctifies the state, worships the market, and genuflects before conservative government, black prophetic faith must uphold the blood-stained banner of a God who so identified with human suffering and oppression that that God descended to earth to die as one of the poor and outcast.

Black prophetic faith must also help guide the national discussion about race in the aftermath of the unprecedented dispersion and migration of Katrina's poor black survivors across the country. While many of the evacuees were initially welcomed with open arms, the racial hostilities that usually accompany the influx of black people into white enclaves must be anticipated. And we must address the fear that the black poor carry with them of being displaced from one home only to find themselves in even more tenuous conditions are they attempt to build new lives. Moreover, if New Orleans, especially, is rebuilt with an eye to regentrification that pushes already economically marginal folk further to the social periphery, then we have done little more than collude with nature's despotically indifferent will to uproot and exploit the poor.

Third, Katrina challenges black churches to recapture their prophetic anger and to transform that passion into social action. During the 2004 election, conservative blacks voted for Bush because of his opposition to gay marriage, diverting critical attention from Bush's failure to address the social and economic inequities that continue to hamper progress and equality for millions of poor blacks. Not only did such a shift among black voters reinforce ugly homophobia, it also absorbed precious cultural resources that might have relieved the suffering of the black poor instead of increasing the suffering of gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual brothers and sisters. The greater tragedy may be that such efforts were sparked by conservative forces and ideologues who have proved hostile to the interests of black folk.

Along the same lines, black churches must be sharply critical of the gospel of prosperity as the measure of authentic faith that has swept our sanctuaries. The black church has been flooded by theological justifications of material acquisition that threaten to drown our heritage of radical identification with "the least of these." It is tragic that so many leaders and faithful in the black church have been seduced by facile formulas of upward mobility and social status while surrendering Micah's prophetic imperative to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with God.

Katrina reminds us that black pastors and their flocks must refocus on their mission to the downtrodden, the heavy-laden, the socially outcast, the bereaved, and those imprisoned by hopelessness and despair. Too many black churches have reneged on the translation of the gospel into concrete demands for social justice and have instead tailored their theologies to fit the market and morality of a conservative culture that despises our history and tramples on our best traditions.

The black church must reclaim its legacy as a center of prophetic expression of outrage at the forces that make the lives of the poor and vulnerable hell. Otherwise, we forfeit our right to be called sons and daughters of a God whose first love is always those who are last.

Katrina didn't happen to make us learn these lessons, but if we take them from the horror we have witnessed, then Katrina's hellish fury, and the injustices it washed into our faces, won't have the last word. And our poor brothers and sisters won't have died in vain.