TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111990/1119610.000

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                                                                                RELIGION, Page 88

Strains On the Heart


U.S. black churches battle apathy and threats to their
relevance but also revel in renewal

By RICHARD N. OSTLING -- Reported by Joseph J. Kane/Memphis,
Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles and Janice C. Simpson/New York


    "Tell the story! Tell the story!" worshipers cry out as the
Rev. Cecil L. Murray preaches beneath the spectacular murals and
stained glass of Los Angeles' First African Methodist Episcopal
Church. The exclamations from the standing-room-only
congregation of 2,000 come with each oratorical high note. It
is a hymn of health, bespeaking the prosperity of the city's
oldest (1872) black congregation, where every service is a
vibrant demonstration of fervor and passion.

    At the cavernous Pentecostal Temple Church of God in Christ
in Memphis, the air throbs to the beat of drums and tambourines
punctuating a Sunday-morning service. Parishioners sing out the
Gospel hymn Victory! I've Got It. Victory! I've Got It. As
impulse moves them, some of the worshipers dance across the
aisles, while white-clad deaconesses stand ready to aid those
overcome by emotion. "God is still in the miracle business,"
intones Bishop James O. Patterson Jr. during an hourlong sermon.
The Church of God in Christ, with 3.7 million members, is the
fastest growing black denomination -- in fact probably the
fastest growing major denomination of any kind -- in America.

    In contrast to such vibrancy, only a dozen graying
worshipers attend the Silver Bluff Missionary Baptist Church in
Beech Island, S.C., for a Wednesday night service. Founded in
1750, Silver Bluff is the oldest surviving black congregation
in the U.S. Noting the total absence of younger Baptists at the
service, head deacon Willie Sims utters an earnest prayer:
"Father, come back to Silver Bluff one more time."

    Throughout black history in the U.S., the church has been
the central institution in the African-American community, a
fact still true in a country with 65,000 black congregations.
As Baptist Pastor J. Alfred Smithing Sr. of Oakland's Allen
Temple Baptist Church puts it, "The black church is the heart
of black life." Today, as never before, that heart is enduring
strains and challenges brought on by apathy, social ills and new
directions in the black religious experience. Urban
congregations are surrounded by neighborhoods demoralized by
spiraling drug use, crime and family disintegration; the
churches face a looming shortage of qualified clergy; and the
very relevance of many congregations is being challenged. But
in the midst of its tribulations, black religion shows healthy
signs of change and renewal.

    The problems and the promise are both given rare examination
in the first full-scale survey of America's black congregations
since 1933, The Black Church in the African American Experience
(Duke University Press; 519 pages; $47.50, $18.95 paper). The
painstaking examination, which has just been published, is the
work of C. Eric Lincoln, the eminent black scholar of religion
at Duke, and Lawrence H. Mamiya, a Japanese-American professor
of religion and African studies at Vassar. The authors' team
interviewed 1,895 members of the clergy in the 10-year effort
and emerged with cautious optimism. "Unlike white main-line
Protestantism, which is in serious trouble, the black church is
at least holding its own," summarizes Lincoln. "But whether that
will continue is anybody's guess."

    The Black Church focuses on the seven largest black
Protestant denominations in the country. The biggest U.S. black
organization of any type is the 7.5 million-member National
Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. Like all Baptist groups, it
gives individual congregations complete autonomy. The National
Baptist Convention of America and the Progressive National
Baptist Convention, Inc. are kindred groups. The oldest black
denominations are the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.)
Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, founded
after the Revolutionary War by free blacks influenced by John
Wesley's revival movement. The closely related Christian
Methodist Episcopal Church was formed by freed slaves after the
Civil War. The seventh institution is the Church of God in
Christ, which, like all Pentecostal groups, emphasizes the
experience known as "baptism in the Holy Spirit," manifested by
speaking in tongues. When other Protestants and Roman Catholic
worshipers are added in, black churchgoers total 24 million.

    Black Christianity preaches a gospel of deliverance, the
reality of a vivid flesh-and-blood Jesus and the urgency of
spiritual rebirth. In that sense, all seven denominations are
akin to white Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism. But black
belief also insists that social and economic liberation is part
of that gospel. No less important than the message has been the
messenger. Uniquely, the black church has been the haven for an
entire community's most visionary leaders, from Nat Turner,
leader of the 1831 slave rebellion, to Oliver Brown, who filed
the lawsuit that abolished school desegregation, to former
Atlanta mayor Andrew Young.

    In examining the status of the clergy, The Black Church
raises deeply troubling questions. The median age of black
pastors in the U.S. has reached a dangerously high 52, which
means that fewer young blacks are entering the ministry. Thanks
to the civil rights movement, the ministry is no longer the sole
redoubt of blacks with leadership aspirations. "We never had
black mayors before the last 30 years," remarks Harlem Baptist
Pastor Wyatt Tee Walker.

    The ministry is also losing out in the economic competition.
Only one-quarter of the black pastors in the U.S. have health
insurance, a mere 15.7% receive pensions, and salaries are so
low that nearly 40% of pastors hold second jobs. Less than
one-fifth of pastors hold seminary degrees. The Rev. Calvin
Butts, pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, believes
lack of formal skills is critical. "You can be `called,' but 9
times out of 10 today if you are not trained, you are of no use
to us," says Butts, who holds a Ph.D. from Drew University in
New Jersey.

    The graying of the clergy extends to the faithful. Black
churches usually operate a wide array of community projects
reaching all age groups, but "many black churches are senior
citizens' homes," laments Los Angeles pastor Murray. "They do
not attract young adults and youths." High rates of joblessness
and crime among young blacks are significant factors, but the
Rev. Richard Norris of Philadelphia's Mother Bethel A.M.E.
Church (founded in 1794) cites the drug crisis in particular:
"It's destroyed the family. It's weakened the church." Baltimore
attorney Leronia Josey blames some middle-class black
Christians for getting too "comfortable." The church, she says,
let others take charge of community welfare, and "in the process
the drugs crept in and the girls got pregnant."

    Black youths have often been attracted to Islam, with its
strong image of male assertiveness, black pride and rigid
discipline. In particular, Muslim organizations have far outdone
Christians in evangelizing prison inmates and ex-convicts. The
Lincoln-Mamiya study estimates, however, that the two major
North American black Islamic groups have only 120,000 members,
and some inner-city pastors claim that fascination with the
religion is waning.

    In contrast with male-oriented Islam, the active membership
in the typical black Christian church today is 70% female. But
there are few women ministers, and apparently that is the way
laywomen want it. "Though congregations are run by women in
support roles, those women say they want to see a man as an
authority figure," says James Costen, president of Atlanta's
Interdenominational Theological Center. The issue may generate
more controversy as the clergy shortage grows. For now,
ambitious women preachers are joining white denominations or
establishing their own independent congregations.

    One of the most successful woman preacher-entrepreneurs is
Johnnie Colemon, 70, who started her Christ Universal Temple in
1956 with 35 members. Now Colemon operates Chicago's largest
black church, boasting 10,000 followers who meet in a sprawling
$10.5 million complex on the city's South Side. Colemon was
ordained by the Unity School of Christianity, based in Unity
Village, Mo., a New Thought group that she quit in 1974 because
of what she charged was a racist tinge. Colemon preaches
reincarnation (she believes she was once an Egyptian princess)
and an unapologetic quest for material prosperity ("Money is God
in action"). Practicing what she preaches, the pastor lives in
a 23-room mansion.

    Despite their problems, mainstream black Christian groups
still exhibit plenty of vitality. Even struggling rural Southern
churches, hard hit by northward migration, are doggedly holding
on with the help of part-time pastors and energetic lay leaders.
One hopeful sign in the North and the West is that blacks are
no longer drifting into white churches when they move up the
social scale. Says Atlanta's John Hurst Adams, senior bishop of
the A.M.E. Church: "We are not buying the integration route. We
never have and never will. We seek an inclusive society that
need not be integrated but values diversity and respects it."

    Across the country, there is a discernible turn back to the
church among educated, affluent blacks. As a young man,
Baltimore civil engineer Larry Little, 41, forsook religion for
radical politics. Years later, he felt isolated as the only
black in his Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins and resumed
churchgoing, currently at Baltimore's Bethel A.M.E. Church. Many
other black urban professionals tell similar stories. Lincoln
and Mamiya argue that the resurgence of interest underscores the
vital need for better educated clergy.

    Los Angeles' First A.M.E. Church is one congregation that
is squarely addressing the problem of lagging male presence.
Church leaders have organized special monthly meetings for men,
who leave the sanctuary midway through the morning service and
gather by themselves. Apart from building male solidarity, the
sessions are designed to enlist commitments to 25 church task
forces, many of them aimed at troubled young men.

    While traditional churches are struggling to maintain their
relevance, Lincoln and Mamiya believe that, increasingly,
American blacks will look to forms of Pentecostalism for their
spiritual needs. By the scholars' projections, Pentecostalism
could claim half of black churchgoers sometime in the next
century. The movement has three variants. There are the
traditional Pentecostal denominations such as the Church of God
in Christ. There are also independent Charismatic
congregations, and Neo-Pentecostalists within the traditional
Methodist and Baptist denominations.

    A lively exemplar of the independent Charismatic movement
is the 10,000-member Crenshaw Christian Center of Los Angeles,
a church with no shortage of men under 40. Pastor Frederick
Price preaches a much disputed "word of faith" message, which
holds that God will supply anything that believers want,
including health and wealth, when they truly believe. The
television preacher describes his method as simply giving people
"biblical information that they can apply and put into their
daily lives. This is what people need, and this is what they
want. They eat it up."

    The nerve center of black Neo-Pentecostalism is Bethel
A.M.E. Church in Baltimore, which presents an invigorating blend
of rollicking music and old-time religion. The church had 500
members in 1974; today it boasts more than 7,000. The average
age of members is 35, and nearly half are men. Bethel is proudly
Afrocentric -- a bright mural of African faces is painted over
the altar -- and has traded its pipe organ for a jazz band.
Pastor Frank Reid, 39, holds degrees from Yale and Harvard
Divinity School.

    Reid's sermons are interspersed with traditional Pentecostal
dancing and singing, while at one point in the Sunday service
worshipers break up into cozy prayer circles. Bethel is an
energetically activist congregation: last year it clothed and
fed 18,000 people, and it operates programs for older people,
teens, women, youths with school problems and adults who cannot
read. Next on the agenda is a $10 million athletic center.

    Congregation member Larry Little is convinced that churches
like Bethel represent not only the best spiritual hope for
American blacks, but perhaps their best social hope as well. "In
the next 10 years," he predicts, "you'll see the churches
growing through the walls because people have nowhere else to
go." Whatever its religious forms, in other words, the black
church still has what Lincoln and Mamiya call the
"institutionalized staying power of a human community that has
been under siege for close to 400 years." If the church
flourishes, the community will gain strength.