Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Pulpit power vacuum
Black clergymen agree struggle is real
LOS ANGELES — “Our God!” the worshippers belted out, bouncing inside a towering cathedral. “Our God!”
Amid the rising voices, the Rev. Charles Blake gently swayed and clapped, head bowed and tortoiseshell glasses halfway down his nose.
Blake, 78, the pastor of West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles, has developed a reputation as a calming force in raucous moments — whether in the church or the community. But presiding over a Pentecostal denomination of roughly 6 million members worldwide, he is well aware of his power. And, like many black clergy members, he is grappling with how to use that power in an activist climate that has drastically shifted in style and substance since the civil rights era.
Blake is one of dozens of ministers who converged on Memphis on Wednesday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most famous preacher-activists in history. But more than bowing their heads and saying prayers, the pastors have confronted a reality that there are no dominant leaders among them in the mold of King, and that their churches are not as central to the social justice movement as they once were.
They are finding themselves trying to figure out how to strike a balance of engaging in King’s unfinished work of fighting racism, while remaining true to a historically conservative institution.
“The church has been to some degree disengaged,” said the Rev. W. Franklyn Richardson of Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y. “Churches that have social consciousness are pushed by this anniversary into a place of reflecting on how far we have come or not come, and have we abandoned what he gave his life for?”
For ministers such as Blake, that means embracing the parts of the movement he agrees with — ending police violence and empowering black businesses, for instance. But it also means holding the line on church teachings with which young activists disagree.
There are also differences in approach. Pastors often want to work within the system to bring about change, while many activists try to disturb and upend the system.
Blake is not someone to be found on protest lines or shouting down law enforcement; he tends to advocate through more formal channels. He departs from some activist ministers in his social conservatism, opposing same-sex marriage and abortion. Yet he tries to strike a welcoming posture in an era of activists who can feel as if the church is judging them.
He hosted a rally at his church to protest the killing of Trayvon Martin. Last year, he wrote a letter to the mayor of St. Louis suggesting that if police practices were not reformed, his denomination could take its annual convention — and the millions of dollars that come with it — elsewhere. And at a gathering of black congressional leaders, his raspy voice grew louder as he declared that black people needed “to take charge of our destiny.”
“Religion at its best shows people how to live productively, safely and wisely and altruistically,” said Blake, who has led the Church of God in Christ since 2007.
Some ministers have an approach that is a more natural fit with the renewed religious left. Last year, the Rev. William Barber II, pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, N.C., started the Poor People’s Campaign, patterned after the effort that King established to address urban poverty. King’s campaign, which was to include setting up an encampment in Washington, was cut short by his death.
Barber is apt to politicize his sermons on Sundays and advocate civil disobedience to win change. He has linked LGBT rights to the civil rights struggle.
“The one thing that would be dishonorable for us is to bring all this attention to the assassination of Dr. King and not have a resurrection of the efforts and the unfinished business dealing with systemic racism, systemic poverty,” Barber said.
Even in King’s day, black churches were not unified. Many did not follow King, and stayed on the sidelines. Some worried about attracting violent backlash. Some preferred a more gradualist approach. Similar tensions remain in the fight for his legacy.
The Rev. Traci Blackmon, an executive with the United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination, and the leader of a church near Ferguson, Mo., sees the work that many churches perform, such as feeding and housing the poor, as distinct from the advocacy that Black Lives Matter and other organizations are doing, she said.
“I’m talking about the organized countermovement that has as its end goal the changing of systems and the dismantling of structures,” said Blackmon, who was a front-line activist after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. “Often, the work that we do on church local levels does not have that as the end goal.”