TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Archives
• Young Voices
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Bishop Jones' official site
• About Messengers
• Bishop Jones' official site
• The Battle for the Mind
• Article on Bishop Jones
• About Messengers

E-mail a friend

Tavis: David Ritz is an award-winning writer who has penned a number of notable books including a terrific biography of the late, great Marvin Gaye. In his latest book, he profiles in the book a number of high profile African Americans. People of faith and fact, including the Bishop Noel Jones, Pastor of the City of Refuse Church here in Los Angeles. The book is called 'Messengers: Portraits of African American Ministers, Evangelists, Gospel Singers and Other Messengers of the Word.' David Ritz, Bishop Jones, nice to have you both here.

Bishop Noel Jones: It's always a pleasure.

David Ritz: Nice to be here Tavis.

Tavis: Glad to have you both here. Let me start, David, by asking you another version, similar version of the question I asked Cathleen Falsani a moment ago which is why this matters. But let me tweak it for you a little bit. What's the unique value that African American evangelist, gospel singers, and messengers of the word bring to public discourse in America?

Ritz: I'm not sure I have the answer to that. I can only answer that its unique value for me is that that's what sort of got me to God. Those were the gospel vocalists and ministers that drew me to God. Those were the sort of voices that were irresistible for me. I can't answer for anybody else.

Tavis: What about those voices makes it - you told me a great story about Mahalia Jackson when you were a kid. You were growing up a Jewish kid, and you're drawn, though, by this Christian faith, by this Black aesthetic on that Christian faith. What was it, in your own words, about that, that drew you, this Jewish kid?

Ritz: The Holy Ghost, you know, I don't know, when I was a kid, I'd go to hear Ray Charles or wh...ver and I was jumping up and down, you know? I was just jumping up and down. And whether it was John Coltrane or Miles and it's taken me my entire life to understand that under those grooves, under those kind of harmonies and melodies, is God. And I've been sort of digging deeper and deeper my entire career as a writer. And so the conclusion I've come to is that it's all God.

Tavis: You, to that point right now, before I go to Bishop Jones here, you write at the very beginning, the very outset of the book, that speaking of it all being God, you write, he who receives and welcomes and takes into his heart any messenger of mine, receives me. He who receives and welcomes and takes into his heart any messenger of mine receives me. I saw that and I think I know why you put that in there. But that's a dangerous passage to me when you suggest that anyone who comes to you in my name and you receive him or her means that you automatically receive me. That doesn't sound a little dangerous to you?

Ritz: Yeah, it is, I mean, and you do have to be careful, and there are some jackleg preachers out there. And there will always be jackleg preachers out there, because in the name of Jesus, in the name of God, you can do some awful things, and awful things have been done. Have been done, but for me the sort of journey has been going from my head to my heart. And I don't dismiss critical acumen; I think it's really important to have, um, critical acumen, and adjudicating preachers.

But I also think that this book is about the journey from my head to my heart and going home. In other words, as a kid, when I was eight years old and I heard Pops and Mavis Staples, I always knew it was true. I always knew that was my home. But it took all these years to sort of go home to Noel's church or whatever church seems to me to be true.

Tavis: Bishop, what's your take on that particular scripture before I move on.

Jones: Well I think there has to be some discernment. There has to be some, yes, some evaluation. But the question now becomes what's the standard if you don't have a standard to evaluate? You've got to have something to evaluate. And I think the answer to that is much of "Messenger's" presentations, you already know something in your heart. Because in order for you even to listen, you have already had to connect with God.

And so at the end of the day, it's a connection from one spirit to the other. One articulates eloquently or presents, and they put something in communication that you could never communicate because you didn't have the words or the expression, but you knew it was right. And so I think messengers actually confirm more than bring you something new. I think you're already feeling something, you're already having some evaluation that's personal, and I think that's it.

Another thing I think its significant here is that the whole, the whole African American experience, the whole Black experience carries with it that religious or spiritual disposition that helps you in the struggle. And I think that's maybe subterrain as it relates to David, and that is the whole Jewish experience is overcoming through religious affiliation and spiritual association, and I think that's the same thing with the Black experience.

Tavis: That just, I would think though that would be an underlying factor for all faith. I mean, Karen Armstrong, best-selling author was on this program not long ago, and we got into a conversation somewhat about this. And that is this notion of whether or not the purpose of faith, the purpose of receiving whatever the message is, is to help you overcome whatever you are encountering, is that what the underlying?

Jones: No question. Because many times what happens is, your expectation in life and your experience aren't always the same and so the whole form comes when you understand, I have this faith, I have this expectation, but I have to get through this experience, and that now begins to form you and make you who you are, and it becomes quite essential.

Tavis: Is it your sense that the church, the Black church specifically since David penned this book, or sets this book in the Black church experience, is it your sense that the Black church is doing a better job now or a worse job, than heretofore are responding to the needs of the people? And I ask against the backdrop of the story that we all saw in the New York Times a few weeks ago about this whole prosperity gospel that's taken root, certainly inside of Black America where it's all about what you can have and not about what you can become. So how is the church doing in being the kind of messenger that it needs to be?

Jones: Well, the church is at a critical point now in terms of the whole message because the paradigm has shifted so many times. Right now, at first, it was traditional Pentecostalism that was on top. Then it moved from traditional Pentecostalism to neo-Pentecostalism to charismaticism to word of faith, and the paradigm has shifted now where faith initially was significant to get to heaven. But the word of faith people have now made fate significant for earth and prosperity living.

Now the next shift will be, and the church misses this shift then it will be wiped out. The next shift is now empowerment. Because through word of faith preaching, preachers have made a good deal of money on telling people, you come here, drop some money off, and God's gonna bless you, make you rich. I think the question needs to be when you come up with 1000 dollars is, how. Because I have never, in my life, received a check in an envelope post-marked from Heaven.

You see, I had to do something in order to get it. And I think every theology brings a psychology. And if you keep pushing that prosperity message, what's going to happen is you're sending a psychological message to the people with your theology that all you have to do is bring it to me and you will be rich. And at the end of the day, that's going to cripple the church.

Tavis: Let me ask you, David, whether or not, in your research, in putting together this book, you find that there are the kinds of messengers, be they singers, worship leaders, pastors, preachers, teachers, you find the kind of messengers now who are having the kind of impact as they did back in the day, and I, Dr. Mahalia Jackson, there are any number of notables. You know, you can't begin a conversation about the Black faith tradition without certain names coming to mind. Do those same kinds of persons in that Kingian, Mahalia Jackson, Gardner Taylor kind of tradition still exist today?

Ritz: Here he is, I mean, you know, Noel Jones to me, I call him the John Coltrane of Evangelical preachers, I mean, yes, I think the answer is yes, they're all over the country. That's what this whole book was about. I am always being told, you know, old-time gospel and old-school gospel, and never be replaced. But to me, today Kirk Franklin and Smokey Norville and...

Tavis: With all due respect, and I love those guys, but that ain't Aretha Franklin; that ain't James Cleveland; it ain't Albertina Walker.

Ritz: Donny McClerklin and, and Marvin Wynens are up there, high in the pantheon of all-time gospel greats. Now again, when time goes by and everybody is always convinced that the only true music happened when they were teenagers and they were 21 years old, but that's just nostalgia. I mean, these cats today can blow, and I'm sort of knocked out by the high quality of preaching. And not just the high quality of the kind of rhetorical techniques, but the heart of the preachers today. So I think it's a great time for, I'm glad you're into gospel music, I love it man.

Tavis: I'm glad you said that, because Bishop, there is this ongoing debate about whether or not what you get from the Black experience, certainly if you happen not to be Black and you go to a Black church, often times with these people first is not the heart thing, but the head thing. It is today where that technique, how important is - I heard a White preacher once say that on his best day, a White preacher can't touch a Black preacher on his worst day. And the point he was making was about technique, about style, about the humming, about the singing, about the intonation, about the groove under the text. How much of the technique, we see you on TV all the time, how much of the technique makes the difference?

Jones: It depends on your audience, because the audience has to be educated enough to understand that we're going to do two things in this. We're going to give instruction and then we're going to give inspiration. It is the groove. The underlining groove that becomes attractive, because now I have grabbed your emotion. But now that I've got your attention, because of the groove, now I have the responsibility to give you the cognitive, the intellectual, the spiritual, the philosophical, the psychological that will help you to make your life work.

Because unless I take the mystical and apply it to your everyday life, then of course, you're just sitting there in another debate, in another philosophical situation. So it's got to go psychological today, that's why mega churches are mega churches. Not because they meet, they grab a lot of people off the street. Because mega-churches grow from, at the expense of, smaller churches who don't have the technique.

Tavis: They've taken their mystical and turned it into a book called 'Messengers: Portraits of African American Ministers, Evangelists, Gospel Singers, and Other Messengers of the Word.' David Ritz, of Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin, and B.B. King, and Ray Charles fame. The new book by David Ritz. David, nice to have you on the program.

Ritz: I appreciate it.

Tavis: Bishop, it's always good to see you.

Jones: It's my pleasure.