Crisis of Faith

The rise of the Black Power movement in 1966 questioned the legitimacy of a movement using nonviolent action. Taking up the cry, "We have the right to defend ourselves," thousands of black parishioners, especially the youth, stopped going to church. As James Cone notes, "They had been waiting too long for God to call the oppressor into account." If Christianity told them to wait on the Lord to solve their problems, many didn't want to be Christian anymore. They wanted freedom, better schools, and economic equality - now.

Rev. Martin Luther King shifted his own focus towards a campaign for economic justice. He criticized the Vietnam War: defense spending, he said, would draw attention away from the program for social justice at home.

Then, in April of 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis.

His death sparked riots in 17 cities throughout the country, during which 39 people, 35 of them black, were killed. At King's funeral, Mahalia Jackson sang a mournful version of Thomas Dorsey's "Take My Hand, Precious Lord." It had been King's favorite song.

In the wake of the riots, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, the slain President's brother, spoke eloquently and empathetically about the need to address the concerns of inner city blacks. In the abyss left by King's passing, it seemed Senator Kennedy might carry the torch of racial and economic justice in the Democratic Party. He decided to run for the presidency, and thousands of black Americans put their hopes in him.

Then, just four months later, he, too, was killed, shot moments after winning the California Democratic Presidential Primary because of his pro-Israel stance.

That summer at the Democratic National Convention, Chicago police brutalized mostly white demonstrators who gathered in the name of freedom faith, peace, and economic justice. It was as if the progressive movement itself had suffered a beat down. The assassinations of progressive leaders were a clear sign that the path towards freedom would be no easy walk.

Some African American Christians tried to hold fast to their belief that an all-powerful and all-loving God would enact justice in history. Others put their faith in Black Capitalism; others joined pan-Africanist or revolutionary movements, or found that faith had failed them altogether - they fell into the abyss of drug dependency. For them, now, even the do-right, do-for-self philosophy of the Nation of Islam lacked the answers.

How could one keep the faith in a country gone so awry? Could one be black and Christian? Could Islam do better to meet the needs of African Americans? Were there alternatives to both religions? As the old traditions seemed to fail, African Americans found new ways to make faith meaningful to their lives.

Black Liberation Theology

As the sixties progressed, James Cone felt torn by a feeling of "twoness." He was an AME preacher, a Christian theologian - and a student of Malcolm X.

Filled with rage against the white church and his own inability to see God at work during the turbulent times, Cone sat down in 1967 to write the essay "Christianity and Black Power." It marked the beginning of a theological journey that would be a radical break with his upbringing and education.

He had never considered himself a writer. But during the summer of 1968, he felt a calling. As he explains, "When the spirit hit me that I had to write the book, there was no choice."

He rented a room at his brother's church in Little Rock, Arkansas, and, in just one month, wrote Black Theology and Black Power. Cone felt himself channeling the Holy Spirit as he wrote. "I just felt myself driven by the truth, the truth of black history and culture and what it had to say about the nature of black faith in the struggle for justice".

His book revolutionized the black church and articulated a way for black ministers to be relevant in the ongoing struggle. Black Theology taught that the Christian gospel carried a message of freedom, and that Jesus was the Liberator, fighting on the side of the oppressed throughout the world - particularly in the United States. Black Theology placed Christ firmly in the ghetto, and gave blacks the power, the "soul," to "destroy white racism."

Cone, like Malcolm X, attacked the white mainstream religious community for its racist interpretation of Christianity, but he also reproached the black Christian community - as had Martin Luther King - for accepting that white interpretation and for not thinking more critically about Christianity in their lives. Mainstream theologians vilified Cone as a racist, but his theory ignited a re-examination of the role of Christianity in the lives and struggles of black people.

"To be black in America has little to do with skin color," Cone wrote. "To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are… Being reconciled to God does not mean that one's skin is physically black. It essentially depends on the color of your heart, soul, and mind."

Throughout the country, young preachers read the book, and then scoured black history. They found inspiration in the writings and life examples of Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, Henry Highland Garnet, David Walker, and Henry McNeal Turner. Their calls for socio-political freedom through rebellion against slavery and cultural liberation through such claims as Turner's 1898 statement that "God is a Negro" were similar to the calls and aims of Black Power. They found that they were part of a deep tradition in which freedom fighters used their faith in the Gospel to further the struggle for black liberation. Their searching led to revisions in church worship styles and re-engaged the church in social activism.

The Black Church and HIV/AIDS

Black Liberation Theology stayed in the seminary; on the streets, new dangers faced a black community less unified in faith in the 1980s than it had been in the fifties. As the new economy took old blue-collar jobs away, families were left with no income. And while the old sins of drug addiction and promiscuity had been around as long as the Old Testament, a new disease - AIDS - challenged the church, the mosque, and the temples.

African Americans make up 13% of the general population, but account for more than 50% of the estimated 40,000 new HIV infections that occur yearly. One in every 50 black men and one in every 160 black women is HIV positive. The black church came under intense criticism, starting in 1985, for being slow to respond to this crisis.

It was a difficult issue. Ministers had to confront behaviors they define every Sunday from the pulpit as highly immoral: homosexuality, drug use, and promiscuous sexuality. Homosexuality is particularly stigmatized in black communities, and black ministers voiced their disapproval - despite the presence of gay worshippers in the congregation.

Black churches were not alone in ignoring the AIDS epidemic. Prominent black civil rights organizations such as the Urban League and NAACP refused for years to make AIDS a priority. White churches, too, were reluctant to take on the issue.

By the end of the 1990s, as the epidemic continued to grow, black churches finally embraced those with HIV/AIDS. In 1989, 50 churches participated in the first Black Church Week of Prayer for Healing AIDS, led by Balm in Gilead, a nonprofit organization that helps black churches provide AIDS education and support networks. During the 1999 Week of Prayer, 5,000 churches held worship services, lectures and concerts to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, according to Pernessa Seele, CEO of Balm in Gilead.

"My strategy is simple," she says. "I ask the ministers to offer a prayer for those who are sick or dying of AIDS. After service, they are always surprised by how many of their parishioners come up and tell them how this disease has touched them personally."

In 2002, she took the program to Africa.

A former administrator at Harlem Hospital, Seele founded the organization after growing tired of watching hundreds of AIDS patients die alone, without the support of their churches. "The church I knew in the South was always a place you could bring your pain, sickness, and grief," Ms. Seele said. "I couldn't bear the silence anymore."

One man, Rev. Eugene Rivers, took a similar approach to the crack epidemic. Black churches, Rivers said, "need to have their feet put to the fire around this issue." He and three other ministers formed the Ten Point Coalition to combat violence and gang activity in Boston. Read more about Rev. Rivers' program at http://www.tgsrm.org/Church%20Leadership%20Crisis.html

The crack epidemic declined, and crime dropped nationwide, so churches were perhaps not forced into action in the same way they have been by the rise of HIV/AIDS among black Americans. Still, black churches have long been characterized as the first line of defense against crises in black communities. The fact that it took nearly a decade - and in the case of AIDS, almost two decades - before black ministers and their congregations could respond to two devastating epidemics suggests that the church may no longer be in the vanguard of the black community.

Black Church Burnings

As if to reflect and extend the tide of confusion, bitterness, and hopelessness in black America, a wave of arson destroyed hundreds of black churches; and then corruption and cynicism dispersed the ashes.

In 1996, over 160 black churches burned across the nation. Many of them were in poor, rural areas. This was particularly devastating, as rural black churches also serve as centers of community and provide a wide range of social services. Investigators found little evidence pointing to a conspiracy or organized plot. But as Deval Patrick, U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, told Congress in 1996, "the climate of racial division across the country is extreme," making African American institutions vulnerable to attack.

The church burnings were also a metaphor for the decline in the church's influence and its prestige. In 1970, 80% of blacks went to church. By the end of the nineties, only 40% did - and the vast majority of them were women. The church as a gathering place for family and community seemed to be over, its place in history a monument to earlier struggles.

Nevertheless, President Bill Clinton formed the National Church Arson Task Force (NCATF) to investigate the crimes and protect churches from future incidents. Over four years, the Task Force reported a steady decline in church arson. They investigated 297 incidents in 1996, 208 in 1997, and 114 in 1998. In addition, the percentage of black churches targeted declined from 40% to 25% - a sharp decline, but out of proportion to their representation in society.

Forty years ago, black churches and homes were subjected to a rash of fire bombings at the hands of the Knight Riders, part of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan organized not only against blacks, but against Catholics and Jews. Out of a sense of solidarity, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith raised $250,000 and donated it to the National Baptist Convention in order to rebuild some of those lost churches. A year later, that money was gone, and the head of the once proud National Baptist Convention, Henry Lyons, was indicted on charges of mishandling funds. The minister pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud, two counts of tax evasion, and one count each of making false statements to a bank officer and the federal government. He was sentence to five-and-a-half years.

Lyons' conviction highlighted how the challenges facing the church have changed since the sixties. Perpetrators in the 1990s are much more difficult to characterize - and their sins are more difficult to hide. Young African Americans in particular sense a hypocrisy in the church that goes beyond theologies of black and white. They seek a higher love, a deeper connection, with the divine.

Seeking a New Path

For some who came of age in the seventies, neither Christianity nor Islam offered an answer. Both religions come from proselytizing traditions that emphasize doctrine, theology and human intermediaries who approach the Divine.

Today's Hip-Hop generation demands that society accept them on their own terms. They have embraced an ancestral theology unmediated through a European sieve, one that provides a personal, active spirituality. They have made Yoruba and its offshoots one of the fastest-growing religions in the world.

All African religions recognize "God Almighty", yet none presume the supplicant's authority to pull the Almighty's shirtsleeve. Instead, worshippers commune with specified aspects of the Divine. These intermediaries can be thought of as angels; they are called, variously: "saints"/"Santos," "Loas," "Orishas," "Obosum," "Neteru," "The Gods." Worshippers consult with them to discover how best to live in harmony with God's Will. These "deities" are part of a highly sophisticated theology, within which people and nature are organized according to personality, function, chemical content, and appearance. Each Orisha has dominion over a certain class of energy; a certain spiritual valence is their domain.

Today, these deities form a melting pot in the New World. In Haiti, they call on Dahomean deities, but also invoke Mbundu (Angolan) names and Ibo powers. Cuba is home to the Lucumi religion, which is mostly derived from Yoruba traditions, as are Candomble and Macumba of Brazil. The Arar religion of Cuba, reflects Dahomean/Fon traditions. The Abakwa Society of Cuba maintains a spiritual and social fraternity from eastern Nigeria/Cameroon. Umbanda, also of Brazil, and Cuba's Palo Monte and Majombe are rooted in religious traditions of Central African peoples.

African religions demand years of practice and insist on a strict regimen of initiation to refine the cognitive process, that followers may develop their ability to recognize how the Deity manifests through seemingly simple, everyday actions. The signs, proof of one's living on or off the path of god, come every day.

Westerners are most familiar with aspects of African religions dissimilar to their own. Dancing, songs, the drumming "for the Gods" are practices that transform meditation into a full-body experience of the Divine. The steps and rhythms are based upon a system of cultivation of consciousness that corresponds to the refining of the mind's perceptive process, allowing informed energy to flow to the heart and manifest in movement. Of course, all the uninitiated see are dance and song.

Part of the liturgy of African peoples is music and instruments:

--Cuba uses the two-headed, hourglass shaped bat drums for its sacred Lucumi ceremonies. Each drummer, with the drum laid across his lap, plays a different drumhead with each hand, in effect making an orchestra of six out of three players.

--Palo in Cuba uses upright drums similar to congas in its rites.

--Trinidad's Shango religion also has three players, performing on two-headed drums with one stick and one hand. Haiti's drums of Vodun are also played in sets of three: one with a pair of straight sticks, one with hands, and one with a hooked stick and a hand. These drums' heads are made of skin and are attached to their shells with large tuning pegs at 45-degree angles. The Vodun priest in Haiti is called a houngan. This minister wields an asson, a small rattle, like a maraca, except the hollow gourd is covered with a net of beads instead of being filled with loose pebbles.

--"Voodoo" is a derogatory derivation of the term "Voudou", the religion of the Fon people of Dahomey, modern-day Benin. During slavery, it was transferred to Haiti and the United States. A typical Voudou ceremony is built around the Loa tree, from where the Spirits descend. The tree is decorated with intricate, lacey corn meal drawings, known as V.V.

--Brazil also has "conga-like" drums, but the heads are tuned with pegs through a loop at the bottom of the drum. Their priestess is called a M.e. de Santos.

Increasingly, African Americans journey to Africa or the Caribbean to study these religions - firsthand. Additionally, traditional practitioners who immigrated to the United States opened spiritual houses here. From this union have come such communities as the Akans of America organization and the Oyotunde, a traditional Yoruba village in South Carolina. The Ausar Auset Society and others recreate rites from the Ausarian (Osiris) tradition of northeast Africa.

The trained devotee's recognition of Spirit's hand in day-to-day living reinforces the African communal worldview practiced and maintained by enslaved people through the then-necessary filter of Christianity. Now, American Africans are turning back to the source, an interpersonal spiritual theology that offers the intimacy of and contact with another dimension, revealing purpose, transforming lives. Literal communion with the Divine, not simply a belief in the divine, is the transforming power. It is the certification of things unseen.

The Million Man March

It had been a decade of increasing drug violence, rising rates of single motherhood, and increasing rates of black men in prison.

Minister Louis Farrakhan, head of the resurrected Nation of Islam, called for a Million Man March. The march, billed as a "holy day of atonement and reconciliation" for African American men, took place on Washington's Mall on October 16, 1995. Much controversy surrounded it during the planning stage, but those who attended described their experience as meaningful, and observers suggest that the march has led to many positive outcomes.

The controversy surrounded the principal organizer, Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan asked black women to stay home and let the men handle their own affairs. Some African American women were supportive, while others perceived their exclusion as symbolic of the "second class" role assigned to Islamic women.

Farrakhan had come under criticism for calling Jews "financial bloodsuckers" who practiced a "gutter religion." Other intemperate remarks infuriated Catholics, gays, feminists, and whites in general. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich predicted that the Million Man March "will polarize us and drive us apart." Still, Minister Farrakhan had claimed the mantle once worn by Malcolm X, and he wore it well. He formed a coalition of groups in support. Churches, fraternities, schools, recovery groups, and neighborhoods sent buses, and, on the anointed day, nearly a million black men showed up at the nation's Capitol. Themes of self-help and self-respect were struck constantly throughout the day. The crowd fell silent as Farrakhan called upon them to pledge to improve their lives and the lives of their wives and children. They were encouraged to go back home and "build your own communities, avoid drugs and violence, register to vote, build black political power, and invest in black businesses."

The march drew groups from churches of all denominations, social organizations, and schools. Clayton Pasley, a twenty-four year old pastor from St. Louis, described the atmosphere as "strong - young black men being empowered with other black men. It's beautiful." The speakers included Farrakhan, civil rights veterans Benjamin Chavis, Jesse Jackson, Rosa Parks, Dick Gregory, poet Maya Angelou, and singer Stevie Wonder.

On the one-year anniversary of the March, Alvertis Simmons, a community activist in Denver, described how his local Million Man March organization returned home, then went door-to-door in black neighborhoods to investigate crimes and decrease community violence. They registered over 500 voters and visited public schools to encourage self-respect among black teens. Farrakhan declared that the march should take credit for the 7% drop in the murder rate the following year. Armstrong Williams, a syndicated talk show host, described talking with men who, after attending the march, started paying child support, spending more time with their children, and returning to the church. Although a national movement failed to materialize, the most important contribution of the Million Man March may have been personal.

"The most powerful aspect of it," said Ron Walter of the University of Maryland during a discussion of the march's impact, "has been really the individual expressions...of people...who stood there in camaraderie with their brothers, and those people who committed themselves to a regeneration of the spirit of the black community. That was a very powerful thing."

African American Muslims Since 1975

Most African American Muslims today are Sunni Muslims who pray to the formless Supreme Being they call Allah - God. They are not members of the Nation of Islam, but follow the leadership of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, son of Elijah Muhammed, the Nation of Islam's founder.

The faith of these converts rests on an interpretation of the Quran that emphasizes interfaith cooperation and international brotherhood with those who consider themselves children of God. "When I was in the Nation of Islam," says Ni'mat Samad, "I hardly thought about the Quran. Now, not only do I think about it, I am in it."

African Americans have been converting to Islam in significant numbers since the 1960s, when black consciousness called for a break from the Christianity forced upon them during slavery. Many converted after reading Malcolm X's autobiography. Some note that as many as 20% of Africans enslaved in North America were Muslims; conversion to them represents a return to their African spiritual roots. Still others say that orthodox Islam gives them a sense of self-worth and clear proscriptions for how to live. It is a full-time, disciplined way of life that requires prayer five times a day, abstinence from drugs and alcohol, and taking care of one's family. A 1995 Newsweek article states that up to a third of black men in the federal prison system are Muslim, and that most converted after being imprisoned.

Some journalists point to a possible religious gender gap in the African American community, with more men converting to Islam while women remain in the Church. Still, significant numbers of black women do convert to Islam and, despite stereotypes that Islamic dress and gender roles may be oppressive, they, within their relationship to Allah, gain the strength to achieve great things in the world. Islamic scholar Aminah Beverly McCloud notes that African American women appreciate Islam's emphasis on social justice and the affinity they find with Muslim women from countries around the world. In many cases, Muslim women serve as leaders and organizers in their communities.

In some American mosques, African American Muslims and immigrant Muslims worship side-by-side. The melting pot of Islam that drew Malcolm X and Warith Deen Mohammed, however, remains elusive. Sixty-four percent of mosques have a dominant ethnic group (usually African American or South Asian). African Americans and immigrants tend to live in separate neighborhoods, and so build mosques in their own communities. Immigrant Muslims are often professionals and sometimes have tensions with African American Muslims living in poorer communities. Lastly, some immigrants criticize blacks for past affiliation with the Nation of Islam and for not being able to read the Quran in Arabic. Despite these occasional divisions, Islamic scholar Yvonne Haddad notes that African American converts consistently cite brotherhood among Muslims as one of their main reasons for joining the religion.

In a huge shift from the tight control and strict hierarchy of the Nation of Islam, Warith Mohammed in 1985 called upon his supporters to attend any mosque, regardless of race - a return to his grandfather's Baptist inclinations. Although an estimated 70% of black Muslims still look to Imam Mohammed for spiritual guidance, he stresses the importance of following the Quran and the deeds of the Prophet Mohammed and de-emphasizes his role as a leader. Mohammed encourages individual mosques to work closely with other local organizations and to create programs to fit the needs of their community, which may be anything from economic development to building schools, from housing homeless members to rehabilitating criminals.

A 1996 article published by Center for Neighborhood Technology detailed examples of organizing and economic development by predominantly African American mosques in urban communities. One example they cite is that of Imam Yahya Abdullah and Fahim Minkah, a former Black Panther, who in 1987 started African American Men Against Narcotics, a community policing project in Dallas that cleaned up abandoned buildings and worked with police to apprehend drug dealers. This program spread to other cities, including Raleigh, NC, Rochester, NY, Richmond, VA, St. Paul, MN, and Little Rock, AR. In Brooklyn, NY, the Masjid Al-Jamiyah shares resources with the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Tenant Association, and together they manage more than 1,200 low and moderate income housing units, employ 300 people, and put millions of dollars earned in rent back into the community. Although there is no centralized Muslim organization that oversees prison work, many imams (either individually or as chaplains paid by prison administrations) minister to convicts.

Warith Mohammed's loosely affiliated group of African American Muslims has been known as the Muslim American Society since 1997. Through orthodox Islam, thousands of African Americans are forging ties with Muslims of all nationalities, both at home and abroad, and continuing to provide meaningful service - spiritual, social, and economic - to African American communities. "Islam is a religious experience appropriate for those who need it the most: those in the African American community who are confronted with violence, unemployment, family breakdown and a feeling of hopelessness," said Imam Taalib Mahdee, spiritual leader of Masjid Al-Quran, Boston, to the Boston Globe. "Islam provides the tools to deal with life, the power to overcome the negative that is inside of us if we abide by the message of Allah and his prophet Muhammad."

Prophets or Profit?

Boasting large numbers and enormous cathedral style buildings, so-called mega churches are "the new thing" in worship.

Mega churches range in size from 2,000 to almost 20,000 members. The Harford Institute for Religious Research has identified more than 600 such congregations. Some are traditional churches that have large urban congregations; some minimize their denominational affiliation. Others offer huge, freewheeling worship services.

On any given Sunday, some 40% of churchgoers may be worshipping in a mega church. These are not likely to be blacks-only churches, but multiracial - and multilingual - congregations. They are socio-economically diverse and cross-generational. In many ways they represent the democratization of religion in America.

Some of the largest mega churches have cathedral style sanctuaries that can seat 6,000-8,000 members at one time while still maintaining satellite buildings for classrooms, gymnasiums, community centers, and charitable foundations. Many churches offer seven days of religious and vocational programming, community activities, childcare, education, and health care services each week. Some of these churches function as small towns within the cities they serve. While some work hard to impact the communities around them, many are like cocoons of faith that shelter their congregations. Using technology that rivals the most hi-tech media productions, these churches can provide videotapes of services and lectures, DVDs, Internet support and audio discs and tapes of choirs, sermons and seminars. By organizing the skills and talents of their membership into separate ministries, mega churches maintain the sense of community that the old neighborhoods used to have. Jazz bands, choirs that specialize in certain styles of music, rap groups, dance troupes, drama clubs and video production staffs have allowed them to reach people who may have otherwise been uninterested in church.

In this new vision of religion, the pastor is no longer a lone counsel to his flock, but the CEO of a major organization. Some ministers say it is a long way from the theology that first drew them into the ministry; they struggle with finding a balance between preaching the gospel and managing the corporation that these churches have become.

By forming Community Development Corporations and nonprofit corporations, churches like Abyssinian Baptist in New York City have had a transformative effect on the urban decay around them. On the other hand, others have been criticized for their insular approach to serving the faithful. They collect food baskets for the hungry, but will they organize to advocate for Food Stamps in Washington?

By expanding traditional notions of worship and appealing to the needs of contemporary African American Christians, the mega church is changing the way Christians of all races approach their faith. But at the same time, they face the challenge of uniting two groups of black Americans, the black underclass and the black upperclass, who find themselves isolated in different ways.

The Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage

Towards the end of the twentieth century, and despite the advances made by African Americans in the military, corporate, and government sectors, American schools remained practically as segregated as they were in 1954. The Department of Justice stopped enforcing busing requirements to force desegregation in 1981. Blacks own 3% of US businesses and are 3% of US doctors. When applying for a mortgage to buy a home, blacks have a 2:1 rejection rate even while the president of Fannie Mae, the quasi-governmental corporation set up to finance home ownership, is a black man, Franklin Raines.

Faith has never been enough to get blacks and whites through the conversation about the legacy of slavery. Since the victories of the civil rights movement, whites see only the advances blacks have made, while too many blacks need all the faith they can muster just to get up and face another day. Whites tire of hearing blacks whine about how bad things are. Blacks get irritated at whites' inability to see the daily indignities so many still have to put up with.

Recognizing that stalemate, noting the contradictions inherent in the statistics, and wishing to start a dialogue between whites and blacks and among denominations about the persistence of the color line and its legacy, Sister Clare Carter, a Buddhist nun and Ingrid Askew, an African American, Massachusetts-based performance artist, "walked out on faith." They decided to organize what they called the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage - a march that would begin in Massachusetts and end in Africa.

It was a march. It was a group-encounter session. It was a spiritual journey. It was an exploration into the legacy of racism and slavery that binds blacks and whites in this country.

For Sister Clare, most of all, it was a way to draw whites into the conversation about race. Sister Clare's Buddhist order chants "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo," an ancient Sanskrit mantra that refers to the way a lotus flower can bloom from the muddy depths of the water. They hoped that, in a similar way, digging through the muck of slavery's history could result in a flowering of understanding and compassion among the walkers - an understanding that would then spread out into America as a whole.