- The black church has been a cornerstone in the black community since slavery.

Pastors have preached the gospel and pushed for prosperity to drive social justice and economic empowerment for black Americans.

But what is the role of the black church and is it changing?

Hello, I'm Monica Evans.

- And I'm Pastor Phil Davis, the senior pastor of the Greater Shiloh Church of Eastern Pennsylvania.

I've been a pastor for 15 years and a youth pastor for 15 years, serving as a shepherd in the community to uplift, heal and to encourage people to better lives.

- Welcome to Courageous Conversations.

We are broadcasting from the PPL Public Media Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

The black church was born out of the fight for freedom, justice and equality.

Pastor Phil, tell me this, please.

What do you believe the role of the black church is?

- Well, I think the black church, like any church, is first and foremost to uplift the name of Christ Jesus.

That's our savior.

That's the foundation of the church.

The black church was birthed right out of racism, white supremacy, because we weren't able to worship with our white brothers in equality.

And so then out of that comes an experience and an expression that lifts Jesus up, but at the same time fights for equality, fights for justice, liberty, freedom and hope in a community that was oppressed.

- How important is music in the gospel?

Because I think about stories about slavery and how music was a message.

- And many times the music was coded, right, because we couldn't communicate in a certain way.

So that music was coded to talk about freedom, liberty and breaking forth.

So Go Down Moses had a message that was embedded in the music to be able to communicate.

And today, you know, you think about the Book of Psalms, right?

It's 150 books in the Book of Psalms, chapters in the Book of Psalms and all of those were songs to God.

And so now the expression of music is one that uplifts and many times it unifies.

If you watched the election or the inauguration the other day, when the Howard University band Showtime came on, I mean, it was amazing, right?

And everything stopped.

Even the commentators were like, we want to see Showtime, because there's something very powerful about music that unites, unifies and inspires people.

- Who do we have on the show today?

- Well, joining us today are some of my good friends, Reverend Dr. Gregory Edwards, who is the founding pastor of Resurrected Community Life Church in Allentown, and then Pastor Benjamin Hailey, the pastor of the Union Baptist Church in Allentown, located on Sixth and Chew, the U at Sixth and Chew.

So I'm so excited to have my good friends on the show to be able to talk about the black church.

- Well, welcome to the program.

Come on in the room, will you?

Come on in the room.

Pastor Edwards, I'd like to start with you.

Reverend Edwards, tell me, what do you believe the role of the black church is?

- Just to echo what Pastor Davis said, certainly it is to embody the Christ's life.

But the black church also, in addition to that, and certainly the black church is not monolithic, right?

So...but it has been in times past and present a place of affirmation, a place of celebration.

- Right.

- Right.

Celebrating the milestones of life.

And also a place where black folk have been able to congregate spiritually and sociologically for understanding better their role in the world.

Identity.

So I would say it's been a place of...

It's been a place of succor, you know, providing assistance and mutual aid when folks fall on hard times spiritually or financially or economically or socially.

But it's been a place where we can gather together without the fear of being othered.

- Mm hmm.

- And have open celebration and full bodied expression of the gospel, both in word, in community and in music.

- Awesome.

Pastor Hailey.

Tell me your thoughts on that.

The black church has been more than religion and spiritual enhancement.

What do you think the role is aside from religion?

Well, the reality is you can't get away from that first indication that any church has got to have the Christ component as its first and foremost endeavor.

But the black church has served in numerous capacities.

Greg just outlined several that are indicative of the black church.

Again, birthed of struggle.

Raphael Warnock has a quote in his book from Cheryl Gilkes that talks about the black church engaging in spiritual militancy.

I think that's a great understanding of what the church does.

We provide a spiritual haven for our people.

We provide a place of identification for our people.

And at the same time, we're advocating on behalf of our people.

- Yeah.

- And engaging them in this Christ community that is transformative for those who have been the least, the lost, the left out and the left behind.

And so there's a multiplicity of roles, if you will, - for the black church.

- Yeah.

And thank you for that, Ben.

So, Greg, you know, many people say that we as pastors and preachers should just stick to the gospel.

Right?

And that we shouldn't engage in politics.

We shouldn't engage in social justice.

Shut your mouth and preach.

Like "shut up and dribble," like they told LeBron.

The anchor told LeBron.

Um, but talk about the intersection between faith and community, faith and politics and what the role of the black church has been in that.

Well, you know, James Cone, the late James Cone from Union Theological Seminary, said that the Gospel is black, not in color, but in condition.

So we people of black African heritage don't have the privilege of being able to separate our spiritual being from our emotional or political being and reality.

- Correct.

Yeah.

- So although the black church has got varying doctrines and theology, we very much see Christ as a right-now help, savior and liberator in the midst of our current... woes that are usually tied to racism or some other embedded form of institutional oppression.

So to separate, that whole notion of separating self, that's not a part of the African experience, let alone the church, the black church experience.

That experience of being able to separate one's spirit, even from one's body or one's soul, is very much steeped in Greek Hellenization in the Enlightenment period.

The black church, once again not monolithic, has embodied a gospel that is really the integration of all of our components - the physical aspect of one's life, the spiritual aspect of one's life, the political aspect of one's life, the economic and financial aspect of one's life, because those are the realities that we deal with both in the House of the Lord and also when we hit the streets.

So that the church, the safe haven, started out as hush harbors.

Right?

That has been the place where we could congregate to talk about voting rights, to talk about civic engagement.

Lest we think that every church...

I know we're on the heels of celebrating what would have been the 92nd birthday of Dr. King.

Every church was not engaged in social justice.

Most churches did not want to invite Dr. King to his pulpit.

So that's a bit of a myth that has to be demythologized, that every black church is doing justice and every black church is involved in political endeavors.

But, you know, the robust heart of the black church has never separated our political realities from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Right?

And so we see feeding the sheep not only relegated to the scripture, but to the lived experience of the people with whom we minister.

- That's good.

- Pastor Ewards, you mentioned the black church and its involvement with voting rights.

Pastor Hailey, I want to ask you this.

As it relates to that.

When I think about the Black Lives Matter movement, it, you know, many of the organizers are less traditional, where the black church was the hub for organizing and getting folks to register for votes.

A lot of the organizing is happening on social media.

What do you think about that?

I think the reality of it is, is that there's been a consistency in the evolution of the black church.

In every era, the black church has emerged as being a leader in that particular area.

And I think that even in this time of progression and this progressive movement that we're seeing from organizations like Black Lives Matter, when we look at the historical context, the black church has always partnered with those who were nontraditional because of the reality of what Dr. Edwards said earlier, that you cannot separate the understanding of our spiritual lives from any other aspect of our lives.

And so as we engage this new culture, this new season of advocates and those who are in our community, the church still has a prevalent role in providing the spiritual as well as the countercultural understanding of our existence.

The black church, just by its mere existence, is an expression of resistance.

And so I think that we can couple that understanding with these new groups that are coming up and really give them a historical perspective of what they are doing and how they can interface with the church to be more effective in communicating the message.

- Yeah, and that's amazing, because when you think about what happened over the summer, it was not necessarily started in the church.

Right?

There were young people who I got emails from, like, or texts from, "Hey, we're doing, we're having a march downtown.

"We'd like you to come and pray."

Essentially what they were saying is "if you don't come and pray, we're still having the march.

"So you can be involved if you want to."

And this younger group of individuals, some of them have an idea of the church that we support, specifically in the black church, white supremacy.

So Dr. Edwards, you can speak to this because I know you did some really interesting stuff in Allentown in regards to white supremacy, how it has been in the church.

You know, with the idea of the pictures of Jesus with straight hair, blue eyes and white skin.

Right?

Do you believe that the church perpetuates white supremacy?

And that's all churches across the board, based on the historical picture and what has been communicated, communicated about Christ Jesus.

- Well, I mean, I believe that white supremacy, I think...

I use this metaphor that white supremacy in our American context is like the plumbing in the building in which we live.

It is in the walls.

It's under us.

It's above us.

It's within us.

It's alongside of us.

And so the church in this regard, not unlike any other institution - public school, public library, other institutions - has to take seriously the fact that most likely, if it's not intentional, it will even inadvertently collude with white supremacy.

Right?

I mean, I'm only where I'm at now, and I have not yet even arrived, because of mentors and formal and informal education that has shaped my theology.

But please don't think that when I went to seminary that I was being mentored by James Cone and Jeremiah Wright, and that's been an evolution.

So there had to be a deconstruction in my internal being to get to the point where I embody black liberation theology within the context of the preaching moment on Sunday morning.

So if a congregation, pastor, people, doesn't take seriously the notion of critical pedagogy or understanding, I think inadvertently it can embrace a gospel that will bear strange, unrecognizable fruit.

And then, and let me say this and then I'll step back.

It does not...it does not leave me that two of the highest ranking political leaders our nation has had have come out of black churches that have embodied - the black social gospel.

- Mm-hmm.

Jeremiah Wright was Barack and Michelle Obama's pastor on the south side of Chicago.

And our newly minted vice president, Kamala Harris, sat under the teaching of the Reverend Dr. Amos Brown from Third Baptist Church in Oakland.

So this notion of separating politics from religion, I mean, where do you think their political ideology was shaped?

Their ideology was shaped by listening to these black preachers who were steeped in a gospel that many times looks very strange to our white siblings, our white brothers and sisters and even some black folk in church.

- Yeah, but it almost perpetuates itself.

And that is a challenge.

You talk about deconstructing and being woke, right, and being able to speak about issues of race and inequality from the pulpit and not have stones thrown at you.

You know, while we're declaring what truth is.

And I think that is a challenge.

And Ben, I know you've been engaged and involved in spaces that are really speaking truth to power.

How as a preacher do you do that and keep the balance between gospel and social ministering and preaching?

- I'll take a cue from one of the legends of preaching, one of the icons of preaching.

I come from Texas preaching tradition and Dr. Caesar Clarke, Dr CAW Clarke, the late pastor of the Good Street Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, has an indication with that, and Dr Clarke said to us years ago that there really is no social gospel.

- There is only the gospel.

- Right.

But in the gospel there are social implications.

And if you extract Luke chapter four, verse 18 through 21 where Jesus comes out of the wilderness, his very first presentation about his ministry is The Spirit of the Lord.

God is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

- Yes, sir.

- And he has sent me to bind the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives.

Recovering of sight, to the blind and set at liberty those that are bruised.

That is the essence of the Ministry of Christ.

- Yes, sir.

- And so you extract from that ministry the understanding that Jesus's entire being was about the betterment of humankind.

And so as we look at this American experiment, and the DNA of the American experiment carries in it dominantly the DNA of white dominance, white oppression, white suppression, I won't say white superiority, - because that's not a reality.

- Right.

But this dominant theme prevails.

And so as a result of being the church that is inhabited by people of black skin identity, we have the responsibility to communicate the gospel - as we see it from Christ.

- That's good.

And that gospel engages all elements of our sociology.

- Mm hmm.

- I have a question for all of you.

America is becoming more diverse and we have a new woman vice president.

When I look at churches, the leadership in most churches are men.

Why are women not appointed to leadership roles in the church?

- Well, I'll go ahead and answer that quickly.

Right?

I'll jump in there.

We just appointed our campus pastor up in the Poconos, who is a single female, which breaks from the historical traditional reality within the church.

And it was funny because I had to really do a heart check for myself as a leader because the patriarchy does exist across many boards.

But when you look at the Ministry of Jesus, he restored, right, value to women.

He restored value to those who were poor and those who were oppressed, as Pastor Hailey just mentioned.

And so I think that for pastors all across the country, specifically within the black church, we have to be intentional about elevating and leveling the playing field.

Historically, that's not the case.

But I can say for our church, we've just really broken into a new space.

Plus, my mom is a pastor, so she's been a pastor along with my father, they're co-pastors.

My wife is my co-pastor.

So there are moments within the church where we are elevating and leveling the playing field.

But I digress to Pastor Hailey and to Pastor Edwards.

- Well, you guys are a testament to that in this contemporary situation, because next week you're going to come and help catechise two of our women, one that's being elevated to the office of Pastor Preaching.

And the other, my wife who's being elevated to the office of assistant pastor.

And so I think that's a contextual situation.

You have traditional churches that continue to maintain the patriarchy that has been historically embedded in the church, whether it be black or white.

But I think those those ties are being broken as we become more enlightened.

I think a lot of those things were done based on mentoring.

And I know for myself, when I first came to Pennsylvania, I was appalled when I entered the pulpit and there were four women in the pulpit.

I came from a Texas tradition where women were not looked at as leaders in the church.

And so that's a point of personal evolution from a pastoral perspective.

And I'm just thankful that I can engage it.

It's a question that's... That I think is going to be around for a long time.

Patriarchy is a difficult thing to to break.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And Greg, I know you want to jump in on this, but there's a question as our time is kind of running out.

I really wanted to ask you and both of you about how you felt seeing the fracture and the split within the church and the evangelical church, a predominantly white church that ran after this, our last president.

And it feels like they sold their souls for a bowl of porridge, you know, - and literally... - You call it porridge.

I have something else that I'd like to say, but it might not get published.

- We're in the living room.

It's OK. - He made this last for a reason.

- Right, exactly.

- As little time as possible.

- I really, because it speaks to the polarization within our country and it speaks to the separation and division even within the kingdom of God, even within the church.

So I'd like to really hear your positions or your insights on that.

- So when we look at the fact that over 90% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, and I also have to remind my mainline siblings in the Presbyterian Church, the United Methodist Church, the UCC church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 57% of mainline denominational folk voted for him as well.

Given that, that they endorsed him, that they overlooked what they have said to be the tenets of their faith around moral character, what we really see, what they were endorsing was their...was the sacrosanct of their white privilege and that their theology around evangelicalism is inseparable from their worldview of whiteness.

- Right.

- And that Donald Trump was about the preservation of their whiteness under the guise of their Jesus.

I would say that, and I said this morning on an earlier show, I am convinced that not all, not all Christians in America are worshiping the same God or following the same Jesus.

I'm convinced.

- People have been twisting religion... - When folk start talking about unity and racial reconciliation, but don't with the same set of facts or truth, they end up being lulled by a lie, and they use scripture, misinterpretation of scripture, the Bible and their doctrine to sanitize it or to put it forth as truth.

But I'm convinced that we have, as Dr. King said, two Americas.

But we definitely have two churches, if not more, because one church is founded on a cracked foundation.

- Wow.

- Isn't that...

Isn't the equivalent to, and I'll throw a real radical statement in here, isn't that equivalent to what the Klan did with scripture?

- Sure.

And so the mindset, as Dr. Edwards outlined, of the evangelical church, as we see, the western United States branded evangelical church, in my estimation, is really not an outcropping of Christendom, but it is a gross bastardization of what religion is about.

And it's capsulized in a political entity.

Evangelicalism, in its purest form here, was birthed out of a fight between Larry Flynt and Jerry Falwell and Jerry Falwell organized the Moral Majority that has morphed now into what we see as this Western evangelicalism, which is more concerned about its power and its authority to maintain the institution as it has been.

It is a status quo maintenance center.

And I you know, I wish that I could... That I could... present it in a different way, but that's what it is.

Pastor Edwards just outlined it.

If you have the audacity to, in the name of Christ, support the previous president of this country, who was continually polarizing, and not only polarizing, but demeaning, bringing degradation and fueling what culminated with what we saw a couple of Wednesdays ago... - Yeah.

- ..And yet you still have the unmitigated gall to support him, I find no Christ in there.

- Yeah.

And it's hard, it's difficult to find Christ in there, right, when the greatest command is that we would love the Lord they God with all our heart and love our neighbor - as we love ourselves.

- Certainly.

It's a great commandment.

The Gospel is founded in love and you can't dehumanize and throw people away, a certain group of people, and then say, well, you know, I'm still a Christian, I'm still a Christ follower.

It just, it doesn't mix.

- It does not.

It does not.

Our time is ticking away.

- I can't believe it.

- It goes by so fast.

- It's good to be back, though.

I want to take time to thank Pastor Hailey and Pastor Edwards for joining us.

Guys, you know, we could go on all day and have this conversation.

And on behalf of Monica Evans and everyone here at PBS39, we want to thank all of you for coming.

Listen, we're in our second season, Monica, so this is great, of Courageous Conversations.

And we are adding a segment called Community Spotlight.

There are many people in the Lehigh Valley doing courageous work to engage and enhance the lives of others and we'd like to put them in the spotlight.

So if you would like, I think we can have them contact us somehow.

- So if there are people doing wonderful things in the community that you would like, our viewers would like to put them in the spotlight, there's a platform for that.

Let us know.

You can go to PBS39.org/courageous.

We would love to hear your suggestions about people we should put in the spotlight.

Again, thank you all for taking the time to join us for Courageous Conversations.

We hope that you've enjoyed the show.

Now, please make sure you stick around for Counter Culture with my colleague Grover Silcox.

He's coming up right after this program.

I'm Monica Evans.

On behalf of Pastor Phillip Davis and everyone here at PBS39, thanks for watching.