- Coming up on "American Black Journal", our Black Church in Detroit series is gonna examine what has led to some individuals, especially the younger generation, accepting God, but rejecting organized religion.

We're gonna hear from three Detroit ministers about reaching out to the unchurched and bridging the gap between generations.

Stay right there.

"American Black Journal" starts right now.

- [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr Paint, MASCO Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

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Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Announcer 2] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of "American Black Journal" in covering African American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and "American Black Journal," partners in presenting African-American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal".

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

Today we're continuing our series on the Black church in Detroit, which is produced in partnership with the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

Recently, as part of this series, we examine how some young African Americans are identifying as spiritual rather than religious.

Some of them say it's because they've experienced church hurt or they don't wanna follow a specific set of organized beliefs and practices.

We spoke with young faith leaders on that show, and today we want to continue that discussion from a different generational perspective.

Here's my conversation with Reverend Larry Simmons of Baber Memorial AME Church, Pastor Semmeal Thomas of City Covenant Church, and Reverend Torion Bridges from Commonwealth of Faith Church.

Okay, Reverend Larry Simmons, Pastor Semmeal Thomas, and Reverend Torion Bridges.

Welcome to "American Black Journal".

- Thank you.

- Thank you, great to be here.

- Good to be here.

- So I actually think this is a really interesting subject to think about, and in some ways it gets at generational divides, I think, in not just the Black church, but in churches everywhere.

But there's also something cultural that I think is at work too, that maybe has to do with our churches in particular.

And so I'm really looking forward to hearing what each of you has to say about that.

But let's start here, and I'll start with you, Pastor Thomas.

Do you see this sort of pulling away from institutionalized or church-based religion among younger people and them wanting to focus more on kind of an individualized approach to faith?

Is that something that you see in your congregation or in the community?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I, yeah, I, yes, okay.

It is something, I don't think it's anything necessarily new.

I just think it's more prominent and more upfront okay.

I think there's been a sort of a falling away for a couple of decades now okay.

All right, I talked to a couple of my young leaders.

I'm helping a couple of church plants and a couple of young leaders, and I posed a question that you posed to us, to them.

All right, and the whole aspect of spiritual is it gives them more of a concept of freedom all right.

And so one of the things that I noticed in my community especially is that people were taking a little Islam, you hear people talking about karma, taking Hindu, taking different stuff, and kind of making their own thing.

And so one of my leaders, Micah Williams, is planting a church in Midtown, and he said that it's the freedom thing, and it's also a response to the generation before.

So it's them looking at us and looking at standard religion, all right, and the dogma and the rules, and you know, all of these things all right and frankly, us not doing a good job of communicating the freedom that's in Christ.

- Hmm, yeah.

- Okay, all right, okay.

And so he said it's more of a response.

You hear young people saying today, "I'm not doing church, I'm doing kingdom."

Okay, all right, so you see that, you hear these kind of things, so, okay, when actually the kingdom is the church.

- Right, I was gonna say, that is church.

See, I think, I find that fascinating.

And part of what I think I'm struggling with is, for us, for African Americans, the church is not just about religion, it is also about our culture.

And it is the way that our culture has survived for so long in this country.

And it is one of those kind of bedrock institutions that we stick to not just because of religious belief, but because of cultural necessity.

And I guess I don't see that as being any less today than it was 50 years ago or a hundred years ago.

The need for that, and so I understand the pushback against rules or structure or things like that, but I don't get the pulling away from the culture itself.

Pastor Thomas, again, I want to get you to just address that part of it.

- So I think that comes out to trust okay.

All right, I think we have a generation, and realizing you can't trust the president, you can't trust the mayor, you can't trust the police, and yes, you can't trust the church.

And I think it comes down to a response.

You know, it's not, we're one part of what they're looking at from a holistic standpoint.

We used to be that trusted part okay.

We used to be that part that we had integrity and we stood for a certain thing.

But now, after all of the scandals and after seeing some of the predatory things that have happened in poor communities, not exclusively though.

Okay, all right, but that's their concern.

So I think it comes down to, man, when I was a kid, people wouldn't smoke in front of a church.

- Right, right.

- Okay, a person wouldn't dare curse.

I've had a person in front of my church cursing at me.

Smoking and cursing at me.

- And cursing, my goodness.

- So, yeah, I really think there's been a, just all the way around and the whole Rodney King thing, where it's no longer somebody saying it, that I'll say this, I think that, especially with Covid, I think Covid was a tremendous revealer.

All right, there were things that we knew, like we knew about preexisting conditions, but Covid put numbers.

- Yeah.

- Okay, and you know, okay, and so y'all think that the things that have been revealed to this generation has caused them to take a serious look at us all right.

And when they look at it, a lot of them feel like they can do better.

- Right, wow, wow.

That's a, I mean, that's really powerful.

Reverend Simmons, I wanna bring you in here.

What's your sense of all of this?

- Well, I would say that when you say religion, it invokes a idea of the church, but I think it invokes the idea of rules.

That there are requirements of the religion.

If you call it Protestantism, if you call it Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, if you call it Islam, and Americans, Western culture, actually more than just Americans, are very, very resistant to the idea of being controlled by external rules.

Particularly in America, this is an issue.

The whole idea of packing up your bags and moving to the frontier.

And I'm not gonna get into the imperialism and the abuse of Native people that invokes, but that idea, participate in everything that happens in America.

You can hear it in politics, you hear it in the TV programs that we watch, the movies we choose.

It's the conquering hero, the rebel without a cause.

And so, for all the reasons that Pastor Thomas just mentioned, when you apply that ethic to the works of the religious institution, and the church is an institution with a history, and that history is not all that good as an African American.

That history extends all the way back to slavery when it was actually a priest who put forward the idea of using Africans as slaves.

And it was the church which stood on the docks of the western shore of Africa and threw water over hundreds of slaves about to be pumped into sardine can, wooden sardine cans, and shipped across the ocean for three months, to defending segregation and I can go on.

Here's what I would say, and I'm gonna, I'm not gonna do the political and the, I'm not gonna do the political and the sociological.

The spirit of God is never going to be denied.

We play a numbers game, but God really isn't about a numbers game.

Scripture teaches us that the road to salvation is narrow and there, and the road to damnation is wide.

And many of their people travel on it.

So we know that when you gather together the resources of the church, bad people are gonna come in to seek to take advantage of that, but it's also true that God never leaves God's people.

And so there will be a remnant, there will be those like Pastor Semmeal who I know well, Dr. Bridges who I'm coming to know through reputation, there're gonna be those who are sincere and people are gonna come to them and flock to them.

The person that was cussing Pastor Semmeal in front of the church, was probably in church on that following Sunday, because I know his church and I know how he relates to the people in his neighborhood.

So I don't believe, I'm not concerned at all about these studies and reports.

If you go back and look in the Bible you'll find the same thing.

If you did a survey just before the crucifixion, you wouldn't find very many Christians.

There were only a couple of 'em who followed Jesus.

If you had done a survey among the disciples, he wouldn't have come out very well.

He'd done pretty good since then.

So I would say in the spiritual dimension, this is a thing, but it is not the final thing.

And it is foretold if you know how to read the good book.

- Huh, wow, no, that's a really interesting way to think about it.

So Reverend Bridges, to use a little bit of a pun, you bridge a little bit of this divide that we're talking about, so kind of in the middle of it from an age perspective, but of course you're a pastor.

I wonder what what you think is happening with, with young people, Gen Z, and millennials in our churches, and whether there is something about this more individualized, more spiritual approach to religion that's taking over the historical place of organized religion in our community.

- So I'm 36 years old and I'm, so I am married 12 years.

We've owned three homes, house burned down, wife had cancer, everything right.

But to some elders, I am still a kid.

- Still yeah, right.

- And I think that's the problem with what my generation and others after me believe.

Like, we're no longer kids right.

You at this point, you can't kid me anymore.

Like I actually pay taxes.

I pay tithes and my voice matters.

And if my voice doesn't matter, then I'm going to go somewhere where it does.

And if it, and the problem is, number one, I feel like we think that we have more time.

We don't have more time.

My very best friend was the second Covid death in Michigan, died at 32 years old.

- Wow.

- We think we have more time.

And we're running up say, against this reality that we don't have time while we are also shunning the actual community that raised and reared us.

These are, we're talking about people that say, opt out of Thanksgiving dinner so that they can go travel because they feel more of a communal sense with, I mean, there was a whole show called show called "Friends," right?

And it focused around the friends.

It didn't show, I mean, every like, every so often did you see Ross's mom or somebody, but it focused on the friends because in that community you were safe, you were loved, you were lifted up.

And the problem is, historically, we've not been safe.

We've not been loved, we've not been lifted up.

Like I think it was Pastor Simmons says, there is a remnant of young people like me who was loved and lifted sometimes by the actual church.

And we've gone to plant churches or say be called to be, be actually called to be pastors at other churches.

But for the majority of it is, I feel that we have traded the semblance of community from a church to a cohort group, to a workout group, to a yoga group.

And say, that's the problem is what you're trying to find there, you are only gonna get a portion of it.

- Yeah.

- Because we are all searching for something.

And so of all of those other groups, have you look inward when we're all called to more so look outward.

It's isn't we, but it's the, right and we're all searching to get that.

But first the church has to get that community piece to realize that hey, Torion's no longer a actual kid anymore.

You actually can't sit him down over there and just say, give us your tithes boy, sit down.

You know what I mean, like?

- Yeah, that idea of safe and lifted up.

I can't remember what the third word was that you used there.

It, that seems to me to be the path, right, that's a path for so many of these folks is to make sure that people can feel that and feel it in a legitimate way, I think.

There is a lot of lip service, I think to that kind of thing.

But talk about what that would look like, Reverend Bridges in an authentic way, yeah.

- So if you look at historically what the Black church was to Black people, it was a institution that came alongside people where they were, and I'm not talking about like small, I'm talking about churches that were really great and really grew because they had all of these organizations within it, right.

That took care of the kids, fed the kids, taught you how to sew, taught you how to do, like you did life with these people, praying merrily.

When you look at the fifties, sixties be like, 'cause you absolutely had to and then it became this microcosm of the have and the have nots.

You know what I, like you went to this church, and if you went to those kinds of churches you got to stand up straight I am a member of such and such kind of church, even though it's built on the absolute backs of getting to know those people, loving them, and lifting them too from bus services to now they're all driving Buicks or Cadillacs.

And there's this walk that you have to take with people in between that from here to here.

And I just think that we are at the end, there's this book I read, I wanna say it was by Jeff, Jeff say, Bezos.

And it says, "every organization has its life cycle."

And I think we're at the start of a great, say awakening within the Black church again, because you have to walk with these people.

Like I pastorally have to walk with my members, I have to live with them, I have to serve with them, I have to lift them and I have to love them.

And if you don't understand that, you're missing a whole sect of people that you've not loved, lifted, served, leaned into, and all of that, you may be that for their mom.

You may be there for their say grandparent.

But are you that for them.

- Are you that for them yeah.

- Because all of these organizations are.

- Yeah, yeah.

So we've only got about five minutes left, but Reverend Simmons and Reverend Thomas, I wanna have you respond to what he's talking about.

What does that look like?

How do you do that?

Reverend Simmons?

You go first.

- Let me think very quickly.

The reason I'm a fierce devoted student of the history of the church, but the reason I've elected to make this a spiritual case is that I believe there are a lot of vultures and ravening wolves who have on collars and church clothes.

That's not me talking.

That's the Bible talking.

And what we have, my contention is that we as a church, as a Christian church are commanded to love.

Jesus spent very little time, actually, I don't think he spent any time, critiquing the religions which surrounded him in Mesopotamia.

He spent time talking about what his believers should do.

And most of the New Testament is not written to the world.

It's written to the church.

- To the church.

- Things that it's talking about, the abuses that Paul is speaking of, is not to the world in general, it's to the church.

And so if we love in the way that Jesus taught us in Matthew 25 and in John 15 and 16, 17, if we love like that, the church will grow.

I think Pastor Hughes has it exactly right.

Bridges, excuse me, has it exactly right.

If we love, people will come.

How did the church grow?

Read Acts chapter three.

They loved on each other and people saw it and flocked to it.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Reverend Thomas, go ahead.

- I mean, the indictment is true.

All right, we haven't done it.

We're a good player on a bad team.

Okay and so what tends to happen is a good player on a bad team starts to think that he or she is a superstar.

When actually they're just a good player all right.

But when you compare us to the other things that they're going to, right, there was no worry about hypocrisy with the dope man, the weed man saying, my weed is the bomb, and then you buy it and it's Mexican weed, it's dirt weed but they still came back okay.

And so, I like what Larry said about you know, just looking historically, there was the enlightenment period.

There have always been periods where people have challenged the church.

I think Stephen, the biggest issue that I saw, that you and Pastor Bridges are saying is really about us.

Okay, all right, you know, African Americans.

And I think, and I'm gonna get in trouble for saying it, I just think we just always had this special relationship.

All right, it's just like we just always had this relationship where we realized how we got 'em.

- Yeah, right, yeah.

- All right, you know, and so I think we have to, historically, the baby boomers, we have to do what my brother said.

We have to empower, we have to be willing to get out of the way all right.

- Here we go Pastor, God has taken us out the way.

(all laughing) - Don't be buying it.

- I'll just leave it at that 'cause we sure we going home.

Brother Bridges is right, these young kids are dying too.

They don't have the time to.

- Yeah, that's true.

- That's really true.

- That's true.

- The proliferation of weapons and fentanyl and all this kind of stuff, man, it is very, very sad.

- Yes it is.

- We are, of course, out of time, unfortunately, but this was a really, really great conversation.

I'm really glad I had all three of you here to explore this subject.

Thanks so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

- "American Black Journal."

That'll do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanBlackjournal.org and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] From Delta Faucets to Behr Paint, MASCO Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

MASCO, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Announcer 2] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of "American Black Journal" in covering African-American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and "American Black Journal," partners in presenting African-American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you, thank you.