- Just ahead on "American Black Journal."

Our "Black Church in Detroit" series examines the faith practices of young African Americans.

We'll talk about a trend of young Blacks shifting from being religious to being spiritual and what that means.

Plus, we'll discuss their participation in the Black church.

You don't wanna miss today's show, "American Black Journal" starts now.

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

I'm Orlando Bailey from Bridge Detroit, sitting in for Steven Henderson.

Today we're continuing the "Black Church in Detroit" series produced in partnership with the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

Research shows an increase in young African Americans who identify as spiritual rather than religious.

Instead of following a specific set of organized beliefs and practices, they prefer a more individualized approach to faith.

I had a conversation about the younger Black generation's view of religion with Minister Mikiah Keener of Triumph Church, Reverend Kenita Harris from Detroit Bible Tabernacle, and Pastor Sonny Smith from Detroit Church.

Really happy that you all joined us.

But today, I think we wanna sort of ground this conversation in some research that has been coming out as of late.

That is, I did a lot of research done on younger Black folks, millennials and Gen Zs around their religious beliefs, or whether or not younger Black folks are religious at all.

And so some of the research is showing that there is this transitioning happening from religiosity to a more spiritually-based approach.

I wanna start with Minister Mikiah, because you are one of those Gen Zers that we're always talking about.

Tell us what you're seeing.

- So I think one of the things I'm seeing, I'm 25, so one of the things that I'm seeing in my age demographic is a lot of people using terms like spiritual as opposed to Christianity.

And I am seeing, even the word Christianity be shunned a little bit.

So trying to get to the root of that.

I think what I'm seeing is a lot of people who have experienced church hurt and instead of dealing with that church hurt that was maybe caused by man, they are rather upset at God and would in turn like to walk away from the church as a whole.

And so I think that transition from Christianity to the word spirituality really stems in hurt that has not been addressed.

And because they don't know how to get to the root of that hurt, they would rather step away from that accountability and that community and fellowship and follow maybe something as to where they feel that they have more freedom and less judgment and things of that nature.

So that's one of the things that I'm seeing right now.

And it is heartbreaking because I don't think that it's ever okay to walk away from God because of what man has done, you know?

- Yeah, yeah.

Pastor Sonny, I wanna bring you in on this.

Minister Mikiah is talking about, the religious aspect of Christianity, the convening, the accountability, coming to church on Sunday and Wednesday and the movement away from that toward a more spiritual approach.

From your vantage point, can you tell me what that even means?

And how are you experienced in this transition as a pastor right in the heart of the city of Detroit?

- Yeah, I think for me it's been a learning opportunity.

So I'm not a Zoomer or a millennial.

I'm 48, so Gen Xer, I have had to learn about our city and the structure and the makeup of our city.

And one of the things I've learned is that Detroit is not as much unchurched as it is, I believe mischurched, you know?

So because of that mis-churching, there's been de-churching.

So people often say, I love God, but I'm straight on church.

So how do we connect with them and listen to them and not just talk over them, but really understand what it is, that they're wrestling with.

I've also had an opportunity to learn, how to be an apologist.

I think that in a sense, we are all theologians, and just, how do I end my faith?

And I think when we answer these questions, it's important to remember that we aren't just answering questions, we're answering questioners.

So there are people with an opinion.

They feel deeply about something, that there are a lot of feelings and experiences, and sometimes they've been mishandled.

Sometimes it's been abuse that's packed into that, right?

So rather than just wanting, throw a verse at them, I gotta listen to them.

I gotta walk with them.

So that's, I think that is the journey.

And I'm really humble.

We have a lot of people who are at our ministry, at our church, who have come from those very difficult backgrounds in church, where they have experienced a lot of hurt and their faith.

Some would say their faith has been shipwrecked, some have gone through a series, a season of deconstruction.

So, we've tried to maintain a safe space for them to come, come close, let's have a conversation as we so to speak, walk on the road to Mais, as Jesus walked with the two disciples.

Right, the end this season.

- Pastor Sonny, I have a follow up to that, and I wanna ask the same question to Reverend Mikiah around the conversations that you say you have to have, and not only answering questions, but the questionnaires.

Can you talk a little bit about the methods of engagement that you, and the strategies of engagement that you utilize?

Because if people are walking away from the church, then where are you going to find these people who have walked away?

- Well, sadly, many of them are my friends.

They, and I was recently asked just a week ago, if I left God, but we still be friends?

If I left the church, would we still be friends?

By someone, and I was happy to say, well, absolutely, absolutely.

But I want to keep walking with you.

So one of the things that I, that stuck with me from an apologist, I heard some, he said, and he was quoting his mom, he said, there's no point in cutting off a person's nose and then giving them a rose to smell.

Right?

So in other words, it's self-defeating when we wanna trample, under like, over everything someone's ever heard or their experiences and want to give them the message of Christ at the same time.

You know what I mean, so I think that we have to, again, we gotta come become aware of our own biases, and our own offenses.

Am I gonna be offended if somebody doesn't not want to label themselves as a Christian?

And if I am offended at that, then why am I offended?

One of the things that I've, again, I've learned, and I continue to learn, like even the scriptures, the scriptures don't like give us this grandiose, label of what it means to be a follower of Jesus as, you shall be my Christians, God never says that, right?

Antioch were looking upon the Christ followers, and they, they said, oh, these, these are the Christians, those are those Christ followers.

So I wanna be, I think we need to be careful with the, how much emphasis we put on a label, where we need to really get down to it is what is our belief system?

That's where the real foundation is, where the real power is.

What do we believe about God?

What do we believe about Christ?

And what do we believe about the church and how God uses the church today?

Is it something that is simply a social construct, or is it something that God has ordained for this age until the return of his son as Christians belief?

- Reverend Kenita, I would love for you to respond to what Pastor Sonny was saying about a belief system and being an apologist and moving away from labels and really doing some deeper work.

Would love to hear your perspective on this.

- Sure, where I think, for me, I am a millennial, and so I'm a pastor and I'm in actually in a church where we have an older congregation, but we do have millennials.

We are multi-generational.

And so I can resonate with Reverend Sonny in terms of saying that you don't really have to look far to find, folks who are sort of disengaged from the church, their friends, they're in our families.

I have them in my own.

And I come from a family full of pastors, and I have cousins.

I have from different generations of our family who struggle with faith and are disillusioned with the church, with the Black church in particular.

And I find for me as a minister of the Gospel, that just being authentic in my own faith and in the witness of my faith and living that out in a way that makes faith accessible.

We're the living epistles, right?

And so for people that I meet, a lot of times people don't even know that I'm a minister, but as we get into conversations in various social context, they find out that I am a minister, they find out that I am a Christian.

And so with that, I think that again, this living out the witness of one's faith and having access to God is so important for people.

And I think that's one of the reasons why, going back to the church hurts, that the church hurts that were referred to earlier, really have to deal with, I think the legalism of the church, the experience of legalism.

And there's nothing wrong with having moral law, but legalism in the sense that prevents people from having access to faith, access to God and that experience, the unique experience of God.

So at our church, one of the things that we do is we make sure, like even in our preaching, that our preaching is like relevant, right?

That it is, is sort of oriented towards how do you live out the witness of your faith in a way that speaks to justice, right?

Not, not just us, but justice, right?

That that talks about the humanity of all and how we as Christians live that out through the redemptive work of the spirit in the world.

And so how do we actually do that?

And so through our preaching, we try to point to that, we try to point to a north star, and so we bring into the Homiletical moment, which is really that height of when we gather, and we worship virtually as well as in person.

So we've sort of broadened our experience because we know that even after the impact of things like COVID, that the church doesn't even gather the same.

And so what we do is we try to point to the North Star in terms of saying, how do you live out the witness of your faith given the experience that we all have in the world that we live in?

And so with that, it's not just my dad who's 75 preaching, it's also me preaching, it's also sort of a multi-generational experience of worship.

But the goal is to point people to, how do you live out the witness of your faith, and do that in a unique way, and that we're all called to do that in a way that may look different from somebody else.

And I think that sort of piece is helpful in terms of coming from an inclusive sort of standpoint, not limiting, right, that the experience of one's faith and it being lived out in the world looks the same.

It is expressed in many different ways, and it's not just within the four walls of the church.

It really is within the context of the world.

And for us, the city, the city of Detroit, the streets, are what we are called to be in.

And so we're all in different spaces throughout, the week, Monday through Saturday, and it's there where we're living out the witness of our faith.

And that's what we really try to point to and to help folks to understand and to be comfortable in that calling, even if it looks different from someone else's.

- Robert, can I wanna follow up on something that you said, and Minister Mikiah, I would love for you to come in on this with your perspective is you talked about justice, and there's sort of this duality in the research that we've been uncovering in that in the wake of the 2020 COVID pandemic, there was also a racial reckoning going on in America where folks rose up to say, enough is enough, especially from state sanctioned killings of unarmed Black folk.

And so what we also saw was that there was a return, a return on part of younger Black millennials and Gen Zers to the black church in pursuit of some kind of justice, right?

So talk a little bit about what justice means in that context.

Minister Mikiah, I wanna come to you and Reverend Kenita would love for you to follow up on that too.

- Absolutely, so in 2020, in the lieu of George Floyd and a number of others, so many Christians were on the front lines protesting.

And I think that that was so commendable because that is what it is to be the church.

And so just to see us not only standing in prayer, but actually standing up on the front line is what I believe Christianity is all about.

Because at some point, we must do more than just pray.

Prayer is the key.

However, there is a strategy that needs to match the key.

And so when we go out and we show ourselves on those front lines, and we stand in peace and we stand up for those who are oppressed, or maybe for those who cannot stand up for themselves, we are mimicking the very footsteps of Jesus.

And even now I'm studying at Boyce College, which is in Louisville, Kentucky.

This is where Breonna Taylor was killed.

So even just to be out here as an African American woman and to still see so many different churches that are doing different things and protests, and they may be on a smaller magnitude today, because even though the noise has died down, that was still a life that was lost.

So still to see the church doing things to keep her name alive as well as others who have been killed because of police violence, it's very commendable.

And so I do believe that as the church, that is what we have to do in times of injustice.

We can't just sit in a pew and pray.

We do at some point have to say, okay, you know what?

Enough is enough.

We're gonna follow the footsteps of Jesus.

Because Jesus was the action-taker.

He stepped away to spend time with the Father, but when he came back, he took action and he was ready to make a move.

And so I believe that is what it is to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

It's to stand up in times of oppression.

- Reverend Kenita, is justice attending the gospel?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

When I talk about justice, I always, for me, in my own theology of justice, it really begins with, I think the command of Jesus, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

This is really like the economy of justice that Jesus talks about.

And so with that central to that is this idea of, when I talk about justice is this idea of loving your neighbor as yourself, which at the root of that is that all are created in the image and likeness of God.

That every single person has the imprint of God within them, the image of God within them.

And so with that, all that we do in terms of, with my language, when I talk about articulating how one lives out, the witness of one's faith, we have seen in our own community, right?

And even across this country, as you have referenced, like even with the Black Lives Matter movement, that this is like a season and a day and time in which we have to be vocal about when we see injustice happening as it pertains to the violating of the image of God in people, right?

Seeing people as people and valuing the image of God in others and celebrating their humanity, right?

And I think that this is like something that we not only see within young folks in movements such as the Black Lives Matter movement, I think we're seeing this sort of moral kind of imperative, Reverend Barber talks about this (laughs), I thought of my pastor from afar, but this moral imperative, right, of being able to honor the image of God in others and the church's responsibility, our responsibility.

But I think it goes beyond even the realm of the church.

I think that young activists that what we see is that they see, as long as there are others who are also participating in this fight in terms of honoring the image of God in others, as long as you lock arms with people who are about that, then they are willing to do that work, right?

And so I think for me as an activist, I try to sort of exemplify that in my own activism, which is the space out of which I live out this loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might, and loving your neighbors yourself.

And one of those spaces is in the People's Waterboard of Detroit, which is a space where serving on the Interfaith Justice Committee, and it is an interfaith committee.

And so it's people from all different kinds of traditions, right?

Religious traditions and expressions of spirituality who come together and look at the issue and work towards things like legislation.

Anything from legislation to actually taking our feet and walking on the street and protesting against things like people having access to water, right?

That doesn't have necessarily anything to do with the various religious expressions of spirituality or faith traditions.

It has everything to do with honoring the image of God in others.

And so I think that that's really sort of the underlying sort of theme across which people want to see their faith lived out in a way that is actually impacting the lives of people.

- Pastor Samuel, we got a little under three minutes, and I want to, and I don't know why they give me such a strict timeline when I'm dealing with preachers, but I wanna bring this up, that Black millennials and Gen Zers are still the most religious and believing group in the United States.

So there are more younger Black folks that believe than any other racial demographic in the United States.

But the research is also showing that those Black folks who are believers want opportunities to lead in church.

Can you talk a little bit about how you engage the millennials and Gen Zers in Detroit church to take up leadership positions?

- Yeah, I think so.

It's important for me that we do things in a way that reflects the heart of God.

And I wish I had more time to really unpack what that means, but just the very incarnation of Jesus, right?

God becoming a man, living among people, putting on a human suit, lived in the neighborhood.

John 1:14 says, he dwelt among them.

The message the Bible says he moved into the neighborhood.

I think that gives us a framework for our missiology.

How we go about living out our faith?

Our faith has to be actualized, right?

So when we do that, we can contextualize the gospel.

And I think that's important for really, regardless of the age group for followers of Jesus to learn how he did things and why he did things.

So that is how we wanna lead.

I think as servant leaders, unpacking this whole idea of justice, I think that we, unfortunately, we may have a too thin of a view or exegesis of biblical justice.

I think it's robust.

The scripture tells us that our God is a father to the fatherless, a defender of the widows from his holy habitation.

Justice flows from the very heart of God.

So this is who we should be about.

And I even I even appreciate how the scriptures paint, give us this picture of intercession.

We were talking about prayer, Lord, earlier, and like, I like the definition of intercession that says, putting one hand on the problem and one hand on the solution.

Bringing 'em together.

This is what God did in Jesus by coming to earth, right?

So that paints a picture for us, not just to have a woe is me victim mentality or not just to come to church, sit in the pew, sing some songs and go home, oh no, we come to go, right?

We come, we get filled, we have fellowship among the believers, but we come to get instruction, to get inspiration, to go out and to carry the same mission that Jesus came to earth with, to our city and to all the parts of the world.

So much more I can say about that.

But I think that is critical to engaging not just millennials, but really any age group.

- Way to close, pastor Sonny.

As always, I always wish we had a lot more time, but I want to thank Pastor Sonny, Reverend Kenita, and Minister Mikiah for being with us today on American Black Journal.

Thank you so much for your contribution.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- That's gonna do it for us this week.

You can find out more about today's guests at americanblackjournal.org.

Plus connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.