The Black Church Is Dead Summary

In his provocative and controversial article entitled “The Black Church is Dead,” Eddie Glaude, professor at Princeton University states:

The Black Church, as we’ve known it or imagined it, is dead.” He goes into some of the reason for his assertion, first he states, “First, black churches have always been complicated spaces. Our traditional stories about them -- as necessarily prophetic and progressive institutions -- run up against the reality that all too often black churches and those who pastor them have been and continue to be quite conservative. Second, African American communities are much more differentiated. The idea of a black church standing at the center of all that takes place in a community has long since passed away. Instead,

They did not know what it was to read or write because they never were afforded the opportunity to do so, legally. Historically, the facts are clear—the longer the slaves remained uneducated, uninformed and illiterate; they made for better slaves—a more cooperative source of free labor. They were purchased and offered up for sale. The Supreme Court decision of 1857 in Dred Scott v. Sandford added to the controversy. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's decision said that slaves were "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to

In 1832, blacks organized a branch of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in the basement of a Black Baptist church. This branch of the society gave black Baptists an aggressive voice, which allowed them to express and present a unified church position towards the institution of slavery. Furthermore, the establishment of this branch was important because it demonstrated that blacks did not need to depend on white abolitionists to fight their battles or be their voice, because black Baptists were determined to speak for themselves.
Black abolitionists attacked the institution of slavery by developing a theology that called for the unity of humanity. In other words, the society argued that all humanity developed from the bloodline of Adam, thereby “linking all humanity together.” This idea of unity focused on the notion that all Christians were brothers and sisters, and that none had the right to oppress, because “brotherhood” explicitly meant equality. Black Baptists, along with other denominations, served as key participants in the formation of this new theology to which abolitionist groups across the new nation began to