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,

different areas of black life have become more distinct and specialized flourishing outside of the bounds and gaze of black churches. Thirdly, and this is the most important point, we have witnessed the routinization of black prophetic witness. Too often the prophetic energies of black churches are represented as something inherent to the institution, and we need only point to past deeds for evidence of this fact. The death of the black church as we have known it occasions an opportunity to breathe new life into what it means to be black and Christian. Black churches and preachers must find their prophetic voices in this momentous present.

Upon the arrival of the African slaves’ their encounter with public education in America for the first time was null and void.

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

respect.”
However, within the spaces of the Black church and those who were enslaved, were not perceived as inferior as argued by Chief Justice Taney. Enslaved persons were not only afforded recognition and permitted to fully participate; they also found a place where they could be educated. This early relationship between the enslaved and the church represents a relationship that would endure the enslavement period, the moment of freedom, black codes, mass lynching’s, and Jim Crow. Throughout these particular epistemes in time, the church was a not only a safe place, but a vital force in the lives of enslaved Black persons. After Emancipation and the Civil War, many states and local governments passed "Jim Crow" laws which gave blacks an opportunity to learn in the same arena as whites. Now, before those laws were passed, Jim Crow laws kept blacks isolated from being able to function as a normal citizen, and receive a quality education. The polls and test (s) kept blacks from voting because if you were unable to read and write, how were you going to vote?

For the vast majority of southern blacks, the terror of Jim Crow meant that they were forced to live "behind the veil," in the words of the black intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois. Jim Crow laws did not give blacks any sense of dignity, or hope, but violated their ability to obtain knowledge. If slaves wanted to receive a quality education, they would have to sneak in order to get it. Abolitionist, Frederick Douglass stated, “I considered slavery to be an economic institution that was antithetical to learning. It reduced slaves to unthinking beasts, for as Master Auld explained, "Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. It would forever unfit him to be a slave." Education was the path toward freedom, and, through his self-education, Douglass discovered the existence of abolitionist forces which sustained his hope of escaping to the North.
Black and white resistance to institutional slavery served as the foundation for many arguments black Baptists, for example, made against the accepted theological and social norms of the day.

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

subscribe.

As the Civil Rights era emerged, this appeal to brotherhood and sisterhood under Christianity would allow African-Americans to, once again, find solace and support in the walls of the church—with much of the leadership coming from and necessary movement work executed in Black churches and ministers. The relationship between the pulpit and the Black public square helped to inform the mission of the Black church. Carter G. Woodson, historian wrote, in the early days, “their preachers were more concerned about the religious and social needs of their people and the challenge of developing important national institutions than they were about what some integrationists called the disgrace of building “exclusive or isolated organizations.” A great part of the mission of the church was linked to social activism, as the blood of Black bodies dripped down trees, sidewalks, and streets.