Taking Down Our Harps

Black Catholics in the United States

M. Shawn Copeland, Toinette M. Eugene, Jamie T. Phelps, O.P.

Giles Conwill, Bryan N. Massingale, Clarence Rufus J. Rivers,

D. Reginald Whitt, O.P.

The primary locus for and nurturer of black spirituality has been the traditional black church.  The term "black church" designates both those black Christian churches that originated as a consequence of the rejection and second-class citizenship blacks experienced in the mainline Protestant denominations and those independent churches that have roots in the religion of the slave quarters and fields (e.g., Baptist and Pentecostal).

The forms of Christianity the African slaves encountered in captivity had already degenerated by their accommodation to the immoral enslavement of other human beings.  These Protestant and Catholic Christians had anesthetized themselves to the immorality of slavery by philosophical and theological rationalizations that "justified" the economic and personal exploitation of their estranged African brothers and sisters.  Indeed, few of these Christians would ever concede that Africans were fully human and therefore their equals in the eyes of God.  To the contrary, in the eyes of most slave traders and missionaries, Africans were uncivilized barbarians who were being saved and elevated by their mere association with Christian civilization.

In the United States, where English Protestantism was the dominant religious culture, few efforts were made to convert the slaves to Christianity until the eighteenth century, and these efforts increased only when it was guaranteed that baptism would not alter the "property" status of the slave.  That these baptisms were often attempts to pacify the enslaved Africans is indicated by one slave catechism from the mid-nineteenth century:  The question "What did God make you for?" is followed by the answer "To make a crop."  Another question, "What is the meaning of ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery'?" is answered "To serve our heavenly Father, and our earthly master, obey our overseer, and not steal anything."

In general, the Christian churches remained indifferent to the spiritual welfare of their African slaves, who were viewed primarily as property.  Blacks were thought to be the cursed descendants of Ham.  In reality, they were not cursed by God but by the indifference of those Christians who used "their bodies but denied their souls, and...turned them away from their churches."  Even when the doors of the church were opened, blacks were relegated to the back pews and balconies of the assemblies to prevent social contact.  Yet it was in these back pews and balconies that the slaves heard the liberating words of the gospel.  While the white preacher attempted to use the gospel to justify the current social and economic relations between the races, the slaves heard the liberating themes of the gospel and integrated them with their traditional African beliefs of a loving ever-present, and provident God.  When their interpretation of the biblical message and its implication for blacks clashed with denominational stances and boundaries, some blacks left their parent churches and formed independent African churches.

Black Christian preachers realized that God's provident love requires that human beings be free to develop their humanity to its fullest potential.  If God is free, then human beings, created in the divine image and likeness, were meant to be free.  Thus Christian responsibility requires those who have been enslaved to recover their God-given freedom so their force-vitale, or inner spirit, can be free.  Such was the meaning and message of the liberating actions of Henry Highland Garnett, Thomas Fortune, Davie Walker ( who followed in the footsteps of Nat Turner), and Denmark Vessey.

It was not unusual for the early black Christian slaves who assembled in the balconies and back pews of the white Christian churches to reassemble in the backwoods and swamps, where they could express their common experience and common spirituality in more congenial forms of rhythm, song, and prayer.  With the emergence of the independent African churches in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the invisible black church of the backwoods became the visible black church in the United States.  These churches generally maintained the structures and central doctrines of their originating denominations; nevertheless, they developed a unique black American religious culture - a blend of both African religion and Euro-American Christianity. This distinctive religious culture, like the African religious cultures that preceded it, sought and still seeks to interpret the meaning of black life in relationship to both God and its environment.  The preaching and worship styles of the black church echo and reflect the African world view and understanding of God's love and active presence in the daily affairs of human beings.  In varying degrees, the liberating spirit that gave birth to the black church is evident in the content and style of its preaching and song, as well as in the involvement of its members in evangelization and action for social justice.

Although some traditional black Christian churches have maintained a faithfulness to the essential meaning and message of Jesus Christ as apprehended from an African or black perspective, others have become accommodated to a dualistic view that divides the world into the sacred and the secular, thus contradicting their African origin.  This culturally alien dualism can give rise to a variety of problems.  On the one hand, black churches can be solely havens of emotional security from the world's racial hostility.  On the other hand, they can be both comforting and challenging sources of spiritual regeneration, empowering their members to struggle to liberate their families, their community, and the world from moral compromise with personal and social sins such as narcissism, materialism, racism, sexism, imperialism, and militarism.  Then again, the black church can be corrupted into an institution that functions solely as a political-economic base for a racially isolated community.  The authentic black church must have a holistic approach its members.  It must comfort as well as challenge, and it must address the spiritual as well as the social and political needs of its members.

Black spirituality is characterized by a number of specific emphases and attitudes, none of which is exclusive to it but all of which, taken together, combine to produce a unique vision and practice of the spiritual life.

First, black spirituality, like the African religions in which it is rooted, is community centered.  It shapes the community and, in turn, is shaped by the community, which defines itself and its history as being integrally connected with God. 

It is in the context of the worshiping community that the God-awareness of black spirituality is nurtured.  What was true of slave religion of the past is equally true of the black church today:  In common worship the community is called by song to be conscious of the Spirit who comes to join the assembly.  Just as the drums of the African ritual opened the door for the spirit to enter the assembly, gospel song invites the Holy Spirit to be manifest in the midst of the worshiping community.

Another fundamental element of black spirituality is its strong biblical character.  The worship services of the traditional black church are dominated by the dynamic and evocative preaching of the minister, and the starting point of the sermon is always the Word of God.  The preacher begins by retelling an entire biblical story or dramatically announcing a few lines from a text taken from the Old or New Testament.  After this vivid proclamation of the Scripture, the preacher brings the biblical text to life by indicating how the story has meaning in the lives of the congregation.  Often the preaching is a dialogical experience, with the congregation affirming the preacher's truth-telling by nods of the head, applause, amens, and the like.  When the Spirit of Truth envelops the assembly, some of the worshipers respond in a manner similar to their African ancestors, who experienced spirit possession.  The preaching and singing are necessarily emotional, because the worshipers have been touched at the core of their being, moved by the presence of the Spirit deep in their soul.

In African-American culture the emotional is not the opposite of the spiritual, nor is there any separation between the emotional and the intellectual.  Both the mind and the heart are needed to grasp the truth.  If the preacher does not preach the truth, it will not be long before the congregation calls him to task.

The point of the black church's biblically centered worship is to hear God's word from the past as it is evidenced in the present.  This "immediate" interpretive principle or hermeneutic is a reflection of the African concept of time, in which past and present are one and continuous.  Thus black spirituality is always concerned to situate itself firmly in the present, in the midst of concrete daily experience.  By the same token, the biblical characters are not simply heroes and heroines of long ago; they have joined the ranks of the ancestors, and their lives, like those of the biological ancestors of African Americans, influence the lives of the living community.

In some worship services, members of the congregation testify to God's action in their lives and those of their extended family during the week.  Increasingly, black Catholic liturgies are incorporating this testimonial aspect through spontaneous prayers of the people during the penitential rite and in the general intercessions during the Liturgy of the Word.  In communal worship the assembly gathers up the experiences of its individual members and transforms them into the experience and concerns of the entire community.

The suffering caused by unemployment, poverty, hunger, homelessness, rejection, and the human degradation of racism is all brought to the church to be transformed; and all of it is transformed by offering the entire community to God for healing, relief, and strengthening.

Most Africans and members of the African Diaspora have an experience of God that is both transcendent and immanent - God who is beyond us but dwells within us.  Black believers know experientially ("deep down in my soul") that the Spirit of God dwells within their inner selves, directing their memory, imagination, intellect, feelings, and body.  Any person born into the religious tradition of African or African Diaspora cultures is nurtured from birth into a style of life that witnesses to the belief that God is manifest everywhere and in every person, thing, or event  This attitude corresponds to the traditional religions of Dahomey, in which God meets the human being at every point of life; but the involvement of God in human life by way of "the gods" has been replaced, in the black church, by the concept or God being present by means of the Spirit sent by Jesus after his ascension.  Thus a person steeped in the black spiritual tradition is trained, so to speak, in a particular kind of mystical tradition.  One sees God's hands in every human encounter and event in life and is conditioned by environmental nurturing to abandon oneself, in obedience to God's will, to the movements of the Holy Spirit.

It is not unusual for a black child reared in a religious home to hear family members, especially the mother, talking to Jesus as they mull over family concerns.  Not is it unusual to hear in family and community conversations testimony that a person has been led by God to use his or her talents in a specific way or to do this or that thing, even when the individual involved was initially resistant to such a course of action.  The impulse in black spirituality to abandon oneself to the divine will and the indwelling Spirit lends itself to a particularly intimate experience of God.

Yet the kind of abandonment black worship invites is not a somber resignation to our hopeless acceptance of a life over which one has no control.  The mystical union to which black spirituality predisposes one is the source of an emotional, energetic, and joyful approach to life and worship.  The life experiences of African Americans attest that God is reliable and benevolent, involved in the daily life of individuals and the community.  Blacks in touch with their spiritual traditions are confident about their ultimate well-being, because our God is a loving God who, in the last analysis, can be counted upon to give joy, power, and liberation from the debilitating oppressions of sin, racism, or any form of evil.  This deep sense of joy finds expression in a correspondingly deep and pervasive sense of peace, even in the midst of great adversity or trial, and it is the same deep joy that overflows in quiet tears, loud shouts, exuberant or emotional songs, dancing and clapping by choir and congregation gathered in worship.

While the joy of the Spirit's presence manifests itself in vivid and diverse ways in the worshiping community, such expression alone does not authenticate black spirituality.  The absolute criterion of authentic black spirituality is its impact on the quality of the believer's life.  It assumes that the true nature of our faith is reflected in the way in which we relate to other human beings and the created order, and that our concern for others will naturally generate witness and actions directed toward the realization of freedom for all human beings to live a liberated and joyful life, energized by the power of the Spirit.  For example, does the person possessed by the Spirit of God treat family, neighbors, friends, and enemies with a sense of respect for the presence of God within each and every person? 

Does this person struggle to establish right relationships with others, regardless of race, gender, or creed?  Does this person act right and call others to be right?  Does this person struggle for the liberation of oppressed persons, races, nations?

Since the center and organizing principle of all African religion in the preservation and strengthening of the life-force or power of the community, in black spirituality, too, the central focus is the preservation and strengthening of the life-force or power that dwells within each individual and in the community.  This life-force is the Spirit of God.

Individuals oppressed by reason of gender, race, class, or nationality have had their authentic freedom, their unique expression of the God-force, suppressed.  Thus they are denied their role as co-creators of God's kingdom.  Authentic black Spirituality leads to prophetic action on behalf of justice, a justice that requires liberation from sin and its effects.  This understanding of justice entails a reordering of the false and unjust structures of institutions, nations, and even ecclesial bodies that have become stumbling blocks rather than facilitators of an individual's or community's right relationship between God and one another.  A person imbued with the life-force at the center of black spirituality - with the Spirit of God - is willing to struggle for this liberation, knowing that even death is not too high a price to pay for the establishment of those right relationships that characterize the kingdom of God.

In their commitment to the liberation and justice of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed, adherents of the prophetic tradition so prominent in authentic black spirituality recognize that they must stand for the truth.  The Christian person must walk the path of Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  A man of love who announced the gospel to the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized of his society (Lk 4:14ff.), Jesus not only spoke the good news, he was the Good News.

Not all black Christians embrace this universal and community-centered understanding of the meaning of Jesus.  They, like some other Christians, believe that the life and death of Christ have nothing to do with the ecclesial and social structures of human society, even when these structures oppress the spirit of love, truth, and liberation given to each person and community for building up and preparing for God's kingdom.

Office of African American Catholic Ministries - November 2007