Here's another online interesting online question about the contemporary Black church {posted here with two responses}

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/race/2008/04/have-you-ever-a.html


Dawn Turner Trice: I'm curious to know how many of you have actually attended a "black church?" Let's take Rev. Jeremiah Wright out of the equation for a moment. Here's a bit of history:

Sunday morning worship service historically was the singular guaranteed place where African Americans could go to be somebody. They struggled to achieve "somebody-ness" on other days of the week. They fought invisibility on other days of the week. But Sunday morning was different.

The church was a refuge. Grandparents and mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts and all their children would put on their Sunday-go-to-meetings clothes and head to the church house. Women wore the wide-brimmed hats and long flowing dresses. Men wore crisp white shirts and ties. Children still smelled of the perfumes added to their Saturday night bath water.

Sunday morning gave people a level of dignity they couldn't find on any other day of the week. Monday through Friday, women and men may have worked jobs as janitors or maids, noble and respectable enough. But they had to deal with stuff that wasn't so noble or respectable---the indignity of being called "boy" or "girl," "auntie" or "uncle."

But on Sunday morning, even if just for a few hours, all of those indignities melted away. You could sit next to the black doctor, lawyer, or insurance man; the black teacher, social worker or plumber and know everybody understood what Monday through Friday was like. Nobody's job made them any less immune to indignities. Everybody needed his or her dose of "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." Here, parishioners could shout and sing and have his or her soul prepared for Monday through Friday. My grandmother called it, "Putting on God's body armor."

I've written before that there is quite a bit of diversity among black churches---that's true of back in my grandmother's day and now. Not every minister is a proponent of black liberation theology, like Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Some black churches are so staid they defy the stereotype of parishioners dancing up and down the aisles.

But what is fairly consistent despite the tone and demeanor of the church, is its tradition of being a place where people could feel rooted in their culture as well as biblical principles.

Have you ever attended a black church? If so, what was your experience? Since the Wright controversy, are you at all intrigued to attend one now?

Comments:

Some of the most enjoyable and memorable experieces I have had in any church happened at St. Rosa de Lima Cathoic Church in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. This is a black Catholic Church that genuinely welcomes everybody, regardless of color.

While fairly wed to the standard Catholic mass, this chuch has its own music (drums and keyboard) and great humor, and is a model for what a post-racial world would look like.
Posted by: Evan | Jul 7, 2008 8:24:48 PM

**

I have been a member of a Black Catholic church for 45 years. Not the same church but always Black and always Catholic. I can appreciate the more tradition Mass but that is not my choice for regular Sundays.

I believe it is accurate to to state that black worship is usually, not always, interactive. The people respond to the sermon. When the Spirit moves, the people shout and move as well. Yes, even in the Catholic Church.

The one thing that I seek from my participation in worship is the spirtual weapons to overcome the world. Good sermon brings the Word of God into our daily lives and helps us to address our present questions and struglgles.

When my white Catholic friend visited my church she told me that it seemed that we believed that God was really listening, that we really beleived he would help us. She doesn't get that feeling in her church. She cried through most of the Mass, for which she apologized. I told that if she could not be herself in her Father's house, where else could go?
Posted by: nessa | Apr 29, 2008 9:37:18 AM