The new Black Evangelicals

Without doubt, Evangelical Christianity is the fastest growing religious movement in the United States today. Several religious observers note that, though the historic mainline Protestant denominations are losing members at a frightening pace, Evangelical churches, seminaries, and publishing houses are experiencing unprecedented growth. ¹

Spearheading this growing Christian movement is an emerging Evangelical “left.” Though this radical wing is a small minority of the estimated forty million “born again” Christians, its influence is rising, even among more conservative Evangelicals. Richard Quebedeaux, a keen observer of the movement, has written: “The vanguard of the evangelical left is centered on a small, highly literate, and generally younger elite . . . Evangelicals of the left range from moderate Republicans to democratic socialists, if not Marxists.” ² Unlike their more conservative elders, radical Evangelicals are seriously attempting to relate their faith to the social ills of society.

From all appearances, however, this radical Evangelicalism is essentially a White religious phenomenon. Though there have been recent journalistic efforts made to include the unique Black contribution to the movement, the net result has been token at best. ³ To date, little if anything has been written about the history, theology, and current debate taking place among the new breed of Black Evangelicals.

Before the new Black Evangelical movement can be further analyzed, perhaps a clear definition of American Evangelicalism would be in order. Historically, several American religious movements claim an Evangelical heritage. The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great Awakenings, the revivalism of Dwight L. Moody, the conservative “old Princeton theology,” and the socio-theological conservatism which grew out of the famous fundamentalist–modernist controversy of the late 1920s are all variants of American Evangelicalism. Today’s Evangelicals are basically conventional Protestants who hold staunchly to the authority of the Bible in all matters and adhere to orthodox Christian doctrine. They believe in making a conscious personal commitment to Christ—a spiritual encounter, gradual or instantaneous, known as the “born again” experience.

If attempting to arrive at a coherent definition of American Evangelicalism is difficult, then the task is even more problematic when trying to define Black Evangelicalism. Theologically, most mainline Black churches (especially Baptist and Pentecostal) are Evangelical if one means adherence to orthodox Christian doctrine. But within that broad group are those who adhere not just to doctrine but to a mentality, a subculture, a lifestyle. This distinct group consists of what I refer to as Black Evangelicals.

Black Evangelicalism is essentially a post-World War II phenomenon. It is a direct outgrowth of the “Bible School” and “Christian College” movement of the 1950s. Blacks educated in these institutions were given a White reactionary worldview. One Black Christian, in describing his experience in the fundamentalist world, has said:

We were taught to shun the world, to be separate from it, and while I am sure the interest was right, the result of such instruction developed a negative and defensive mentality. I found myself viewing people as the enemy, especially if they smoked or cursed. They were to be saved, of course, but not necessarily to be loved as they were. Imperceptibly, I came to be more doctrine and program centered than people centered . . . I became a fundamentalist. ⁴

A prevailing belief, in the recent past, among most Black Evangelicals was that the Black community had very few “biblically sound” churches. This erroneous belief was popularized by Tom Skinner’s Black and Free. In 1968, Skinner concluded that, “The kind of religion usually found in the Negro churches is highly emotional, often superstitious and has little biblical foundation.” ⁵

Wittingly or unwittingly, Skinner left the unfortunate impression that most Black choirs are entertainers and performers and most Black ministers are con artists and immoral preacher pimps. To be sure, it is doubtful whether a significant number of mainstream Black Evangelicals have moved from this position. Dr. William Bentley, former president of the National Black Evangelical Association, has suggested that the Black Evangelical movement “remains for the most part, outside the mainstream of black Christianity. With the possible exception of black Pentecostals black evangelicalism is distinctly a middle-class religious phenomenon, and has much more in common with its white counterparts than with the black.” ⁶ In short, mainline Black Evangelicalism has tended to see Black Church/Black Christianity through White eyes.

During most of the turbulent 1960s, Black Evangelicals remained conspicuously quiet. While Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and the Black Panthers attempted to define and defend Black personhood, most Evangelicals mouthed “pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.” Before the close of the decade, however, a vocal minority of militant Black Evangelicals came on the scene. Shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the most militant critique to date from a Black Christian perspective was published: William Pannell’s My Friend the Enemy. Pannell expressed the mood of militant Black Evangelicals when he wrote, “The white man must learn to listen. I am bored beyond words with the white man’s assessment of me – how I ought to think; how I, in fact, do think; how I should feel as a Christian. What you must learn is how I think, how I really feel.” ⁷ Pannell’s colleague, Tom Skinner, who was previously tagged as the “Black Billy Graham,” began to reverse that image in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As the new “Stokely Carmichael of the evangelical world,” Skinner unleashed a vehement attack on White Evangelical racism, militarism, and American civil religion. Without doubt, Tom’s famous address to the Ninth InterVarsity Missionary Convention in 1970 made him the foremost evangelist of the gospel of holistic liberation. ⁸ By addressing crucial social issues, Skinner found himself persona non grata at several “Christian” colleges and churches. The famous Moody Bible Institute, for example, took him off their radio station because his messages were “too political.” Skinner’s prophetic challenges soon made him a “bad nigger” in many Evangelical circles.

During the late 1960s, the militant mood permeated what was then known as the National Negro Evangelical Association (now the National Black Evangelical Association). A major cleavage erupted at the 1969 NNEA convention between the older traditional Evangelicals and the younger militants. This cleavage was intensified at the following year’s convention held in New York. Younger Black Evangelicals forced the convention to address itself to the unholy Graham–Nixon alliance and to support John Perkins, a Black Evangelical social activist who had been jailed and severely beaten for his involvement in social issues in Mississippi. The apex of the convention was a keynote address by perhaps the most articulate speaker at the time for militant Black Evangelicals, Columbus Salley.

In 1970, Salley, along with a White liberal Evangelical, co-authored a book entitled, Your God Is Too White. ⁹ The book hit the Evangelical community like a bombshell. Its excoriation of White American Christianity was a bitter pill for many to swallow. Like Vincent Harding’s Black Power and the American Christ ¹⁰ and Albert Cleage’s The Black Messiah, ¹¹ Salley attempted to strip “Christianity” of its Whiteness and oppressive nature. In many respects, Your God Is Too White was the handbook for militant Black Evangelicals.

Dr. William H. Bentley, the “godfather” of militant Black Evangelicals, was attempting to raise the social and ethnic consciousness of Black Christians years before Black Power was in vogue. Bentley, perhaps more than anyone else, has contributed to a distinct Black Evangelical nationalist school of thought. ¹² Both a theologian and an astute church historian, Dr. Bentley is attempting to develop a truly liberating Black Evangelical theology. Without doubt, New Black Evangelicals have come into their own.

Is there a relationship between the White Evangelical “left” and radical Black Evangelicals? To better understand the question, one must examine the antecedent of the White “young evangelicals,” namely neo-Evangelicalism.

Neo-Evangelicalism was a reaction to “cultic fundamentalism” twenty-five years ago. It was characterized by a renaissance in Evangelical theology and apologetics. In the area of social ethics, however, the new movement left much to be desired. Indeed, neo-Evangelicalism, like most White religious movements, capitulated to White racism. E. J. Carnell, probably the greatest theologian of the movement, once wrote, “Too much stress on racial injustice will divert the sinner’s attention from the need to repent of his totally self-centered life . . . If we let the Negro buy a house in a fashionable suburb we do an injustice to vested property interests.” ¹³ To be sure, this type of theologizing would fit perfectly in the antebellum South or in the racist society of South Africa.

Carnell, it must be said, at least was honest about his racism. The truth remains, however, that the colonizer, whether Christian or pagan, liberal or conservative, will not automatically seek the best interests of the colonized. The oppressors will never interpret the gospel correctly because it calls for the liberation of a people they hold in bondage.

New Black Evangelicals have the same distrust for the White Evangelical “left” as their elders had for neo-Evangelicalism twenty-five years ago. Over the recent past, there have been several confrontations between radical Black Christians and “leftist” White Evangelicals. Since its inception, Evangelicals for Social Action (a group which is attempting to link Evangelical faith with social action) has had serious problems in recruiting and keeping a significant Black presence. ¹⁴ Many former Black members feel that though ESA is to be commended for its fight against racial injustice, its onslaught against racism is still not strong enough. Though militant Black Evangelicals certainly do not minimize the importance of other social issues, they affirm with W. E. B. DuBois that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”

Perhaps the greatest disillusionment of radical Black Christians is with the most radical element of the Evangelical “left.” This radical segment tends to lean heavily on the Anabaptist tradition insofar as its social ethics and lifestyle are concerned. Such figures as Jim Wallis (editor of Sojourners), John Howard Yoder, William Stringfellow, and Jacques Ellul are representative of the movement. Their model “tends to renounce political action and coercive power in favor of a more countercultural witness of non-violence and pacifism, exemplifying a whole new order based on Christian values.” ¹⁵

Though the establishing of Christian countercultural values and lifestyles is certainly important, new Black Evangelicals feel that the seeming political withdrawal by radical White Christians is strangely reminiscent of the otherworldliness of fundamentalism.

Many New Black Evangelicals see the White Evangelical “left” to be as irrelevant to them as neo-Evangelicalism was to their predecessors in the 1950s. The new Blacks feel that White Evangelicals as a group, no matter how radical or young, will never come to grips with the demon of racism embedded within them. ¹⁶

Lerone Bennett, Jr. once wrote concerning the need for Black intellectual autonomy,

The overriding need of the moment is for us to think with our own mind and see with our own eyes . . . We must create a new rationality, a new way of seeing, a new way of reasoning, a new way of thinking . . . We see now through a glass whitely, and there can be no more desperate and dangerous task than the task which faces us now of trying to see with our own eyes. ¹⁷

Unfortunately, most militant Black Evangelicals have merely reacted against White Evangelicalism without clearly defining their alternative. This fallacy is partially owing to their inability to develop a distinctly Black intellectual spiritual frame of reference. Indeed, most radical Black Evangelicals still “see through a glass whitely.” The overriding need for Black Evangelicals is the theological decolonization of their minds. This process, however, will not take place overnight.

First, new Black Evangelicals must begin to rethink those conclusions previously believed to be of God. They will have to raise the question, “Hath God said?” in relation to what Evangelical theology has taught them. This will mean taking a fresh look at Scripture, devoid of White Evangelical hermeneutics and exegesis.

Black radical Christians must not avoid the task of theologizing for themselves by saying that White Evangelicals are doctrinally correct though ethically bankrupt. What is being suggested is that perhaps there is something fundamentally wrong with White Evangelical theology. Dr. James Cone correctly understood that “if concern for social action does not flow smoothly from the present theology, [you should] see what its weaknesses are, and then you will know better how to behave in the world in light of your relationship with God.” ¹⁸

The notion that White Evangelicals are not involved in liberating social action because they are racist is true as far as it goes. How, then, does one explain the same social paralysis on the part of Black Evangelicals? It is impossible for an individualistic, dispensationalist theology to be a liberating force for an oppressed people.

Second, given this reality, it is imperative that New Black Evangelicals construct their own liberating theology. Such an endeavor will be fallacious if Black Christians merely blackenize the theologies of E. J. Carnell, Carl F. H. Henry, Francis Schaeffer, and other White Evangelical “saints.” Black Evangelicals must construct a theology of their own social context. They must realize that all theology is contextual, including White American Evangelical theology.

The theological methodology of New Black Evangelicals must be dialectical in nature. That is, the theological starting point is both human and divine. Contrary to most Evangelical theologizing, God does not eradicate concrete socio-political realities when he reveals himself to his people. Conversely, Black Evangelicals must hold that theology must be epistemologically valid. That is, while God uses the human/social context to reveal himself, it is indeed God who is doing the revealing and not merely human projections.

Therefore, New Black Evangelical theology must be biblical; that is, it must be grounded primarily in the witness of Holy Scripture. Without the Scriptures as a norm, all God-talk drops to the level of humanism and anthropology. In essence, New Black Evangelicals must construct a biblically liberating and prophetic theology which will speak meaningfully to the plight of Black people all over the world.

Third, radical Black Evangelicals must redefine the concept of mission. Clarence Hilliard, a New Black Evangelical, introduced such a redefinition at the 1974 Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization by way of a protest paper. Hilliard contended that evangelism must include the redemption of both the individual and the social order.

One of the best New Black Evangelical missions to date, especially to Black youth, is the National Black Christian Students Conference. NBCSC was conceived in 1974 by Dr. Ruth Lewis Bentley, a psychologist at the University of Illinois Medical School, and Ms. Wyn Wright Potter, director of Black Christian Education for the Reformed Church in America. This Black Christian nationalist organization is attempting to politicize, theologize, and organize Black Christian students to bring holistic liberation into oppressed Black communities. The NBCSC is by far one of the most radical endeavors by New Black Evangelicals to date.

Finally, there needs to be a coalition between New Black Evangelicals and radical Black Pentecostals. Such a coalition could be mutually helpful. Black Evangelicals need the spiritual vitality and grass-roots organization of the Pentecostals. The Pentecostals, on the other hand, need the systematic theological methodology that the Evangelicals can offer. Together, these two movements could become the most dynamic liberating force to take place in the Black community in twenty years.

Radical Black Pentecostals by themselves have effected positive change within the Black community. The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a militant Black Nationalist Pentecostal, is in the forefront of the Black liberation struggle in Brooklyn, New York. Chairperson of Brooklyn’s militant Black United Front and pastor of House of the Lord Pentecostal Church, Daughtry has in every respect preached and practiced a Black political theology. Other radical Pentecostals, too numerous to mention, are following suit.

In summary, New Black Evangelicals must meet the challenge of the times by preaching and practicing a prophetic and liberating gospel of liberation. Their faith must be able to speak meaningfully to the social, economic, spiritual, and political powerlessness in America’s Black communities. Developing a holistic theology and gospel will not be easy. There are no simple solutions. But under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the Lordship of Christ the Liberator, Black radical Evangelicals can become God’s agents of change.