Reflection on the “Soul of Black Preaching”

Bazooka Bubble Gum once came with comic strips wrapped around the candy. One such strip had a little boy searching under the lights for a precious coin he had lost in darkness around the corner. An adult asked him why he was searching there. The boy responded, “Because the light's better.”

Sometimes we must be audacious enough to search in unlit places for what is lost. I reflect upon insights from this year's gathering of the Black Theological Leadership Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary. “Searching for the Soul of Black Preaching.” The minister was preaching. And the crowd was standing near. The congregation was singing a tune. In a voice that was loud and clear. You know the crowd that stood around him. They were crying, I could plainly see. For the song that they sang was so touching. They were singing “Nearer My God to Thee.” (Sam Cooke, “Nearer to Thee,” 1955)

“Cataphatic” defines a theological approach ¹ in which one speaks affirmatively about the nature of God, who is otherwise undefinable. Is that also the approach taken for “Black preaching?” Can “search,” in the dim light of insufficient definition, ever recover from unlit places the precious “soul of Black preaching?”

African American churches and “Black preaching” have shaped my life. However, until the Institute, little did I appreciate my role as a “Black preacher.” Therefore, I undertook reflection to set down an “orderly account” {Luke 1:1} of what was fulfilled that week. In preparation I found the term “Black preaching” described, yet never defined. The descriptions often spoke to its form, “sermonic tradition,” “biblical hermeneutic,” “multifaceted with four parts,” “messages to predominately African American congregations,” even a picture of Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, but nary a definition.

Through reflection, I attempt to wrestle with the compound question of, what is the “soul of Black preaching,” and where it might be found. Admittedly, I am not a scholar. Note the shift from “cataphatic” to “apophatic.” ² Thus, I reflect heart-to-heart, rather than head-to-head. I am best described as a simple African American pastoral “herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees” (Amos 7:14). My “herd” is a small flock in Midtown Manhattan. As a “dresser,” I strive, through reflection and inquiry, to make precise “incision” to the low-hanging fruit of human imagination.

My journey to ordained ministry came by way of the practice of law. As such, jurisprudence and theology influence my cogitation, occasionally colliding into coherent thoughts worth writing down, such as regarding the theological and historical paradox of “Black preaching,” and the positing of its soul in historically African American communities. Biblical study suggests that “Black preaching” emerged long before the 1619 delivery of bound sons and daughters of Africa onto American soil, long before the African American community became the modern paradigm for sanctioned bondage, chattel enslavement, systemic oppression, persistent injustice, and structural marginalization.

Critical study counsels me that we are not the first community to “trod the stoney road,” nor to receive the divinely anointed and heavenly appointed assignment to proclaim hope to those crying out for a “nearer” God! Nor, do I believe, are we the sole custodians of “Black preaching.” Rather we are provisional anointed fiduciaries, for the benefactors of God's amazing grace. Such unscholarly characterization should not negate “Black preaching,” but hopefully deepen resolve to search for its soul, even in unlit places.

Thoughts on “Black preaching” According to the Cambridge Dictionary “Circularity” ³ describes a word so undefinable its definition contains the word to be defined. As such, a search for the “soul of Black preaching” may be impacted by the fallacious circularity of its definition. Yet, even in the absence of dictionary assistance, the irreducibility of “Black preaching” is reduced for our understanding to the simple whisper of a “hum,” then poof, it's gone. In her book, “The Sanctified Church,” Zora Neal Hurston writes of “Negro spirituals”: “The real spirituals are not really just songs. They are unceasing variations around a theme. Contrary to popular belief their creation is not confined to the slavery period. Like the folk-tales, the spirituals are being made and forgotten every day.” ⁴ She goes on to write, “All good work and beautiful, but not spirituals These neo-spirituals are the outgrowth of glee clubs.” ⁵

Hurston offers a powerful insight into “Black preaching,” as well as how its soul may be uncovered. In examination of its “good work and beauty,” are we somehow searching for its soul in glee club performances of “neo-Black preaching?” If Hurston is correct, the soul of “Black preaching” may reside in “varied messages around a particular theme, unconfined to a particular period or people, simultaneously made new and forgotten daily” over and above the veneer of performance ⁶ . Obviously, I have no scholarly answer to that, as earlier expressed—through reflection I offer “incisions.”

I am blessed to have been joined by esteemed clergy colleagues, and guided by extraordinary scholars, preachers, intellectuals, and disciples. I learned in law that to get at the right answers, one must ask the right questions. I have a deep gratitude to the Black Theological Leadership Institute for framing questions around the subject of “Black preaching.” Questions provoked inquiry into the reconciliation of a divine gift, which has exponentially advanced in performance, yet seems to woefully lag in substance. BTLI Director Rev. Dr. David Latimore reminded us Black preachers of the great urgency to proclaim the gospel in the midst of the “hopes” and “pains” of communities wherein the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. averred a social check has been returned, “marked insufficient funds.”

During seminary, I was directed to God's Trombones, by the late Rev. Dr. Evans E. Crawford, author of The Hum: Call and Response in African American Preaching. He emphasized throughout the course, “Preaching as Fine and Folk Art,” that in the Black church, “the whole church preaches.” His instruction helped me better understand James Weldon Johnson's sermon, “Let My People Go,” a timeless masterpiece in “call and response.” Hidden in the eloquent brevity of that sermon is the inconspicuously self-evident “soul of Black preaching.” To heed Moses’ call to go, the people must respond by leaving. The notion of proclamational duality invites us into the unlit places to uncover the “soul of Black preaching.” It shifts full attention from the light of the pulpit creating balance with the unlit pews, uncovering a dynamic “soul” that bounces between the liminal space of mutual proclamations and responses.

I rejoice in the privilege to have joined others in the “search.” Chaqar, in the Qal imperative form, is a Hebrew word for “search.” The Greek word is zēteō. Each implies findings based upon invitation to intimately investigate, examine, or seek out. In other words, we did not merely gather to search, but also to find. Ergo, we note the biblical instruction, seek and you shall find (Matt 7:7, NRSV). Finding the “soul of Black preaching” is essential to the church's role in moving forward an issue embattling the African American community. Although the Institute is completed, our work continues until that precious soul is found.

Is God's Spirit the foundation for anointed “Black preaching?” From “the beginning,” God's Spirit hovered over the chaos that was. It continues to announce light into the chaos that is, revealing the soul of God's eternal divine intentions. “The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor 2:10, NRSV). So, too, God’s Holy Spirit was the active agent, when the prophet Isaiah preached God's intentions to end social chaos and usher in justice for the poor and oppressed.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord … (Isa 61:1–2, KJV)

The Spirit set the stage for Jesus to rise from His pew, open the scroll, and perform a homiletical masterclass in “Black preaching” (Luke 4:18), then dramatically drop the mic and return to His pew.

Are our pews the locations of positive divine intention? Maybe Jesus’ “Black preaching” is a marker of its soul, aiding our search from the pulpit, as well as the pew. For the song that they sang was so touching. They were singing “Nearer my God to Thee.” Consider the mythical Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz, and her quest to find “home.” Although she looked outside, the target of her search was always inside. Is the soul of “Black preaching” an implicit “option for the poor” written upon our hearts? Is it discovered when we gather at the intersection of Hope Street and Despair Avenue? Jesus said, “Believe in God, believe also in me” (John 14:1, NRSV). Unequivocally, I believe! I believe in God, Jesus, and the Spirit revealed reality of “the soul of Black preaching,” whose critical importance for structural liberation of the African American, and other oppressed communities, I have yet to uncover. However, what was shared at the Institute leads me to know, I need only believe. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29, NRSV). Scripture is clear that God's thoughts and ways are not our own (Isa 58:8–9). They are mysterious, “cataphatic,” yet somehow drawing “Nearer,” and strikingly self-evident with each sermonic rendering.

In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart when confronted with defining obscenity, he wrote in a concurring opinion: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced with that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.” ⁷ Likewise, I’ll conclude here any immediate search to fully uncover the “soul of Black preaching.” For now, I’ll just click my heels together three times, because though yet to be fully revealed, “I’ll know it when I hear it.”