Who Really Created the Black Church?

Reverend Dr. Charlie Dates explains the origins of the Black Church in America and the crucial role it plays in rounding out American Christianity. Tune into the full conversation here: Holy Post Live in Chicago

Phil: I started getting hit very often in talking about race issues with people saying, “There is no 'Black Church,' there is no 'white church.' It is sinful to even use those terms because you’re dividing God’s church.” How do you explain why it’s valuable to speak of the Black church as a distinct entity, theologically and historically?

Charlie: Yeah. I don’t think Black people were intent on starting a Black church. Dr. David Daniels, he was a Church of God in Christ bishop. He wrote about some of the Christian roots on the western side of Africa. Enslaved persons came from colonies that were already Christian. They did not come to America and get Christianity as a perk. I’m not saying everybody who was brought here was a Christian. I’m just saying it’s historically inaccurate to paint these persons as godless, as Christless. A lot of them even were Catholic. Dr. David Daniels talks about that in some of his writing. So, we would have historically happily wed with others who were Christian. It is just hard when your enslaver is preaching to you the liberating power of Jesus Christ for your soul, but is interested in keeping your body in prison.

So we’ve got to be honest here about who actually gave birth to this bifurcation within the church in America. It was the same insidious theological reflection that’s alive and well today in white evangelicalism. So I don’t want to take ownership of how it started. I do want to take ownership for where it is, because I think those persons took that wicked dogma, sanctified it, baptized it, rid it of all of its prejudice and hatred, turned it back on the system, and brought about Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others.

And so we need this theological reflection of Black people in order to round out what’s missing in American Christian theology. Actually, I would say it this way: it’s probably the theological reflection of the people on the margins that’s pulsating and thriving as the real thing that those at the center of the empire should pay attention to. White people are losing their minds—no offense—that they are no longer going to be the majority. In 10, 15 years there will be no clear dominant majority in America, and what that will mean politically and economically. I think a lot of what we’re seeing right now is that rugged reaction to that.