Religion's Role In The Civil Rights Movement

Kelly Brown Douglas begins by posing a series of questions, including, “Who is the Black Christ?” and “Is the Black Christ Enough?” (6-7) For Douglas, the Black Christ, “…represents God’s urgent movement in human history to set Black captives free from the demons of White racism” (3). The question of “Who is the Black Christ?” is addressed in Chapter 3. The question of “Is the Black Christ enough?” is addressed in Chapters 4 and 5, as Douglas critically examines the relationship of the Black Christ to the Black community and ends with addressing what womanist theology is and why there is a need for it in understanding the Black Christ.

The author, Curtis J. Evans, argues that African Americans and images of black religion in American culture have been key to the development of American ideals and culture, as well as a reflection of the nation’s failures as a country. Throughout the text, Evans never truly offers any added narrative to the events in history he speaks on, but simply historicizes the burden that has been placed on black religion, and by natural extension, black people. He documents the changes in how black religion was viewed in America and how black America responded to these views.

I chose to do my religious ethnographic study at my home church, Tabernacle Baptist Church in Youngstown, Ohio on Sunday, May 8, 2016. Tabernacle is an 112-year-old historic Black Baptist church located on the lower Northside of Youngstown surrounded by a mixed income housing development, homeless shelter, Youngstown State University, and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. I would say the average age of a Tabernacle member is 55 years old. About 70% of the members at this church are “middle-class” families. Until about five years ago, its membership was almost exclusively middle class. There has seen an influx of membership in working class individuals and students since the arrival of Tabernacle’s young, vibrant pastor, Rev. Christopher McKee, Jr., three years ago. The church is attentive to the needs of this demographic but remains true to its historic Black Baptist church roots. The church previously struggled with this conundrum until it came to the reality that an exclusivist mindset around worship is detrimental to the body of Christ when it did not have a pastor for over three years. The church was dying because no one was welcome to it and it did not have a leader. Though it was difficult, this reassessment was beneficial in making Tabernacle more relevant and welcoming to the community it is blessed to serve.

The roots of a black woman’s struggle heightens the sole reasons why she bends over backwards for herself and her community. This showcase of bravery and courage is further elaborated in Ross’s first chapter named “Religion and Public Life: Early Traditions of Black Religious Women’s Activism.” Ross does an excellent job at unfolding the ignorance of black male religious leaders during the Civil Rights Movement. Black ministers and other male figures during this time fell extremely short by failing to acknowledging the women who offered much more than a helping hand in promoting change. Black religious women in the Civil Rights Movement provided a critical influence to the success of the movement. They furnished multiple ideas that embraced racial uplift and social responsibility all while making connection to religious life. Religion has always been crucial to not only black people but also to the minority race period. They place an immense reliance on a power that is much, much greater than their own. Having faith in something is innate; and is an essential need for humans. Therefore, there is

groups also held meetings and conferences and also gave speeches for their cause.( “the African American odyssey”). Members from religious groups were one of the first people to protest against the African American slave trade.( “Religion during the Civil War”). People not only protested but they also sent petition to stop slavery with thousands of signatures to Congress. (“the African American odyssey”)

Another reason the church was such an influence on the boycott was because black people

Throughout the duration of the class, I have come to understand Black Church studies as an examination of the complex meaning of contextual theology in the lived of African-American experience—theology rooted within the experience and social realities of the believer. Religious identity being a force that does not consume the identity of the person, but is shaped and formed by the cultural reality of the believer. It is within this dynamic that I have come to understand both traditions that shape my personhood (the tradition of Catholic moral theology and African-American liberation ethics) call me to public resistance of the neoliberal aggressions that harbor the African-American community. As stated within Black Church Studies: An Introduction regarding liberation, “We should not understand liberation in the passive voice... Rather, we should construe liberation in an active sense, in which the Black community is forever liberating in order that it may do more and be more than it has done or been before.”

Civil Rights Movement delivered, arguably, the most renowned and recited speech of the past sixty years. The infamous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. In this historic moment, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr famously stated, “he was going back to the South with faith that his people could hew a stone of hope from a mountain of despair.” (1) An effort considered by many to be the greatest, most successful social movement in our nation’s history, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-60s ushered in accomplishments of equality in areas of social issues and liberal ideology at pace never witnessed before in American society. In A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, author David L. Chappell analyzes how this feat was accomplished in such a short period. In doing so, Chappell reconsiders the roots of the movement itself and comes to a shocking conclusion. Rather giving credit to the success of the movement to black leaders and northern liberals, Chappell argues that it was actually the neutrality of the southern, white churches that helped to steer our country toward an era of national change. (5) “Unlike white southern social conservatives before and after them, segregationists in the 1950s-60s tended to identify their own white southern churches as the enemy.” (5) According to Chappell, this was the “Achilles’ heel” for segregationists during the movement. (6) It was this very failure

Historically, racial segregation was a key factor shaping the role of the Black church. "By the same token, it created the relative structural absence of institutional participatory alternatives and molded the cultural presence of an overarching moral community" (Hunt, & Hunt, 2000, p. 588).

In the earlier years, the Churches made by slaves and other Africans grew to be very popular, but now they don't have such a high voice as they had before. "Today, the black church is in crisis, with scholars claiming that it has lost its prophetic and

Reviving The Black Church: A call to Reclaim a Sacred Institution, offers an insightful and honest evaluation of the state of the black church. There will be two strengths and two concerns considered and examined separately. This analysis will be followed by a succinct conclusion with remarks and recommendations.

African American Religious Thought is always in the process of shifting. Whenever there is critical thought being developed, there has to be a shift. As I read each article, there were many salient points that resonated with me. Before I outline those points, I want to begin with the critical points that were lifted from Professors Glaude and West in African American Religious Thought. Both scholars very succinctly outlined the major themes that provide the backdrop for the study of African American Religious Thought in light of race and culture in the US. Glaude and West provide a historical periodization that carefully examines five historical moments that informs African American religious thought. These five platforms are:

This book represents thirty years of searching for the truth of the gospel and is a collection of essays on Black Theology. While working on his Ph.D. in systematic theology Cone had an awakening from his theological slumber as a result of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The more involved in the Civil Rights movement Cone became the more he realize how limited his seminary education way. Hence, in this book Cone reflects on how the Civil Rights movement caused him to raise questions such as what theology had to do with the black struggle for racial justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement helped Cone to look at theology and the struggle of black people with injustice. Thus you have James Cone drawing upon decades

Throughout late childhood, education touches upon the subject of segregation, a separation between whites and blacks during mid-20th century America, and children across the country learn the harsh reality of our nation’s history. Modern culture produces media to recreate these events in movies such as The Help, and Driving Miss Daisy. Although much of the media related segregation with the 1950’s and 1960’s, these decades were only a climax of the protests and civil movements during the time period. Not only segregation, racial inequality has also existed for hundreds of years- it is only during these specific years that the conflict and involvement of citizens across the country peaked through the use of protests as well as the influential people that led them. While influential leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. led the Civil Right Movement, segregation in the United States continued to affect the daily life of African American people publicly, educationally, and judicially until the eventual process of integration.

The popular picture of what the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and the 1960’s is of a hopeful crusade, where African Americans were able to use reason and moral arguments to illustrate to the country the immortality and injustice of segregation. This picture also assumes that African Americans were successful in this movement despite white southerners’ diehard devotion to segregation and white supremacy. In A Stone of Hope, Chappell challenges this narrative by shedding a light on civil rights protestors uncertainty of the movement’s success and how coercion and religion also played into the success of the movement, as well as how segregationists lack of support and action played an important role in its success.