The African American Church

1. The African American Church The Many Dimensions of the African American Religious Experience

2. The Dimensions • The Religious Dimensions: The Black Sacred Cosmos. • The religious worldview of the Black Church involves the African heritage and the conversion (or response) to Christianity.

3. Central Institutional Sector and Partial Differentiation. • The Black Church is the center of the Black community. It is the only stable institution that has existed since slavery. • There was no complete separation between the secular and the sacred. • Clergy had impact on political and social organization that was desired and expected.

4. The following is from the Black Church in the Sixties by Hart Nelson and Anne Kusener Nelsen; it is on pages 10-15.

5. Interpretive Models • The Assimilation Model • The Black Church is a “stumbling block to assimilation in the American mainstream.” • The Isolation Model • The Black Church isolates itself from the community because of racism. Religion is for lower class people not for middle or upper class. [There they are . . . Too bad]

6. Interpretive • The Compensatory Model • The main attraction of the church is to provide a place for the masses of Blacks to have control over their own institutions. • Ethnic Community-Prophetic • Provides a community support as well as a prophetic function.

7. The Dialectical Model of the Black Church • There are 6 dialectic models of the Black Church. Although they are “polar opposites” the churches’ actual practice is somewhere within the continuum. Furthermore, a church may practice more than one model at a time and there may be other models. These models are just frameworks.

8. The dialectic between • Priestly and prophetic functions • Worship versus community activities http://umcna.bsc.edu/images/voice/03.02.cvr.jpg Father Augustt Tolto- the 1st universally recognized priest in the US http://www.holyangels.com/images/Father%20Augustus%20Tolton2.gif

9. The dialectic between • Other-worldly versus this-worldly • Concerns of heaven and the afterlife versus the here and now. http://www.someonespecial.com/cgi-bin/someone/19D6148431.html http://www.albrightknox.org/acquisitions/acq_2000/Colescott.html

10. The dialectic between • Universalism versus particularism • The universality of the Christian message versus the particularity of the African American lived experience—Black consciousness. http://members.tripod.com/zaggyworld/images/YRoseAlosblnk4.jpg http://www.denverblackchurch.org/newimages/reading.jpg

11. The dialectic between http://www.monticello.org/gettingword/reunion.jpg • The communal and the privatistic. • The churches’ involvement in all aspects of communal life versus withdrawing and seeing after the needs of its adherents. http://www.chevrontexaco.com/social_responsibility/community/images/music_competition.jpg

12. The dialectic between • Charismatic versus bureaucratic. • The organizational style of the church tends to move toward charismatic (a person centered) as opposed to a bureaucratic which seems to rely on a “system” to insure functionality. http://www.american-pictures.com/gallery/usa/book268br-a.jpg http://www.artsofcitizenship.umich.edu/sos/topics/images/2baptch.jpg

13. The dialectic between • Resistance and accommodation • The church has been the leader for change and compromised. http://www.earthstation1.com/Civil_Rights/MLK/Pics/MLK55-WithAbernathyAndRosaParks.jpg http://www.library.arizona.edu/images/afamer/dunbar/churpr2_400.jpg