Democracy in Black by Eddie S. Glaude Jr

Author:Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2016-01-12T05:00:00+00:00

For her, Bishop Long had inherited the mantle of Dr. King’s and her mother’s legacy. The going-home service of her mother was the occasion to announce that fact to the world.

She had said as much two years earlier. In 2004, Long led a march to the tomb of Dr. King in protest of gay marriage and Bernice King lit a torch from the eternal flame of her father’s burial site, passing it to Long as a kind of symbolic coronation. The irony wasn’t lost on many who observed the spectacle: a march against same-sex marriage occasioned a moment to disremember Dr. King, with his daughter profoundly complicit in it all.

Since those lofty days, Bishop Long has fallen to remarkable lows. In 2010, two young men filed lawsuits accusing him of using his position to coerce them into sexual relationships. Bernice King has left the church. Long is no longer considered (as if he ever was) the heir to Dr. King’s legacy. But the fall of Bishop Long should not be seen as an isolated instance of a corrupt and hypocritical preacher. The theology and business model of New Birth wasn’t unique to him. It has spread like a virus throughout black Christendom, transforming the role and function of black churches from the prophetic spaces we associate with the civil rights movement, which provided resources for the most vulnerable in our communities and helped challenge white supremacy, to profit centers in the name of God.

We have witnessed over the past few decades the disappearance of the neighborhood church in cities around the country, driven largely by the rapid suburbanization of the black middle class. As churches embraced growth plans that involved following these congregants to the suburbs, they left poor communities behind. And if the church stayed in the city, its members more than likely drove in from the surrounding suburbs. They no longer lived in the neighborhood.

The shift in location affected the social function of black churches in poor neighborhoods. What happens to the church as a hub of communal life (from food banks to job training to places for local neighborhood meetings) when most of the people who attend the church don’t live in the neighborhood or the church has relocated to some sprawling campus like a religious version of Walmart or Home Depot? In effect, communities left behind lose a vital institutional space that connects with their everyday lives.

Moreover, the popularity of what has been called prosperity gospel, a view that God wills that those who are born again be materially wealthy (a view Bishop Long adapted), has greatly affected how some black churches understand the gospel and its relation to questions of justice. Creflo Dollar, pastor of the World Changers Church International and the preacher who asked his members to buy him a $65 million jet, illustrates this view when he says:

Many people think poverty and prosperity are words that only describe the state of one’s finances; however, these terms involve much more than that. The Bible describes poverty, or being poor, as being insufficient in any area of life.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.