Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Values Wars by Sikivu Hutchinson

Author:Sikivu Hutchinson [Hutchinson, Sikivu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: African American, African American Women, Atheism, Christianity, Culture Wars, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalist Christianity, Non-Fiction, Religion, Women
ISBN: 9780578071862
Amazon: 057807186X
Barnesnoble: 057807186X
Publisher: Infidel Books
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Not Knocking on Heaven’s Door

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

—I Corinthians 13:11

The first few minutes of the 1960 revival movement film Elmer Gantry are a paean to the spit and gleam of Burt Lancaster’s klieg light teeth. Dancing shamelessly like a character unto themselves, they tell you everything you need to know about 20th century divinity and the meteoric rise of the evangelical shaman as American idol. Based on Sinclair Lewis’ 1927 novel, the film chronicles the arc of a white Middle American rogue’s pursuit of Jesus Inc., represented by a beatific revivalist preacher named Sister Sharon Falconer. Lancaster tears into the title role with lupine brio. Barely ten minutes in and Gantry has landed at a Negro church, dirty and disreputable, freshly sprung from a hobo brawl on a musty boxcar from central casting. Gantry’s old time religion is lock stock with sex, lies, moonshine, and doe-eyed indolence—before his date with destiny he staggers around half-heartedly, selling cheap vacuum cleaners, toasters, and any other sundry fare he can get his hands on, desperate for a quick fix, a ticket out of obscurity. Is there no better place then for a miscreant white man to jam his foot through the door of redemption than a Negro church?

If Hollywood cinema is America’s shepherd, then yes. In the 1980 film the Blues Brothers ex-cons Jake and Elwood Blues embark on their back flipping “mission from God” with a send-off from preacher James Brown and choir member Chaka Khan. Robert Duvall’s turn as a misunderstood “apostle” in the 1997 film of the same name begins and ends in steamy clapboard black churches. In Jim Crow America white people enter black sacred spaces strategically, innocently, their presence seemingly unquestioned. They enter and are indelibly transformed, their souls becalmed, the lynch rope that would surely greet a black interloper in a World War I era white church unthinkable. In Gantry Lancaster hears the peals of “On My Way to Canaan’s Land” as he walks along the train tracks. He follows the sound, entering a church service going full bore. The singing stops as he enters. Gradually, as he lends his powerful tenor to the song, the all black congregation’s initial wariness gives way to “acceptance.” Of course, images of black folk rapturously belting out gospel songs are standard American pop culture fare. But the Gantry scene intrigues because of the striking figure of a little girl standing next to him in the congregation. She gives Gantry the once over, her disrupted body language conveying caution and bewilderment with the inimitable honesty of a child. The quizzical little girl is the visual anchor of the scene. She provides a critical gaze, a resistant spectatorship. All the adults are swept up in the euphoria of the moment; grinning, clapping, and singing at the top of their lungs with the soulful abandon that only Hollywood’s Negroes know.

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