Black Churches Say ‘Amen’ to the Lord and ‘Yes’ to Progress

Many intellectuals still see the black church through Marxist eyes: Religion is a drug that dulls the pain of life experienced by the poor and oppressed.

Karl Marx’s image of religion as the opiate of the people has a nice ring to it. It fits well with a view that religion is the coping mechanism for the masses, perpetuating their slavery.

But sometimes elegant theory has to face reality. How can Faithful Central Bible Church be paying $23 million for the Forum? Or how can West Angeles Church of God in Christ afford to build a church on Crenshaw Boulevard that rivals L.A.’s other cathedral--the one being constructed next to the Music Center? And where did First AME get $31 million to run its community development programs?

It’s time to readjust our theoretical lenses. Perhaps religion does not block social and economic progress. African Americans go to church at a higher rate than their fellow Americans. And perhaps the black church has something to teach the declining white mainstream churches in our society.

Ecstatic worship and biblical literacy may be just the formula for giving people a vision and sense of purpose. A little catharsis with your religion may not be antithetical to prophetic commitment.

Saying “yes” to God may mean saying “no” to vices that indeed provide a short-term fix but that also deny one the capital to start a business or send the kids to college. In the slums of developing countries, it is rather common to observe upward social mobility as an indirect consequence of conversion.

There is a lesson to be learned from the black mega-churches in our city. Not only do they have social capital--those ties that bind people of faith together in service to each other--but they have financial capital. Indeed, some of the most entrepreneurial people in our city are sitting in their pews listening to sermons about discipline, the common good and the fact that dependency, unless it is spiritual in nature, is not to be praised.

But it is not just the mega-church that has something to teach us. I have also been impressed with a group of 30 small and mid-size African American churches that belong to a network known as Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches. Through their collective strength, they have passed a significant bill in the California Legislature that mandates education as the way to reverse recidivism rates of men in prison. And now they are tackling the issue of parent involvement in schools at the grade-school level.

The civil rights movement may be in eclipse, but the spirit is at work in powerful and innovative ways. Marches and demonstrations had their place. But there is also a role for working within the democratic structures of capitalism--as long as the common good and responsibility to one’s neighborhood, new and old, are preserved.