Charles Blake

When he was first introduced to West Angeles Church of God in Christ’s 50 members in 1969, Charles E. Blake faced a hostile congregation. Some in the congregation did not want a new pastor appointed by then-Bishop S.M. Crouch; several members refused to take their seats. Blake responded by asking everyone to stand, and his eloquence and passion eventually won the congregation over.

Since then, Blake has been the force behind West Angeles’ growth to 18,000 members. His congregation has become a mega-church, and Blake, now a bishop, expects to begin holding services in a new 5,000-seat, $60-million cathedral early next year.

Blake, 60, belongs to a generation of black pastors across the country whose managerial savvy has turned their congregations into engines of economic development in African American communities. Blake has become as much a CEO as he is spiritual leader. West Angeles has more than 80 social-outreach ministries: a performing-arts center, bookstore and counseling center among them. The church’s 245-student West Angeles Christian Academy is a K-8 private elementary and middle school where students routinely perform above grade level in reading and math.

An activist pastor on social issues, Blake has entered the debate over school vouchers by supporting Proposition 38, the initiative on the November ballot that would give California parents $4,000 a child to send their children to the private school of their choice. A coalition of more than 50 prominent black pastors, including Rev. Cecil Murray of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church and William S. Epps of Second Baptist Church, oppose the measure.

Nevertheless, Blake is convinced that vouchers offer an opportunity to dramatically improve education in poor neighborhoods.

A native of Arkansas, Blake grew up in San Diego, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at what is now United States International University. He later received master’s and doctorate degrees in divinity from Atlanta’s Interdenominational Theological Center and the California Graduate School of Theology, respectively. He and his wife of 31 years, Mae, have three children and two grandchildren. He was interviewed in his office at the church on Crenshaw Boulevard.

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Question: What prompted you to endorse Proposition 38?

Answer: One of the major things that impacted me was that the poor people struggling to pay the $250 or $300 monthly tuition for their kids to attend our school are also paying taxes. And a goodly portion of their taxes are being used for education. To me, that was a fundamental injustice that they were much less able to bear than were the wealthy.

Q: Does it concern you that by endorsing school vouchers, you may be seen by some in the black community as embracing an idea associated with political conservatives?

A: There are those who still feel it is a betrayal of our community to join with conservatives and others in supporting this issue. I have gone the liberal line for many, many years. Despite having a private school [at West Angeles] for more than 20 years, I have clearly stated that we needed to avoid vouchers, and any kind of privatization of education, because poor communities would be jeopardized if the wealthy were permitted to take their children out of the public school system and use those dollars to support private schools.

Of course, I knew all about the fact that in the early ‘60s, the whole school-choice thing was a strong segregationist rally cry. I just didn’t want to be associated with anything that they were associated with.

Q: What do you plan to do to support Proposition 38?

A: I’m not going on the road for this. I want to be very careful not to appear to have bought the whole conservative bill of goods, even to have renounced the liberal economic and political issues about which I am concerned. But I do think that we need to serve notice on both liberals and conservatives that blacks, especially many blacks who are within the church, are inclined to be morally conservative, even theologically conservative, but socially and economically liberal.

Q: You have a lot of public schoolteachers in your congregation, and many of them have their children enrolled in private schools.

A: That point really needs to be made. It’s amazing that as soon as the public school teachers can afford to, they send their children to private schools.

Q: Many other congregations may also include a fair number of public schoolteachers whose children attend private school, yet many prominent black ministers and elected officials oppose Proposition 38.

A: All of us are entitled to our own points of view. Those ministers and I will work together on many other issues.

Q: Those ministers, like virtually all black elected officials, oppose vouchers despite a poll conducted last year by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies showing that 60% of African Americans, 76% of those between ages 26 and 35, support vouchers. How do you account for that?

A: It’s probably because of the power of the education lobby. Sometimes, we toe the liberal line without really examining it, to understand which of these issues are good for our community. Even when we were a small church, we subsidized our school with about $60,000 a year. We have struggled, and certainly our parents made great sacrifices. Many of them have not been able to pay the tuition. And so they lost their investment, to a degree, because they may have had to withdraw their children.

But for 26 years or more, I’ve been saying no vouchers, no government involvement, no government support. But that was against myself.

Q: Why do you feel that public schools nearby are unable to achieve the academic results you get at your school?

A: When you have a monopoly and don’t have to compete for resources and funds, there is an apathy that overcomes you, and there is a style of operation that does not relate to efficiency and economy and measurement of results.

Q: Some fear that if vouchers are adopted, public policymakers will be able to practically abandon education in inner cities and outlying rural areas, arguing that residents of those areas can solve their own problems with vouchers.

A: I don’t think that automatically follows. I think there will be a much greater scrutiny and a much greater obligation on the part of government to support public schools as they efficiently move to become competitive.

Q: If every child who wanted to go to private school had a voucher tomorrow, there simply would not be enough classrooms to accommodate them in private schools. What do you do about capacity?

A: No bank will deal with a Christian or with an inner-city private school, financing infrastructure and future development, with the uncertainty of future income. But if you had a voucher commitment so that income could be predicted, you would have the banks stepping in. Once you get your operational base of support in place, then you can begin to solicit foundations and corporations for additional revenue.

Q: Are there unused classrooms, unused capacity, that could be put to use quickly?

A: There are churches that have a school and could expand. And there are other churches that do not have the courage to even try a school because of the inability of inner-city residents to pay the tuition. If they had a financial base, they would have the courage to move off into staffing and providing an educational facility.

Q: There is only one Christian high school in South-Central Los Angeles, not counting Catholic schools. Are there plans to develop more?

A: There is nothing afoot right now. But I guarantee you that if vouchers are approved, all of us who are in the Christian school movement in the inner city would be calling a conference very, very soon to seek a way where we continue to feed our students into a private Christian school. It’s just so expensive to do it without additional help. And many of us have decided that rather than handicap a kid and deprive him of athletics and the lab sciences, let’s back off of that and put them back into public school at grade 10, where they can get all of these things. But a lot of them leave us and lose their way when they go back into the public school system.

Q: Vouchers are not the only alternative to poorly performing public schools. The charter-school movement is gaining momentum, and magnet schools have long been a bright spot in public education.

A: I’m supporting all those alternatives because I feel that we have to shake up this reality--the public school system--that is not producing for us.

Q: What’s going to happen to the public schools if vouchers are approved?

A: I think their bureaucracy will be reduced. The ratio of employees in the classroom will be increased. They will become amazingly more innovative and creative. They’ll begin to become more competitive. They will create a host of additional programs that will enable them to retain students. I think it’s going to be a great enhancement in every way. They will be more considerate of their teachers, seeking to keep them from transferring to private schools. I think it’s going to be a fantastic win-win. And way down the road, both public and private educators will probably assess this whole period as being overwhelmingly good for the cause of education.

Q: For generations, the black church has been one of the most important institutions in black communities. The church now seems to be taking on an even more expanded role--building homes, assisting with mortgages, job training.

A: In the black community, the church has always been the place where our people have launched their attempts to enhance black society. The church was the originator of black colleges, black insurance companies, black banks and many other institutions. It was the church that largely coordinated the whole civil rights movement, again as an expression of its sense of responsibility to serve and enhance black society. . . . Any extra resources we are able to generate as a church should be pumped back into pursuing that goal of social enhancement in our community.

Q: What changes have enabled black churches to dramatically expand their obligations?

A: In years past, pastors did not have the exposure, the knowledge or the expertise to build churches into huge organizations. Mega-churches are coming into existence because we’re learning better how to invest resources, build administrative structures and how to market to larger numbers of people.

Q: What are some of the projects you have under way?

A: When corporations like drug stores and supermarkets build a new store, they have our Community Development Corp. screen applicants and do some preliminary training. Our CDC is providing 275 housing units for low-income families. We’re doing a lot of mortgages for first-time homeowners. We have home-buyer fairs, pro bono legal fairs and medical screening programs.

Q: How have these ministries developed?

A: Sometimes an individual member might say he or she feels a certain responsibility to work in a given area of the life of our community. If it’s a good thing, something where this person has expertise, I back them. Black Americans face problems that are the result of oppression and racism of the past. But we cannot expect those who inflicted these wounds to heal them. We must ourselves find a way out of the dilemma we face. My support of vouchers is a move in that direction. *