Black Ministers Aim to Counter Popular Culture

A national conference of African American ministers met in Los Angeles this week and focused on how to build moral leadership in the post-civil rights era and keep spirituality alive in an entertainment-soaked culture of violent video games and rap music.

In one of the main speeches, the Rev. Cain Hope Felder, a professor of biblical languages and literature at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, D.C., said too many preachers have bought into the secular culture, becoming so enamored with fame, money, large congregations and the art of preaching as entertainment that they have forgotten their calling.

“We have lost our moral and spiritual leadership in America,” Felder said “We preach on very safe subjects.”

Churches, he and other speakers stressed, must get rid of their own moral decay and pull away from the trappings of affluence and preaching the “gospel of prosperity.” Before they can reach out to young people and counter the influence of the popular culture, churches need to exemplify what it means to be Christian by involvement in the community, the speakers said.

The Rev. Henry M. Williamson Sr., bishop of the 9th Episcopal District, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church -- made up of 150 churches in 10 states -- said pastors need to stand up to powerful interests in entertainment, advertising and politics, as the prophet Nathan did to King David in the Old Testament to convince him of his wrongdoing.

Churches need to speak up about purveyors of “messages of madness, murders and mayhem” in music, video and films that too many young people emulate, he said.

“We have a prophetic calling to speak truth to power,” Williamson said, yet, “our silence is deafening.”

Felder agreed, saying: “Look at the video games -- violence, sex and drugs. The church is supposed to be a moral and spiritual institution, and yet it’s not doing anything on these issues.”

Williamson suggested a “one church, one public school” project, following a model his congregation in Chicago started.

The idea is for every church to adopt a school and work with the principal to design a volunteer program to help students read, write and learn to use computers and to help with social behavior and personal development. “We can scratch where it’s itching,” he said.

Such community support, he suggested, could help counter the effect on children of a high divorce rate and growing up in single-parent homes.

The four-day conference, which drew 121 pastors and lay Christian leaders from 10 states, was convened by the African American Church Strategy Team -- a coalition of eight black Presbyterian churches in Los Angeles -- and held at the First AME Church and the West Angeles Church of God in Christ.

It also drew church leaders from other Protestant denominations, including Baptists, Methodists and Pentecostals.

The conference’s evening worship services at the West Angeles Church on Crenshaw Boulevard were open to the public and attracted hundreds.

Many in the audience clapped to the beat of music performed by a band and choir. Some, moved by the spirit, raised their hands heavenward and prayed aloud.

Each evening service featured a sermon by a nationally known preacher, such as the Rev. Vashti McKenzie, a presiding bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Nashville area. She was the first woman to attain such a post.

The formal title of the conference was “Reflecting Scripture in a Post-Civil Rights Era: Declaring Our Lord Jesus From the Pulpit, in the Pew, on the Pavement.”

The Rev. Frank Portee III, convener of the event and senior pastor of the Church of the Redeemer in South Los Angeles, said the gathering, in its second year, was designed for black pastors across denominational lines to discuss critical issues.

Churches, he said, should take the lead in reviving the civil rights movement and get it involved in such issues as healthcare, employment and education. Unless that happens, the civil rights movement and the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will become largely an exercise in nostalgia, Portee said.

The civil rights movement “did not start with Martin Luther King and it won’t end with Martin Luther King,” Portee said. Many pastors and churches are doing their part, but what is needed is a collective effort by churches as a whole, he said.

Another major concern was how to draw more young people to churches that have older congregations and are declining in membership.

Pastors need to connect better with the hip-hop generation by being available to them in and out of church.

One way to attract the younger generation is to use the African American Heritage Bible, which highlights accounts of African people in the Bible, said the Rev. Henry L. Masters Sr., senior pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles. When teenagers hear of such biblical characters as Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus carry the crucifixion cross, their eyes light up and they want to learn more, Masters said.

The Rev. Bennie Mitchell, pastor of Connors’ Temple Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga., who attended the conference with his wife, Betty, said it was well worth it.

“What I have heard is not new,” Mitchell said. “But for me, it’s inspiring because I know some folk are doing the same things and going through the same things that we are going through. My heart is pricked, my mind energized and my spirit uplifted.”

The Rev. Diane Moffett, an associate pastor at Elmwood Presbyterian Church in East Orange, N.J., said: “You leave a conference like this and you say, ‘Thank you, Lord’ because it’s time to know that we are on the right path.... It’s a wonderful way to reflect and look at ourselves and what faithfulness requires of us at this time.”