The African American Church

1
The African American Church

• The Many Dimensions of the African American
  Religious Experience

2
The Dimensions

• The Religious Dimensions The Black Sacred
  Cosmos.
• The religious worldview of the Black Church
  involves the African heritage and the conversion
  (or response) to Christianity.

3

• Central Institutional Sector and Partial
  Differentiation.
• The Black Church is the center of the Black
  community. It is the only stable institution
  that has existed since slavery.
• There was no complete separation between the
  secular and the sacred.
• Clergy had impact on political and social
  organization that was desired and expected.

4
The following is from the Black Church in the
Sixties by Hart Nelson and Anne Kusener Nelsen
it is on pages 10-15.
5
Interpretive Models

• The Assimilation Model
• The Black Church is a stumbling block to
  assimilation in the American mainstream.
• The Isolation Model
• The Black Church isolates itself from the
  community because of racism. Religion is for
  lower class people not for middle or upper class.
  There they are . . . Too bad

6
Interpretive

• The Compensatory Model
• The main attraction of the church is to provide a
  place for the masses of Blacks to have control
  over their own institutions.
• Ethnic Community-Prophetic
• Provides a community support as well as a
  prophetic function.

7
The Dialectical Model of the Black Church

• There are 6 dialectic models of the Black Church.
  Although they are polar opposites the
  churches actual practice is somewhere within the
  continuum. Furthermore, a church may practice
  more than one model at a time and there may be
  other models. These models are just frameworks.

8
The dialectic between

• Priestly and prophetic functions
• Worship versus community activities

http//umcna.bsc.edu/images/voice/03.02.cvr.jpg
Father Augustt Tolto- the 1st universally
recognized priest in the US http//www.holyangels.
com/images/Father20Augustus20Tolton2.gif
9
The dialectic between

• Other-worldly versus this-worldly
• Concerns of heaven and the afterlife versus the
  here and now.

http//www.someonespecial.com/cgi-bin/someone/19D6
148431.html
http//www.albrightknox.org/acquisitions/acq_2000/
Colescott.html
10
The dialectic between

• Universalism versus particularism
• The universality of the Christian message versus
  the particularity of the African American lived
  experienceBlack consciousness.

http//members.tripod.com/zaggyworld/images/YRoseA
losblnk4.jpg

http//www.denverblackchurch.org/newimages/reading
.jpg
11
The dialectic between
http//www.monticello.org/gettingword/reunion.jpg

• The communal and the privatistic.
• The churches involvement in all aspects of
  communal life versus withdrawing and seeing after
  the needs of its adherents.

http//www.chevrontexaco.com/social_responsibility
/community/images/music_competition.jpg
12
The dialectic between

• Charismatic versus bureaucratic.
• The organizational style of the church tends to
  move toward charismatic (a person centered) as
  opposed to a bureaucratic which seems to rely on
  a system to insure functionality.

http//www.american-pictures.com/gallery/usa/book2
68br-a.jpg
http//www.artsofcitizenship.umich.edu/sos/topics/
images/2baptch.jpg
13
The dialectic between

• Resistance and accommodation
• The church has been the leader for change and
  compromised.

http//www.earthstation1.com/Civil_Rights/MLK/Pics
/MLK55-WithAbernathyAndRosaParks.jpg

http//www.library.arizona.edu/images/afamer/dunba
r/churpr2_400.jpg