By Terry Manning
Maybe my antennae are up because it’s Black History Month, but out of nowhere and across social media, I’m seeing diatribes against even the notion of a Black church.
It started for me with a pastor talking about how there is no Black church or white church, that there is only one body in Christ. Which is true, but he made it sound like Black people having a collective identity around their faith was a rejection of white believers and white people in general.
Historically, the opposite has been the case.
Now, as a believer, I accept that Jesus is the son of God, that he died for my sins, and that by his sacrifice, I have the opportunity of salvation. That is the bare minimum of what my faith requires as I understand it.
Beyond that it urges me to spread the word to others and, more importantly in my eyes, to live a life that reflects that faith. Such a life includes following the tenets of showing love to others and treating them as I wish myself to be treated. I am obligated to love the stranger (aka foreigners and immigrants), to support their care and the well being of widows, orphans and others.
But these are things some of the loudest forces in the white Christian community are saying are problematic. Some have even said empathy is a sin.
I pair that with Pastor Joel Webbon’s recent declaration that 90 to 95 percent of the Black churches in America are “by the standards of Scripture, heretical.” He goes on to say most Black pastors are too poorly educated to lead congregations and that most Black Christians would better served by leaving their churches to find and attend “good God-fearing” ones led by “Biblically qualified” white male leaders.
Can we talk about what “good God-fearing” white folks have done over the history of this country, from burning witches in Salem to burning buses used by Freedom Riders in support of Black voter registration during the Civil Rights Movement?
I just saw the Ku Klux Klan, which has always proclaimed itself a Christian organization, is rebranding itself as the Knights Party, with a “national director” (formerly Grand Wizard) who pastors a church he says does not welcome Blacks or Jews. “We don’t have a sign, ‘everybody welcome,’” Thomas Robb said in one interview, “because everybody’s not welcome to our church.”
Or maybe can we just talk about what self-described “good God-fearing”white folks are doing right now in this country.
President Donald Trump has been unabashed in his drive to purge America of its Black history and make Black Americans’ present as uncomfortable as possible. White evangelicals were the engine of his drive to power.
As Time notes, “77 percent of white evangelical Protestant Christians, along with 57 percent of white non-evangelical Protestants and 64 percent of white Catholics” voted for him in 2016. After one term in office, two impeachments, an attempted insurrection and a couple sex-related scandals, the numbers were even higher in 2024 when, the Christian Chronicle reports, “72 percent of White Protestant or other Christian voters and 82 percent of White born-again or evangelical Christians” voted for Trump.
So much of what is going wrong in this country right now — from anti-immigrant violence that is placing regular American citizens in peril to the ongoing assault on Black economic power to the muted response to revelations in the Epstein files — is rooted in that place where white nationalism aligns with white Christianity.
And this is where Blacks should go to worship? Among people who practice a faith that would deny their very rights as citizens? As fellow Christians? As human beings?
As the Rev. Charlie Dates explains in a clip that is going viral in my social media circles, the Black church, if anyone can be blamed for it, should be blamed on white people. First, he notes that some of the people brought here in chains were already Christian or had been exposed to its teaching.
“We would have historically, happily wed with others,” Dates says. “This is hard when your enslaver is preaching to you the liberating power of Jesus Christ for your soul, but is interested in keeping your body in prison.”
Even if slavery doesn’t exist in the same form as then, I agree with Dates this mindset still exists. And while it does, there’s little chance of getting Black people or other minority groups to abandon institutions that were created in response to white prejudice.
I know Webbon does not speak for all white Christian leaders, and I know he doesn’t speak for all white Christians. But as Atlanta-based Pastor Jamal Bryant said, the silence from white Christian leaders after Webbon’s comments has been deafening.
The Black church isn’t bad just because it’s Black, and any white person who thinks so is fooling themselves if they think they are good just because they are white.
Terry E. Manning worked for 20 years as a journalist. He can be reached at teemanning@gmail.com.