For many people, it is easy to take for granted someone or something that is seen everyday.
Most Indianapolis residents drive past at least one church on their way to or from the places they live and work. It seems like the church, both physically and as an institution, has always been around, and always will be.
Experts, however, are encouragingindividuals to remember the historic and contemporary contributions of the church to the African American community, whether or not they are persons of faith.
“For generations the church has been a space for community, cultural and ethnic orientation, economic development and uplift and political organization, as well as spiritual enlightenment,” said Joseph Tucker Edmonds, Ph.D, an assistant professor of Africana Studies and Religious Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).
Scholars have frequently noted how the church and its leaders played a key historic role in the social advancement of Blacks in the United States.
That impact could be felt from Richard Allen’s establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in 1794, through the slavery movement of the 1800s, the segregation of Jim Crow laws in the early 20th century and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s to today.
Some of the country’s best-known African American leaders, from Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, to Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson, were either based in or had significant ties to the church.
Edmonds noted that African American led churches in particular were designed to meet vital needs that were not being met in general society. When segregation kept Blacks out of most institutions in society, they had to form their own, including churches, colleges and universities, fraternities and sororities and professional associations.
“African Americans and many marginalized groups were not allowed to participate in the public space in any substantive way,” Edmonds said. “One of the major contributions the church offered was to be a site for that kind of public debate and discourse to happen.”
Charles Ware, Ph.D, president of Crossroads Bible College, agrees that the church has historically been a place of community and family for the African American community, especially when it was marginalized, pushed out of mainstream and had very little political and leadership representation in the majority world.
“The church was the community, the sense of belonging, the voice for history and significance,” Ware said. “It was a gathering for people to supply one another’s needs and provided a voice for the community.”
The church today
Social changes in society and within the church itself over the last 30 years have led some observers in numerous articles, books and reports to question the relevance of the institution today.
Edmonds believes the church still plays a dominant role in the political and social organization of life in the Black community.
“That is why many churches are still visited during elections by politicians who are trying to galvanize and organize the Black vote,” he said. “The church is also still the place where indigent or marginalized populations go to receive social and support services when the state or other social services are not easily assessable.”
Edmonds added, however, that a major shift has occurred in the church’s influence among people in the millennial generation, which most estimates say range in age from 12 to 30. That influence, he said, is not absent but is decreasing.
“Some churches have lost some of their radical attention to the politics and the issues that are of greatest concern to this group,” Edmonds stated. In general terms, it’s pulled back from wholesale and robust agitation of unfair and unjust policies in many of our urban and city centers around the country.”
Ware believes the role of the church is still prominent, but has changed because African Americans have made significant strides politically and socially since slavery and the civil rights movement, when the church was at the center of the community.
“We still have challenges, but civil rights issues are not as glaring as they were in the past,” he said. “African Americans are getting interwoven in the mainstream, and I think the role of the church is lessening in the minds of many, particularly our youth.”
Ware added that the church has also been impacted by frequent media reports of immorality and misuse of funds in some churches, and that the issues for which people come to the church have changed over the years.
He believes in order for the church to regain its role as the “go-to” place in the community, it must meet “real needs” and address the “nitty-gritty” problems faced by families and youth.
“Churches need to go back to basics,” he said. “That involves preaching the gospel of Jesus, helping people get saved by the grace of God, helping them to build character, saving and uniting marriages and fighting for families. If there ever was a time the Word of God is needed it’s now, but some churches have moved away from it.”
Edmonds believes that to stabilize its own future and that of society, the church needs to reach out to youth and young adults, and radicalize its agenda to a certain degree, enthusiastically addressing issues related to education and unemployment.
“High unemployment among young Black men, for example, is very high,” Edmonds said. “In order to make itself relevant to the new generation it needs to make a claim that it’s interested in both that generation’s social and spiritual well-being. It must be ready to stand in the gap for failing schools and disinterested parents or disempowered parents.”
