Local ministers uphold the traditions of black preaching

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By BOB REEVES/Lincoln Journal Star

Last Sunday at Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Rev. Karla Cooper preached on the theme “Humpty Dumpty at the river’s edge.”  

Using a biblical text about God stopping the water in the Jordan River so Joshua could lead the children of Israel into the Promised Land, she talked about modern-day Humpty Dumptys with “brokenness, fragility and cracked-up dreams” who are afraid to cross over into a life of fullness and purpose.

“I’m here to tell you that God specializes in things that are impossible,” she said. “With rising gas prices, economic uncertainty, weather instability, food costs soaring, you’d better believe that God specializes in making a way out of no way. And when we fall down and even break up like Humpty Dumpty, God can put us back together.”

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Associate Pastor John Harris preaches at Christ Temple Church on May 4. (Gwyneth Roberts)

In an interview, Cooper said she seeks to focus her sermons on real problems facing people today as well as societal issues, such as unemployment and discrimination.

She considers herself part of the “prophetic” tradition of African-American preaching. That doesn’t mean prophetic in the sense of predicting the distant future. Rather, like the Old Testament prophets, prophetic preachers call people to turn to God and stop doing things that hurt themselves and others. They also aren’t afraid to point out evils in the political or social world that go contrary to God’s law.

The recent controversy over comments by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, to which presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama belongs, has focused public attention on the often uncomfortable and uncompromising message of black preachers. 

Black preaching comes out of the experience of African-Americans, said John Harris, associate pastor of Lincoln’s Christ Temple Church.  “Black pastors have to realize that racism is still on the front burner, and they need to be grounded in the reality of the poor and those who are oppressed,” he said.

One distinctive characteristic of black preaching style is the “call-and-response,” in which people in the congregation punctuate the sermon with verbal affirmations.

As Cooper spoke last Sunday,  her voice rose in urgency, her listeners responded with such words as “Amen!” “That’s right!” and “Hallelujah!”

She spoke about God promising to drive out the  Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites and other tribes who occupied the land he had promised to the Israelites. “God can drive out your enemies,” Cooper said, listing  modern “ites” that may need to be driven out: cancer, addiction, greed, classism, homophobia, agism, jealousy.

“All you have to do is make it to the river’s edge. You do your part, and God will do God’s part,” she said.  “We’re all at the brink of our breakthrough, but we’ve been broken like Humpty Dumpty for so long we’re afraid to cross over.”

A week earlier at Christ Temple, Harris preached on the topic “Seeking godly wisdom.” 

He talked about the decisions we all have to make — to be good husbands, wives and parents; to avoid such evils as drugs, alcohol, crime and domestic violence;  and to help others in the struggles of life.

“God isn’t just blessing you so you can tell folks you’re blessed,” Harris told his congregation. “He’s blessing you that you might be a blessing to someone else.”

He delivered his sermon with broad gestures, a strident voice and bits of acting — such as when he mimicked a cigarette-addict’s cough. “That’s funny, but when you have to see them in intensive care, that’s no joke,” he said.

Harris cautioned against making wrong assumptions about God, such as “God don’t like ugly.”

“Yes, he does — how do you think you got saved?” he challenged his listeners. “Stop saying that stupid stuff!”

In February, Harris preached about politics, just before the Democratic caucuses here. “I didn’t tell them who to vote for (but) I told them to pray God would give them the wisdom” to make good decisions at the polls, he said. “I told them they needed to become aware, to vote and be part of the political process.”

He also has spoken against the efforts by some groups to overturn affirmative action.

“We need anything that’s going to give people an opportunity for housing, employment and for their life to be sustained,”  he said.  “Until those barriers (of discrimination) are broken down, we have to have it (affirmative action).”

Turning some of Wright’s more inflammatory comments into sound bites has been “a distraction,”  said the Rev. Wayne Reynolds, pastor of Lincoln’s Grace United Methodist Church.

Reynolds, who is African-American, is pastor of a predominantly white congregation, but he still does a lot of prophetic preaching himself.

Reynolds said that Wright didn’t shy away from saying that discrimination and exploitation are contrary to God’s law.

Martin Luther King is most often remembered for his “I have a dream” speech, but “his most powerful speech, just a few months before his death, had to do with economic oppression and opposition to the Vietnam War,” Cooper said.

King’s message, Cooper said, was an example of “black liberation theology,” a term coined by James H. Cone, author of the 1969 book “The Theology of Black Power.” Wright also identifies himself as a black liberation preacher, focusing on the biblical vision of God as liberator.

“The controversy (over Wright) shows how much of America is not aware of the black preaching tradition, and what an important part of American Christianity it has been,” said the Rev. Jim Keck, pastor of First-Plymouth Congregational Church.

For much of American history, ministers and church leaders have been the most vocal spokespeople for the black community as well as the conscience of the nation, he and other local pastors agreed.

The differences between white and black preaching have their roots in American racial history.

Before the Civil War, slave owners prohibited slaves from meeting in unsupervised groups.  At the same time, masters made slaves go to church and listen to white preachers — sometimes from an honest desire to save their souls, but often from the belief that religion would keep them in their place.

“Religion was misrepresented by the slave holder to keep folks enslaved,” Harris said. “God made us in his image, but the whites were making God in their image.”

Meanwhile, slaves held secret meetings called “hush harbors,” where those who could read the Bible taught others about a God of justice who freed the Hebrews from Egypt and about Jesus, who came to free all people from oppression, Cooper said. 

The AME, the oldest of many predominantly black denominations in America, began in 1787 when Richard Allen, an emancipated slave, tried to pray at the altar of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.  The church’s white elders ordered Allen to go to the segregated balcony.  He walked out of the church and never returned.

Instead, he began the AME church, which gave a voice to a new generation of black leaders.  AME churches spread widely in the northern states as well as in the South after the war.  Other predominantly black churches grew up, especially Baptist churches in the late 1800s and Pentecostal and Holiness churches, springing from the charismatic revival of the early 1900s.

For many decades after the end of slavery, the church was the most prominent institution in the black community, Reynolds said.  “People looked to the black preacher to be their spokesperson.”

Many leaders of education, law, medicine and other professions have come out of the black church, and many historically black colleges were started by churches.

“The church became the socializing center, the place you could get the stuff you needed to persist and subsist in a country that was obviously not on your side,” Harris said.   “Ministers were people who would speak the truth, often to their own peril.”

Black ministers who speak out against social evils are following in the footsteps of Jesus, who “came up against the establishment of his time,” Cooper said.  “He was a person of the peasants. He came as a peasant, seeking to liberate all those who had been marginalized.”

As a minister, Cooper, who also is chaplain at Doane College, said “I feel called to speak the truth, but also to give people hope in how to live that truth.”

Both Quinn Chapel and Christ Temple churches are interracial congregations, with many Hispanics, whites and immigrants from other countries, as well as African Americans. 

Lincoln has a number of other predominantly black congregations. Among the most prominent are Mt. Zion Baptist Church,  Angelic Temple Church of God in Christ and Newman United Methodist Church.

Trago O. McWilliams, who founded Christ Temple in 1940, “saw racism as an affront to the Gospel,” Harris said. “He wanted a church that would be a catalyst for change — not a church of just black people.”

Alan Jacobsen, senior pastor at Christ Temple, is a white man who grew up in the church and says McWilliams had a profound effect on him. “I thank God that Rev. Trago didn’t look at me and say, ‘You’re white so I can’t help you,’” Jacobsen said.

While Reynolds’ congregation is mostly white, it includes several interracial families. He believes the racial differences among churches will begin to dissolve as the United States becomes increasingly “mixed,” both ethnically and racially.

“Ultimately, heaven doesn’t have a black section or a white section, or a Lutheran section or a Methodist section,” Reynolds said. “Heaven is made up of all those who accept God’s son.”

Reach Bob Reeves at 473-7212 or breeves@journalstar.com.