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Evangelization and Spiritual Reparations
Part I
Gregory Evans Callaway
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who propose to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean's majestic waves without the awesome roar of its water."
Frederick Douglass
How does this fit into Roman Catholicism and African-Americans? Luke, one of the original twelve and a revered figure in Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, is also reputed to be the founder of the Ethiopian Coptic Church, http://members.xoom.com/redingtn/eth.html , which is one of the oldest churches in Christianity and is a church of African origin. Its liturgy, worship rites and theology are very closely aligned with Roman Catholicism from which it is separated. It must be remembered and I must point out and emphasize to our African-American brothers and sisters that three (3) of the early Roman Catholic popes were of African heritage. This would hardly have been possible for a religion founded in Europe. Roman Catholicism initially spread from Africa to Europe and not the other way around. Roman Catholicism was virtually driven out of Africa by the invading forces of the Islam. ( It was the pre-Islamic Arabs who had introduced the Black slave trade to the Europeans-namely the Romans). The Ethiopian Coptic Church withstood the onslaught of Islam and remained virtually the only Christian Church in Africa. Roman Catholicism, having spread from Africa to Europe initially, returned from Europe as one of the religions of the invading European colonial powers who having been previously introduced to the Black slave trade, by the Arabs, brought it to the New World i.e. United States, the Caribbean Islands, Central and South America. By this time, the protestant reformation had occurred. The protestant European colonial powers which ultimately conquered what is now the United States were virulently anti-Catholic and passed their theological beliefs on to their slaves. When they decided to permit slaves to have some type of deity worship service (initially they told the slaves that slaves had no souls), they did not permit slaves to join their churches not even in a segregated manner. However, they initially appointed ministers from the slave group and permitted them to form their own type of worship as long as it was Christian and the slave masters could keep an eye on the worship service. Consequently, the slaves, i.e. African-Americans, had religious leaders that looked like them, talked like them, and became role models for them. For African-Americans, protestant philosophy or ideology of the reformation had nothing to do with their choice of a Christian denomination. The religious denomination of slaves was generally mandated by the slave master's denomination. In his book, The History of Black Catholics in the United States, Father Cyprian Davis, a Benedictine monk, points out an ambivalent world for Catholic slave owners in the United States. Their church wanted slaves to be baptized as Catholics but at the same time local ecclesiastical authorities refused to permit them to worship in their churches and refused to teach and appoint slave leaders ,catechists, to minister to the slaves. This is where and why our non-Catholic denominations were able to recruit slaves to their various denominations. Catholic ecclesiastical authorities attempted to minister to the slaves with European and local missionaries who brought their own prejudices against Blacks with them. Some of these Bishops, priests and nuns, like their protestant ecclesiastical counter parts actually owned slaves which is/was a contradiction. As a consequence, the Catholic religious leaders that the slaves saw did not look like them or talk like them and could not be role models for them. This is another reason that African-Americans for the most part are not Catholic. The African roots of Roman Catholicism must be emphasized both visually and theologically when evangelizing among African-Americans. It must be emphasized that the Catholic church is not a church of European origin. There are no other Christian churches in the United States that can trace their roots directly to Africa with the exception of the Ethiopian Coptic Church. The next issue in the evangelization process is the profile of the
African-American Clergy. To successfully evangelize among African-Americans, the African-American Catholic clergy as defined below must self assign and accept the task. Again in his book, The History of Black Catholics in the United States, Father Cyprian Davis, notes that "By and large Catholics, either black or white, were not in the forefront of the civil rights movement or among the leadership of the protest organizations..." He further states that "...Moreover, the notion that it was unseemly for either clergy or religious to engage in public spectacles like demonstrations was especially strong among Catholics in general..." Father Davis earlier notes that Catholics were also by and large absent from the abolitionist movement. This is another reason for the Catholic church's marginal success in recruiting slaves and former slaves. As an African-American Catholic, I sincerely regret that the church dropped the ball on the issue of civil rights demonstrations. Fortunately, we have an opportunity to make amends. The African-American clergy, this includes Bishops, our highest clergical office holders, as we do not have any Cardinals at this time-more on that later, Priests, Deacons, Brothers and Nuns, have a particularly acute and sensitive responsibility to the African-American community. There must be a higher profile assumed not only by the African-American Catholic clergy but the non-African-American Catholic clergy as well. Specifically, what is a higher profile? Well, I do not necessarily mean, but I will not exclude, obtaining credentials in the politics of confrontation. In the event the word, confrontation, turns some of you off, all confrontations do not have to take the form of demonstrations. Confrontations can take the form of public discourse, press conferences to denounce injustices, forums, ecclesiastical white papers, position papers, and right on Cardinal George of Chicago, public prayer vigils for as we all know, the pen and permit me to add the spoken prayer is mightier than the sword. We can be confrontative without being combative or disrespectful. Evangelization, door-to-door and corner-to-corner, must also take place at the parish level. Each church should make a circle with the church at the center. Extend the radius of the circle in a direction of "x" miles and form a circumference; further divide the circle into arcs and make the decision to evangelize within the arc for "y" period of time with the goal of recruiting "z" members; the process must be continuous. Evangelizers (including bishops, priests, nuns, deacons, brother, and laypersons) would require special training (including training in the church's involvement in African-American history) in order to be able to effectively respond to questions raised about the Catholic Church from an ethnic perspective and criticisms. In his position paper, Evangelization: Crossing the Cultural Divide, Bishop Edward Braxton, Ph.D., recommends that lay evangelizers to paid for their work. I agree, as accountability cannot be exacted from volunteers. Ralph Reed, Ph.D., the former director of the Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition said while being interviewed on the Larry King show that the Christian right owes the African-American community an apology. The reason is that during the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, they stood on the sidelines and did nothing to help us. They were on the wrong side of history. What does this mean to us as Catholics and in particular our African-American Catholic clergy as well as our non-African-American Catholic Clergy? It means that they need to be seen in the right place at the right time participating and promoting the right causes. Many of them were in the right place at the right time in 1960s but what about today? Today, when events happen in the African-American community the Catholic clergy, as a group, remain silent on the sidelines as observers like the Christian right did in the 1950s and 1960s. I urge our African-American Catholic clergy to obtain a copy of the Winter 1999, Volume 4/Number 4 issue of the American Legacy magazine and read the article, Fighting Spirit, The Church in Action, by Dale Edwyna Smith, Ph.D. In my humble opinion, it should serve as a primer for a code of clergical conduct for our African-American Catholic clergy. Our Catholic clergy both African-American and non African-American as well as our writers, scholars, and laypersons cannot be invisible in addressing the secular concerns of the African-American community and the secular concerns of other minorities. African-American Catholic clergy cannot be visible on Sundays and invisible during the week. The Catholic Church, if it is truly interested in evangelizing among African-Americans must assume a proactive leadership role in addressing key issues of interest to the African-American community keeping the issues in the forefront of media attention. Our African-American Catholic Clergy must become media manipulative Change comes from keeping events in the forefront of the media. Our African-American Catholic clergy should take the lead. Our clergy, laymen and laywomen, must not stand on the sidelines. The times call for leaders to step out of the rectories and into the limelight. I submit that the reason for the discord/conflict in race relations in the United States is that the issue of race relations has never been addressed on a national scale. For the Catholic Church, an evangelical "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" for African and African-Americans is needed. The issue of the church's involvement or lack of involvement in our historical struggle for freedom and equal rights must be forthrightly addressed. The issues must be singularly enumerated globally and parochially. The church must respond to the issues raised. For example, a high profile African-American minister raised the issue of Pope Pius XII blessing the planes that Benito Mussolini sent to bomb Abyssinia-now Ethiopia. Issues like this are troubling to Africans and African-Americans. I would proposed the establishment of a national Catholic evangelical "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" composed of African-American Bishops, Priests, Nuns (African-American women must be seen in church leadership positions), Deacons, Brothers, and Laypersons. The commission's charge would be to examine the church's history as it pertains to African-Americans. The commission would list where the church has failed i.e. the involvement of the Catholic countries in the slave trade, failure to be involved in the abolitionist movement to free the slaves in the United States, failure to take a leading role in the civil rights struggles, and failure to address forthrightly the issues that confront the African-American community such as police brutality and affirmative action. The commission must be empowered to implement its findings for, "power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and never will." If anyone has veto power over the commission's decision(s), the commission will be no more than window dressing. There have been enough studies that are still collecting dust on shelves somewhere. In Chicago, Illinois a renaissance in public housing is about to occur. Seventeen thousand (17,000) public housing units will be razed over the next ten (10) years for a myriad of reasons: gang infestation, drugs, prostitution, psychic destruction of motivation and just plain government inefficiency. Currently, two hundred and forty five thousand (245,000) low-income renters compete for one-hundred fifteen thousand (115,000) units of affordable housing, according to a Catholic Charities report titled, "The Housing Crisis in our Neighborhoods." An attempt will be made to replace the lost units by increasing private subsidized units. Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, called on all people of good will to assist in the relocation of the families displaced by the massive destruction of the public housing units and put forth a plan to involve the Catholic Charities in this effort as well as calling for changes in various laws that pertain to housing and investment. For his action, the Cardinal is to be commended. However, the majority of the residents of public housing (upwards of 90%) are African-Americans. From an African-American evangelistic point of view it would have been much more effective, if the ranking African-American Bishop in the archdiocese had been the one chosen to hold a press conference, using the largest public housing unit as a backdrop, surrounded by African-American priests, nuns, and laypersons, to make this announcement. This would give visual credence to the proposition that African-Americans are involved or becoming more involved in the leadership and decision-making processes of the Catholic Church, especially in areas that effect African-Americans. On certain issues our non-African-American ranking clerics should magnanimously step aside and place our African-American clerics in the media forefront in order that they (our African-American clerics) can be seen as being in decision making leadership positions. The ethnicity of positive role models and leadership positions are paramount for our African-American youth and to evangelize among the African-American "un-churched." It must be remembered that housing patterns in the United States are generally segregated by ethnicity. Churches are built to be in proximity of the housing of their parishioners/congregations and therefore become segregated by the definition of the housing patterns that surround it. When the ethnicity of a neighborhood changes from European descent to African-American, the leadership of the churches are left with the decision either to attempt to remain in the neighborhood and recruit a new congregation from the African-Americans moving into the neighborhood or to sell the structure to an African-American congregation and follow their congregations elsewhere. Non-Catholic denominations generally choose the latter. The Catholic churches, to their credit, attempt to remain and recruit a congregation from the African-Americans moving in. The difficulty comes with the recruiting clergy. They are not African-American and many are more interested in attempting to teach or impose on African-Americans a European culture of worshiping than attempting to learn the African-American culture of worshiping such as vocal comments during the worship service and call and response singing. African-Americans resent attempts to change them to a European culture of worshiping and therein is one of the difficulties in recruiting them to the Catholic faith. Time should be purchased on Black oriented radio stations and the Black Entertainment Television Network (BET) for African-American Catholic talk show hosts composed of bishops, priests, deacons, nuns, brothers and laypersons. These individuals could/would discuss Catholicism from an African-American perspective, answer call in questions, and invite guests from both the Catholic and other Christian denominations to participate in discussion forums on a wide range to topics. Gospel Masses should be broadcast (radio) and telecast with running commentary every Sunday as an audio and visual form of evangelization. Advertising time both radio and television, with reverently structured brief infomercials, should be purchased inviting the "un-churched" to consider attending/joining an African-American Catholic church and participating in the worship service. The archdioceses of the nation must promote the visual profile of the African-American clergy, bishops, priests, nuns, deacons, brothers, and laypersons. The African-American clergy must be seen by Catholics and other Christians as promulgating church policy instead of merely following the dictates of a white leadership. To use a southern African-American colloquialism, they cannot be see as "straw bosses." Our African-American clergy must be seen as the anchors of their communities. They must be accessible to the people and shed the perception of aloofness. They must become more people friendly responding to entreaties and letters-even from other Christians. They should visit and speak at other Christian Churches. The liturgy for African-American Catholic churches should be modified to reflect the liturgical rites of our African-American culture at the option of the local parish i.e. congregational response to the homily, call and response singing, gospel readings by laypersons, and periodic homilies delivered by nuns and laypersons. Our African-American Clergy must become computer literate and internet proficient as this is the communication medium of the today. Their message(s) can be sent instantaneously to millions of people. Growing numbers of African-Americans are coming on line. Sermons and ecclesiastical position papers can be sent on line and interrogatives answered. Lastly, the African-American Clergy can communicate instantaneously with each other by e-mail. They can have live conferences via chat rooms without leaving home. The next issue in the evangelization process is to address issues that currently confront the African-American community this will be addressed in Part II of this paper: •Affirmative Action
To be continued.
Holy angels Church, An African American Catholic Church. |