Strains On the Heart

By Richard N. Ostling

"Tell the story! Tell the story!" worshipers cry out as the Rev. Cecil L. Murray preaches beneath the spectacular murals and stained glass of Los Angeles' First African Methodist Episcopal Church. The exclamations from the standing-room-only congregation of 2,000 come with each oratorical high note. It is a hymn of health, bespeaking the prosperity of the city's oldest (1872) black congregation, where every service is a vibrant demonstration of fervor and passion.

At the cavernous Pentecostal Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis, the air throbs to the beat of drums and tambourines punctuating a Sunday-morning service. Parishioners sing out the Gospel hymn Victory! I've Got It. Victory! I've Got It. As impulse moves them, some of the worshipers dance across the aisles, while white-clad deaconesses stand ready to aid those overcome by emotion. "God is still in the miracle business," intones Bishop James O. Patterson Jr. during an hourlong sermon. The Church of God in Christ, with 3.7 million members, is the fastest growing black denomination -- in fact probably the fastest growing major denomination of any kind -- in America.

In contrast to such vibrancy, only a dozen graying worshipers attend the Silver Bluff Missionary Baptist Church in Beech Island, S.C., for a Wednesday night service. Founded in 1750, Silver Bluff is the oldest surviving black congregation in the U.S. Noting the total absence of younger Baptists at the service, head deacon Willie Sims utters an earnest prayer: "Father, come back to Silver Bluff one more time."

Throughout black history in the U.S., the church has been the central institution in the African-American community, a fact still true in a country with 65,000 black congregations. As Baptist Pastor J. Alfred Smithing Sr. of Oakland's Allen Temple Baptist Church puts it, "The black church is the heart of black life." Today, as never before, that heart is enduring strains and challenges brought on by apathy, social ills and new directions in the black religious experience. Urban congregations are surrounded by neighborhoods demoralized by spiraling drug use, crime and family disintegration; the churches face a looming shortage of qualified clergy; and the very relevance of many congregations is being challenged. But in the midst of its tribulations, black religion shows healthy signs of change and renewal.

The problems and the promise are both given rare examination in the first full-scale survey of America's black congregations since 1933, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Duke University Press; 519 pages; $47.50, $18.95 paper). The painstaking examination, which has just been published, is the work of C. Eric Lincoln, the eminent black scholar of religion at Duke, and Lawrence H. Mamiya, a Japanese-American professor of religion and African studies at Vassar. The authors' team interviewed 1,895 members of the clergy in the 10-year effort and emerged with cautious optimism. "Unlike white main-line Protestantism, which is in serious trouble, the black church is at least holding its own," summarizes Lincoln. "But whether that will continue is anybody's guess."

The Black Church focuses on the seven largest black Protestant denominations in the country. The biggest U.S. black organization of any type is the 7.5 million-member National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. Like all Baptist groups, it gives individual congregations complete autonomy. The National Baptist Convention of America and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc. are kindred groups. The oldest black denominations are the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, founded after the Revolutionary War by free blacks influenced by John Wesley's revival movement. The closely related Christian Methodist Episcopal Church was formed by freed slaves after the Civil War. The seventh institution is the Church of God in Christ, which, like all Pentecostal groups, emphasizes the experience known as "baptism in the Holy Spirit," manifested by speaking in tongues. When other Protestants and Roman Catholic worshipers are added in, black churchgoers total 24 million.

Black Christianity preaches a gospel of deliverance, the reality of a vivid flesh-and-blood Jesus and the urgency of spiritual rebirth. In that sense, all seven denominations are akin to white Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism. But black belief also insists that social and economic liberation is part of that gospel. No less important than the message has been the messenger. Uniquely, the black church has been the haven for an entire community's most visionary leaders, from Nat Turner, leader of the 1831 slave rebellion, to Oliver Brown, who filed the lawsuit that abolished school desegregation, to former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young.

In examining the status of the clergy, The Black Church raises deeply troubling questions. The median age of black pastors in the U.S. has reached a dangerously high 52, which means that fewer young blacks are entering the ministry. Thanks to the civil rights movement, the ministry is no longer the sole redoubt of blacks with leadership aspirations. "We never had black mayors before the last 30 years," remarks Harlem Baptist Pastor Wyatt Tee Walker.

The ministry is also losing out in the economic competition. Only one- quarter of the black pastors in the U.S. have health insurance, a mere 15.7% receive pensions, and salaries are so low that nearly 40% of pastors hold second jobs. Less than one-fifth of pastors hold seminary degrees. The Rev. Calvin Butts, pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, believes lack of formal skills is critical. "You can be 'called,' but 9 times out of 10 today if you are not trained, you are of no use to us," says Butts, who holds a Ph.D. from Drew University in New Jersey.

The graying of the clergy extends to the faithful. Black churches usually operate a wide array of community projects reaching all age groups, but "many black churches are senior citizens' homes," laments Los Angeles pastor Murray. "They do not attract young adults and youths." High rates of joblessness and crime among young blacks are significant factors, but the Rev. Richard Norris of Philadelphia's Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church (founded in 1794) cites the drug crisis in particular: "It's destroyed the family. It's weakened the church." Baltimore attorney Leronia Josey blames some middle- class black Christians for getting too "comfortable." The church, she says, let others take charge of community welfare, and "in the process the drugs crept in and the girls got pregnant."

Black youths have often been attracted to Islam, with its strong image of male assertiveness, black pride and rigid discipline. In particular, Muslim organizations have far outdone Christians in evangelizing prison inmates and ex-convicts. The Lincoln-Mamiya study estimates, however, that the two major North American black Islamic groups have only 120,000 members, and some inner- city pastors claim that fascination with the religion is waning.

In contrast with male-oriented Islam, the active membership in the typical black Christian church today is 70% female. But there are few women ministers, and apparently that is the way laywomen want it. "Though congregations are run by women in support roles, those women say they want to see a man as an authority figure," says James Costen, president of Atlanta's Interdenominational Theological Center. The issue may generate more controversy as the clergy shortage grows. For now, ambitious women preachers are joining white denominations or establishing their own independent congregations.

One of the most successful woman preacher-entrepreneurs is Johnnie Colemon, 70, who started her Christ Universal Temple in 1956 with 35 members. Now Colemon operates Chicago's largest black church, boasting 10,000 followers who meet in a sprawling $10.5 million complex on the city's South Side. Colemon was ordained by the Unity School of Christianity, based in Unity Village, Mo., a New Thought group that she quit in 1974 because of what she charged was a racist tinge. Colemon preaches reincarnation (she believes she was once an Egyptian princess) and an unapologetic quest for material prosperity ("Money is God in action"). Practicing what she preaches, the pastor lives in a 23- room mansion.

Despite their problems, mainstream black Christian groups still exhibit plenty of vitality. Even struggling rural Southern churches, hard hit by northward migration, are doggedly holding on with the help of part-time pastors and energetic lay leaders. One hopeful sign in the North and the West is that blacks are no longer drifting into white churches when they move up the social scale. Says Atlanta's John Hurst Adams, senior bishop of the A.M.E. Church: "We are not buying the integration route. We never have and never will. We seek an inclusive society that need not be integrated but values diversity and respects it."

Across the country, there is a discernible turn back to the church among educated, affluent blacks. As a young man, Baltimore civil engineer Larry Little, 41, forsook religion for radical politics. Years later, he felt isolated as the only black in his Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins and resumed churchgoing, currently at Baltimore's Bethel A.M.E. Church. Many other black urban professionals tell similar stories. Lincoln and Mamiya argue that the resurgence of interest underscores the vital need for better educated clergy.

) Los Angeles' First A.M.E. Church is one congregation that is squarely addressing the problem of lagging male presence. Church leaders have organized special monthly meetings for men, who leave the sanctuary midway through the morning service and gather by themselves. Apart from building male solidarity, the sessions are designed to enlist commitments to 25 church task forces, many of them aimed at troubled young men.

While traditional churches are struggling to maintain their relevance, Lincoln and Mamiya believe that, increasingly, American blacks will look to forms of Pentecostalism for their spiritual needs. By the scholars' projections, Pentecostalism could claim half of black churchgoers sometime in the next century. The movement has three variants. There are the traditional Pentecostal denominations such as the Church of God in Christ. There are also independent Charismatic congregations, and Neo-Pentecostalists within the traditional Methodist and Baptist denominations.

A lively exemplar of the independent Charismatic movement is the 10,000- member Crenshaw Christian Center of Los Angeles, a church with no shortage of men under 40. Pastor Frederick Price preaches a much disputed "word of faith" message, which holds that God will supply anything that believers want, including health and wealth, when they truly believe. The television preacher describes his method as simply giving people "biblical information that they can apply and put into their daily lives. This is what people need, and this is what they want. They eat it up."

The nerve center of black Neo-Pentecostalism is Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baltimore, which presents an invigorating blend of rollicking music and old- time religion. The church had 500 members in 1974; today it boasts more than 7,000. The average age of members is 35, and nearly half are men. Bethel is proudly Afrocentric -- a bright mural of African faces is painted over the altar -- and has traded its pipe organ for a jazz band. Pastor Frank Reid, 39, holds degrees from Yale and Harvard Divinity School.

Reid's sermons are interspersed with traditional Pentecostal dancing and singing, while at one point in the Sunday service worshipers break up into cozy prayer circles. Bethel is an energetically activist congregation: last year it clothed and fed 18,000 people, and it operates programs for older people, teens, women, youths with school problems and adults who cannot read. Next on the agenda is a $10 million athletic center.

Congregation member Larry Little is convinced that churches like Bethel represent not only the best spiritual hope for American blacks, but perhaps their best social hope as well. "In the next 10 years," he predicts, "you'll see the churches growing through the walls because people have nowhere else to go." Whatever its religious forms, in other words, the black church still has what Lincoln and Mamiya call the "institutionalized staying power of a human community that has been under siege for close to 400 years." If the church flourishes, the community will gain strength.

With reporting by Joseph J. Kane/Memphis, Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles and Janice C. Simpson/New York