Black Power in the Church

Abstract

greater force for good in our society exists than those who have chosen to dedicate their lives as stewards of God. As modern day apostles, the clergy are intimately woven into the fabric of man's life, his struggles to overcome evil and his eternal quest for true brotherhood. The clergy, in their role as carriers of the message of Christ, must whether they like it or not involve themselves both in bringing this message to the people and constantly working out ways and means to make it a reality. We often pray, kingdom come, they will be done . Thy will be done when? How? Tomorrow? Next year? Thy will be done how saith the Lord and it is His will we must seek to pattern our lives after. Many American clergymen have remained aloof from social issues, preferring to preach a gentle, wrist-tapping form of antiseptic Christianity that runs around today's problems instead of confronting them. For years, the clergy in America refused to speak out against labor injustices, racial injustices and the exploitation of the poor. Iťs only a very recent phenomenon to see the clergy walking picket lines for civil rights causes. I walked picket lines 30 years ago in Harlem and have walked almost as many picket lines as I have preached sermons not picket lines only to protest racial segregation, but picket lines to help a union organize employees, or raise the poverty-level wages in an institution. But to many American clergymen, Selma, Alabama was their first awakening to social injustice. Clergy today must totally involve themselves, their church and their parishioners in the black freedom struggle. The forces for evil, for the status quo, and against progress have been far more active than the clergy which still has not broken its chains of silence and inaction on civil rights, despite an occasional march here and an incidental picket there.