Before You Read THE DIVIDED MIND OF THE BLACK CHURCH
I read Senator Raphael Warnock’s book, The Divided Mind of the Black Church as one of 11 books to be read this year by the Manasota Interracial Book Club, of which I am a member. Divided Mind is basically a good book and I got a great deal from it.
And it is a poor choice for a book club.
One would think that The Divided Mind would be a slam dunk hit with a general audience. It’s authored by the glittering minister who occupies Martin Luther King’s old pulpit, the freshman senator from Georgia, whose election stunned the nation and pushed the democrats to majority status in the US Senate. Even the book’s title is provocative and inviting.
But reading the book feels like a walk on Jupiter. Warnock’s writing is weighted down with convoluted sentences and theological jargon. It takes a theological degree, preferably one issued after 2000, to be conversant with the problem that Warnock is exploring, namely how to get liberation theology out of the academy and into Black Churches.
As I read the book I was glad that I had some familiarity with liberation theology. Without that background, I would have certainly had a difficult time getting oriented to the basic problem that Warnock was writing about.
Global Warming
The Divided Mind interested me for another reason. In the last two years I’ve become alarmed about global warming. I’m wondering how Christian churches can begin preaching and teaching about the climate. This concern feels much like the one that Warnock explores. In other words, Warnock is asking how worshippers in the pews can accept a liberationist outlook as essential to their church’s mission. And I’m asking the same question except about climate change.
There exists a vanguard of mostly academic theologians who see clear links between biblical faith and the deteriorating climate. But how can their work become part of the teaching, preaching, and mission of ordinary congregations? That question is Warnock’s question. It’s that distance between graduate school and pulpit that that makes me doubly interested in what Warnock has to say about Black Theology.
This is a Challenging Read
Despite my interest, reading Warnock was still challenging. Probably about a third of the words I read in conjunction with this book came from Google and Wikipedia. If I was even slightly sleepy as I read I could easily get lost and need to reread.
The book got better as I worked through it. I think this happened because I kept reminding myself that the book is basically a doctoral dissertation. When the text became opaque and I was looking up words I reminded myself that the original readers were James Cone and a committee of academics. Continually returning to the book’s original purpose made me a much more sympathetic reader. So, the first part of this post expands a bit on the academic character of The Divided Mind. I share all of this in the hope that other readers will know ahead of time that the book will be difficult and whether it is for them.
The second part of this post is a detailed summary of the book. As I finished each chapter, I asked myself, “Okay, what did I just read?” I wrote down what I could remember without re-reading. Those recollections, the ways that I explained to myself what the chapters were saying, appear below.
The Academic Core of the Book
The Divided Mind of the Black Church grew out of a doctoral dissertation that Warnock completed in 2005. He holds three degrees from New York City’s Union Theological Seminary, where he was a long-time a student of James Cone, the “father” of Black Theology. I’m speculating now in guessing that most of the dissertation was written in the months leading up to Warnock’s graduation in 2005.
Later, Peter Paris, another professor and editor of the 22 volume “Religion, Race, and Ethnicity” series published by New York University Press, persuaded Warnock to publish the dissertation as a hardback in 2013. President Obama was then in his second term. Later in 2020, the book was reissued in paperback in conjunction with Warnock’s run for senate which launched him into national celebrity status.
We need to think about the business considerations behind Warnock’s book. Peter Paris is an academic who assembled the series for NYU press. This probably means that the publisher had minimum editorial investment in each of the books that would make them accessible to a general readership. The publisher’s calculation is that a book is a financial success if it sells a couple of hundred hardbound copies, usually to libraries. Warnock’s aging dissertation would not be usable as assigned reading for college classes, nor would it as a hardbound book be a hot seller in bookstores. It is a reasonable speculation that The Divided Mind was published with modest expectations and destined for a life on library shelves.
With this background it shouldn’t surprise the reader that The Divided Mind has several characteristics one would expect of a doctoral dissertation. Warnock and his editors probably left out technical stuff characteristic of dissertations such as research and data information. They added new material that would appeal to a a general readership.
America’s New Reckoning with Race
For example, one addition was the section on the Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s fiery sermon (“God damn America!”) stirred up so much controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign that it threatened to derail Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The Jeremiah Wright flap was a glorious illustration of the consternation that goes along with introducing Black Theology to the general public. So it was a great addition to the original study. Warnock added the Jeremiah Wright material before the 2014 publication of the hardback. I would argue that it that section is the most current and readable prose in the book.
I could detect no other additions that would have made the paperback a new edition. But since Obama’s election there have been numerous civil rights developments, which have been deemed as America’s new reckoning with race. These include the Black Lives Matter protests in May of 2020, the shootings of Trayvon Martin (2012), Freddie Gray (2015), and several others, and an emergence of an emboldened White nationalist movement. While not as germane to Black Theology as the Jeremiah Wright controversy, these are crucial to Black well-being. And they got not even a fleeting mention in Warnock’s book.
Put bluntly, the book is dated.
Disappointed Readers?
I imagine book shop browsers spotting The Divided Mind on a display table. They’re thinking, “I love that new senator from Georgia. He preaches in Martin Luther King’s pulpit. I’d want to know more about him and his ideas about the Church and nation. I’d also love to learn more about the Black Church.”
Little of that is in this book.
Happily, Henry Lewis Gates has done a magnificent job of introducing the whole universe of Black Christianity in America in his new book: The Black Church: This is My Story, this is My Song. An accessible documentary accompanies that volume. Gates’ work is much more appropriate for a popular readership.
Of course, what I’ve said is entirely speculation. I have no access to sales information or the business success or failure of the book.
Nevertheless, readers need to be shrewd in how they spend their reading time. And taking a hard look at a book’s business background is part of that.
With that in mind, The Divided Mind is a valuable study of an important theological conundrum, namely should Churches be engaged in the social order trying to make changes that would help a particular oppressed segment of the population?
Book Summary
Introduction
Warnock’s Introduction lays out the book’s theme. He sees the Black Church’s liberationist character as implicit in the simple fact that it exists at all. The Black church formed when enslaved persons noticed and were fascinated by their masters’ religion. Enslaved people would sneak off into the woods to offer prayers and worship together.
Throughout its history, the Black church was forced to confront the low social standing and persecution of its members. During the Civil Rights years in the late 1950’s and 1960’s Martin Luther King, a church leader, appealed to the Christian conscience of Blacks and some White clergy to peacefully pressure American society to loosen Jim Crow restrictions and strict segregation so that Black Americans could enjoy more freedoms and prosperity.
From a theological standpoint, the Black Church may have marched with King, but it has yet to internalize an attitude toward Christian social transformation that takes social justice as a natural part of Church business and Christian discipleship. It is this final step of placing social engagement alongside of conversion and the personal spirituality, that is the focus of Warnock’s book.
Warnock begins with theologian, Joseph Washington who called critical pre-1970’s Black religiosity a “folk religion.” Washington is the perfect foil for the Black Theology movement, because his ideas represent the polar opposite of what Warnock and his mentor, liberation theologian, James Cone are arguing for, which is for the Black Church to become a thoroughly liberationist entity.
Chapter One: The Gospel of Liberation
Divided Mind’s first chapter describes the Black Church’s basic liberationist character. Put plainly, the tasks of Black uplift just got attached to Black Churches, which through history were usually the largest, most stable institutions that African Americans had in the United States.
From its beginning as clandestine gatherings of enslaved persons who found themselves attracted to their masters’ religion, the Black church has always defined itself as different from established White congregations. Even when the Second Great Awakening’s White preachers preached to Blacks who attended their revival meetings, they never welcomed their enslaved converts into the White Churches.
Much of the abolitionist energy arose in Black congregations, as did resistance to lynchings and Jim Crow. Warnock spends much time arguing that Martin Luther King pressed Black churches toward a more liberationist identity during his public life and leadership in the Civil Rights Era.
Regrettably, the Black Church has not yet fully owned (my term) this essential vocation of influencing American society towards full racial equality and reconciliation. Owning would be taking the next step of adopting, digesting, and making a part of its creed and mission advocacy of social changes that would fully bring Black Americans into equality with whites.
Chapter Two: The Gospel’s Meaning and the Church’s Mission
Chapter two begins with a deeper consideration of Joseph Washington, who in the early 1960’s looked at the Black Church and decided that its distinctiveness from White Christianity signaled its underdeveloped character. Washington went on to state that Martin Luther King, who popularized Black uplift as a centerpiece of Christianity, was urging Black religion to tack in precisely the wrong direction.
James Cone and others were saying precisely the opposite. Warnock states that “Black Theology was created in order to refute Washington’s book.”
Black Power
It was during the 1960’s that the expression “Black power” gained wide usage. This was the time when Black theologians were carrying their speculations about God’s favor of Blacks to bold and controversial extremes. Was there any way that God could be construed as extending a special grace to Black peoples? Might God or Jesus be black?
Warnock names a few entities where Black Theology was developing responses to Washington. One such group was the National Conference of Black Christians (NCNC). The idea of “Black power” and a “Black Jesus” emerged from this group. There was the Black Caucus movement, which were subgroups of Black Christians within existing denominations.
Importantly, James Cone emerges in the 1970s. His writings systemized Black theology and made it available to a wide audience.
Significantly, as Black Theology developed, Joseph Washington abandoned much of his polemic against Black Theology.
All of this had a disruptive, but beneficial impact on White Churches. With the rise of an alternative embodiment of Christian faith came a stark challenge to three assumptions, namely that
1) European style, denominational Christianity was the correct vision of Christian faith;
2) that social justice is not an essential part of the Christian church’s mission; and
3) that Black Churches are not to be taken seriously as a full expression of Christian faith.
As White Christianity lost its unspoken status as the genuine embodiment of Christian faith it also was able to see its long-time complicity with slavery and racism.
Chapter Three: Black Theologians on the Mission of the Black Church
Warnock’s third chapter, “Black Theologians on the Mission of the Black Church,” is a survey of Black theologians who have argued for including a Black liberationist emphasis in Black congregational life. Of course, Black churches and their pastors have long been seen as advocates of racial uplift. Slaves adopted the evangelical faith of their enslavers because it lifted their self-esteem and was centered on liberation. Unfortunately, the Black Church has not worked through finding reasons why the liberationist element in Christianity, which they’d long sensed intuitively, did not enjoy formal status as being an indisputable element in the religious life of Black Christians.
Warnock devotes the most of this chapter to James Cone, the father of the Black theology. Cone frames the Black Church’s mission not as charitable projects but as making common cause with God’s work in the world. God’s work reaches its zenith in Jesus Christ who loves all peoples, especially the poor and captives. The church which follows this path will most certainly be liberationist.
Warnock names several theologians who argue for the social justice orientation of Black Christianity. These include Benjamin Mays, Charles Hamilton, Charles Shelby Rooks. Most of these thinkers are sharply critical of the emotionality and histrionics of Black worship. Some of the thinkers insist that the the emotionality needs to be curbed if the more serious work of racial uplift is to be established.
A couple of the theologians, notably Cecil Cone, James Cone’s brother, advocated for the recovery of African spiritual characteristics as a way of getting to a uniquely Black expression of Christianity. Another theologian, Albert Lleoge’s approach is promising. He draws on scripture as a foundation for Black liberation theology, but his exegesis clearly goes overboard in its attempt to set up a Black nationalist Christianity along the lines of the Nation of Islam.
Chapter 4: Black Pastors on the Mission of the Black Church
Chapter 4, “Black Pastors on the Mission of the Black Church,” moves to assess how Black theology is actually faring in real world Black congregations. Warnock begins by comparing two prominent Black Pastors, Joseph A. Johnson of the CME denomination and Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention. Johnson, an intellectual, appears to be Warnock’s ideal Black pastor who adopts prophetic social witness. Jackson, in contrast, thoughtfully rejects a particularist construal of Christianity, which singles out one ethnic group as specially called and sanctified. Jackson feels that Whites are bound to be antagonized by this approach, which would in turn undercut the Black Dhurch’s mission to all peoples.
Ironically, when Black Churches to take on a liberationist social stance they unavoidably awaken White Churches to their own apostasy of bondage to White Supremacy.
The chapter concludes with a revealing look at the Jeremiah Wright flap that took place during the 2008 presidential campaign. Barack Obama’s Chicago church was one of the rare congregations where Black theology had been adopted and proclaimed. Warnock insists that Wright’s sermon (“…god damn America…”) was a worthy example of the kind of liberationist thinking that enjoys precious little adoption in even Black churches. Because the liberationist outlook embodied by Wright, was so little known in the American public, American conservatives were predictably scandalized when they saw video clips of Dr. Wright damning America on constant loop. The whole episode illustrates that Black theology remains captive in the academy, where the best that can be said of it is that it enjoys interracial support.
Chapter 5: Black Women’s Traditions of Liberation and Survival
The effect of Chapter 5: “Black Women’s Traditions of Liberation and Survival, is to see women as an oppressed group within an oppressed group. As such, they help the traditionally, male-dominated Black Church to remember that all of God’s oppressed creatures deserve deliverance. The feminist or “womanist” voice of Black Theology arises out of the tendency of males to consign women to positions of surrogacy. Dolores Williams can be credited with using this term to gather up the kinds of tasks that fall to Black Women. Surrogacy means that Black women’s bodies are in constant service bearing children to enlarge the slave population, serving as wet nurses, and even serving at church functions.
Ironically, it is in this bodily service that Black women align with Jesus, who himself is traditionally seen as a surrogate or servant used to offer bodily sacrifice on the cross. This comparison between Jesus’ self-giving and that of Black Women summons Black Theology to rethink how Jesus’ cross is interpreted and updated. Williams goes on to insist that explicit opposition to injustice ranks with oneness, holiness, apostolicity, and universality as a fifth mark of the genuine Church.
This chapter bristles with stimulating ideas. It opens the door to the concept of intersectionality which prevents the church simply to focus on racial injustice without considering gender injustice and all forms of oppression. Christians can’t simply work to relieve Blacks from oppression. If we are called to work for racial justice then we must also be working for women’s liberation together with the uplift of LBGTQ persons and even the environment. And yes Warnock mentions the environment explicitly as an exploited entity.
Conclusion
Warnock concludes this chapter by acknowledging that Black Theology is largely an academic phenomenon and therefore little known in congregations. Womanist thinking is even less known. The chapter concludes with a hat tip to the Sanctified Church, which is a lay movement that arose in the early 20th century to protest the pretensions and inequality of denominational church life.
Divided Mind’s conclusion presses the Black Church to merge its pietistic, evangelical character with Christianity’s liberationist mission. This will not simply take the form of occasional mobilization for political causes. It will instead be part of the character of the Black Church, and as such will enable it to cast a fresh light on the surrounding dominant culture and an apostate White Church. This prophetic posture will not only stand for liberation for Blacks but for the deliverance of all races, different genders, and sexual orientations, and even the whole of the living world.
