Thought this was an interesting development: One of the standard themes of Southern politics in my lifetime has been the role of the black church in politics.
A significant feature of it has traditionally been that the effect was seen and heard mostly within black communities themselves, with the larger society mostly seeing the effects and not hearing the powerful, rolling, Bible-drenched rhetoric.
A release from the Steve Benjamin campaign contains a fairly new twist on that — a typical appeal by a black preacher for a local candidate, only amplified for the world via YouTube.
On the above clip, you hear the Rev. Willie Rivers, vice president of the National Baptist Convention USA, who urges recipients to “share this video with your family and friends and remind them to vote tomorrow, April 6, for Steve Benjamin.”
A transcript:
… and so we’re asking you to stand strong with them.
Stand as you stood with Martin Luther King.
Stand with him as you stood with Thurgood Marshall.
Stand with him as you stood with President Obama.
Stand with him with all your might, and power.
Stand with him, in the name of our God.
It ends with a voiceover by Steve Benjamin himself saying, “On April 6th, we’ll make history, again, together.”
I think this is done in the white community, too, except that it isn’t vocal, it is just understood that the church stands for a particular candidate or political ideology. If so, then it would also one of the dividing factors that makes it hard for blacks and whites to worship together.
Yes, occasionally you see overt (yet under-the-radar) involvement of the white church, particularly among conservative evangelicals. It was said that one reason Bob Inglis surprised the media with his first election to Congress was that so much of the campaign was among white religious conservatives.
But it’s as nothing compared with the role of the black church. It’s connected to the fact that not so long ago, ministers were by far the most influential people in black neighborhoods, and across the whole community. This was particularly true before black candidates started winning elections — preachers stood in lieu of black elected officials in terms of political leadership. By comparison, white preachers are relatively marginalized. The churches are critical to the infrastructure of political organization for black candidates.
And you never see the white pulpit used unabashedly and overtly as a literal political platform, with candidates invited to speak to the congregation. Nor do you see the conflation of approved candidates with religious figures, even divine ones. Whites who express their political views from a religious framework would generally view such rhetorical gestures as sacrilege.
Finally, changing the subject slightly — it’s really not hard for whites and blacks to worship together. It can be done, and often is. It’s certainly a matter of course at my church, and particularly at the noon Mass that I attend. Yesterday, for instance, after our Mass in Spanish (attended not only by Hispanics, but non-Hispanic whites whose ancestors came from ALL parts of Europe, black members, Asians and any other group you care to name, which is typical), our celebrant Father Bernard, who is from Tanzania, spontaneously treated us to a stanza of “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” in his native Swahili.
I realize this may not be a typical experience for churchgoers in Columbia, but it’s what we’re used to…
Doesn’t matter if the church congregation is black, white, Hispanic, Hindu, Muslim, or whatever in America.
If a political message is preached, expressed, or otherwise broadcast from a pulpit during worship services, the church should lose its tax exempt status immediately.
No doubt politics will be discussed on Sunday or whenever services are held but they should be held outside of the sanctuary and most definitely out of the pulpit.
If a church wants to be an arm for a political party, fine. Just don’t escape paying your taxes by hiding behind exemption. Remove it from a religious organization status and move it into a political one.
Bart, I was wondering about that. Our clergy are very careful not to make political statements from the pulpit, and I always understood that endorsing a politician was a fast way for a church to lose it’s tax exempt status. What gives here?
The Methodist Church has been fairly well integrated for a while.
I think Jim Crow and the pre-Voting Rights Act era has a lot to do with the lingering politicization of the black churches….
Bart and Karen–
I think some of the political posturing of some churches is not to endorse overtly a candidate or party–I imagine the black churches would treat all candidates the same–but certain candidates and parties are pro-life, say, or espouse the same “family values”
What about the Catholic bishops threatening to excommunicate people who voted for Obama?
I don’t know. Maybe there are exceptions. Does anyone out there have any knowledge of actual rules and regulations in the IRS rules that prohibits a minister from promoting a particular candidate?
Kathryn, I’d love to see where you got THAT one. Maybe you’re thinking of the moves by some bishops — not “the Catholic Church” — to refuse communion to some “pro-choice” Catholics. THAT actually happened.
Here’s my beef about the Catholic Church and politics — the church doesn’t get involved in politics enough. And I can assure you I’ve NEVER heard anything from the pulpit urging me to vote a certain way. I sort of wish I did, even if I rebelled against the advice. I think staying neutral is kind of a cop-out.
But that’s because politics is so important to me… truth be told, Jesus was scrupulously neutral on politics…
… but I also suspect that the reason Jesus stayed aloof from politics was that what an individual did politically did not matter, in a land ruled by Herod at the sufferance of the tyrant in Rome.
But in a world in which every citizen gets a say, would he have stayed neutral? Maybe so. Maybe he would have thought such temporal concerns, having to do with earthly power and such, were beneath the notice of a properly focused person.
In which case, of course, my priorities are SERIOUSLY out of whack, and I don’t deserve such a fine automobile…
“Kathryn, I’d love to see where you got THAT one. Maybe you’re thinking of the moves by some bishops — not “the Catholic Church”
Uh Brad–I said “the Catholic bishops”
I just now Googled “excommunicate Obama voters” and got many hits….I seemed to recall that the Charleston bishop–is he yours?–made some statements to that effect before the election…
@Bart
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=161131,00.html
A quotation therefrom;
Currently, the law prohibits political campaign activity by charities and churches by defining a 501(c)(3) organization as one “which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.”
Kathryn, sorry about reading and typing too fast there. I’m doing everything stream-of-consciousness today…
I suppose I could correct the error, but I’ll just leave it up as an example of the perils of this form of expression…
By the way, I found a reference to what you’re talking about. I suppose the bishops were becoming alarmed about the growing evidence during the election that Obama’s position regarding abortion and the courts actually seemed to go further than past Democratic nominees. You may recall that I wrote at the time about how flabbergasted I was at his outcomes-oriented approach to the judiciary, which to me seemed startling in a Harvard-trained lawyer.
Right now, though, I’m more worried about foreign policy, an area where I had thought Obama was pretty pragmatic. I didn’t realize until I read Krauthammer’s column Sunday that the president sent back Churchill’s bust to Britain?!?!? Wow.
It seems to me that when a priest/minister/preacher/pastor tells his congregation to vote for someone, that its pretty straightforward that he/she is endorsing a political candidate. Threatening to excommunicate parishoners who vote for a given candidate appears (to me) to be applying political pressure. And waddya mean, “Jesus stayed aloof from politics” Brad? While he did not explicitly preach the overthrow of the Roman Empire (or the current Jewish religious hierarchy, for that matter), his entire ministry was an in-your-face condemnation of the dominating powers. If political powers, both Roman and local had not seen him as a threat he could have had a nice old age. Since he wasn’t a slave, the mode of his death says that Rome was willing to consider him an insurrectionist. And why did Pres. Obama send Churchill’s bust back?
@Kathryn,
Thanks for the info. Now, if the laws were enforced, what would happen? How many cries and/or accusations of racism would we hear if a black church lost its tax exempt status because of the words spoken from a pulpit were deemed political, in violation of the law?
If a Catholic bishop were to speak from the pulpit during a worship service and call for the excommunication of anyone who voted for Obama, that is political speech – period. If a bishop were to refuse communion to someone who voted for Obama, that is another matter. There is a fine line between religion and politics but the subject of abortion is something else altogether.
Our minister when asked about politics answered this way. paraphrase – “I cannot nor will I speak to politics from the pulpit. I will not endorse or advocate for one candidate over the other one during official church services. If anyone tries to bring up a candidate, the issue will not be addressed nor pursued. If a candidate is so offensive to Christian values and to God, we will pray for him or her, not ask the congregation to vote for the opponent. Each of us will have to vote according to our conscience and beliefs, not because of a political message from me or any official of the church.
@Karen,
The question of the returned bust will never be answered. All we can do is speculate unless Obama decides to share his decision with us. I’m surprised Brad only found out about it Sunday. This is an old news item.
This is an old thread now, but maybe somebody is still reading it. I was surprised and somewhat disappointed that a preacher from our pulpit felt he had to say, “don’t worry, I’m a Republican, but . . . .”
That tells me we’re divided somewhere along party lines, and I find it very disturbing.
I’m not sure what makes the difference in the Catholic church, as Brad mentioned. We think, as Protestants, that we have more room to think and express ourselves, but we seem to stay in an ideological box, even more so than if we had the more “rigid” system of the pope and church tradition. It puzzles me.
I’m sorry, Herb. That must have been disturbing to you, from what I can tell in your writing.
I wonder if your church’s position on women in the ministry might have given you a clue. I was raised in a both ELCA (regular liberal-ish Lutheran) and Missouri Synod (fundamentalists with a liturgy) churches. I found that where there is a choice of flavors within a denomination, as in the Presbyterian Church, people are more likely to segregate based on political beliefs. PCA never seemed to be one of those “assumed politics” churches to me, though.
At our church, we are about 60/40 black/white, which I think is a big part of how we avoid all the political polarization. Having a diverse group keeps everyone honest and civil. (We’re not all of the same political persuation, and certainly some of us have strong views on numerous subjects, so it’s not their we’re a bunch of apolitical folks). Maybe if I were in a Catholic church it would be this way as well, but for the quasi-evangelical that I am, I’m very glad to have found this group to be a part of. I wish more Protestants could figure out how to make integration work for their churches, as the things gained seem to me to far outweigh the things lost. (The quality of the singing, for one thing, is great).
I do think one barrier to more integration for some denominations is preferred styles of worship and music. The liturgical churches and their traditional music are perhaps more of an acquired taste–and some people, indeed many people, who were not born into them acquire that taste. Alas,though, far too often,the styles of worship and music are “Stuff White People Like”–which has actually correctly been assessed as pretty much stuff upper-middle class, fancy college-educated people of any color like.
One of my favorite human beings is the Cathedral Musician for the Cathedral of Maine, a very black man of very orthodox “white people” tastes. He’s originally from a working class family in Newport News, but his love of organ-playing gradually took him to the more rarefied (arcane, maybe) music of the Anglican Church.