(A reprint of September 2, 2007, extensively edited)
This blog site is not supposed to produce scholarly tomes based on extensive research, and this present post is certainly not one of those scholarly tomes. It consists, rather, of some timely observations about our individual and collective efforts to live and love and be Christlike. This includes looking at our past and present areas of Christian service and how we worship God. In this regard, let’s go back a hundred fifty years or so to the religious community in the United States.
A History of Prejudice and Subjugation
In the days before the Civil War, black people were often treated worse than animals, especially in the Southern States. The slave master had the power of life and death over his human chattel. Of course not every person of color was killed; no, they were needed to pick the cotton, to do labor that was below the dignity of the white man and to bring more babies into the only world the black man knew, a world of subjugation and humiliation. And, curiously, these same people who were lower than animals were employed in personal household chores and their females were used to cook for the master’s household and to help raise the white man’s children. They entrusted their lives in a sense to the lowest of their low plantation beasts!
The African American slave came to know God in the midst of the fire of oppression and bondage. He had been forcibly rooted out of his homeland in Africa, brought to America in chains and made to serve a master who was, at best, uncaring and, at worst, cruel and oppressive. The slave was, in general, an unfortunate human being who was made, like his white master, in the image of God Himself. But those who exploited and enslaved and dehumanized their captive willingly disregarded or were ignorant of this divine resemblance in their pursuit of monetary profit and personal convenience.
The poor slave awoke as in the middle of a nightmare to find himself in America with no family and no ties to his homeland except the ties he had with others who had been captured with him and dumped unceremoniously in the “Land of the Free.” He had been dropped into a culture totally foreign to him and given no Adult Education classes on how to win friends and influence people. The slave was truly a ship without sail, rudder or anchor and he sorely needed something to sustain him. He needed a God.
Blacks Were Forced into Segregated Worship
“A Judas goat is a trained goat used at a slaughterhouse and in general animal herding. The Judas goat is trained to associate with sheep or cattle, leading them to a specific destination…” (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
In the matter of segregated worship it was not that the off-color sheep of God willingly followed a Judas goat into such an unloving practice. We were forced into it because we did not have the “intelligence” or the inbred “dignity” to worship God as other humans.
I won’t pretend to know the details of how this people’s theology was shaped. This I do know: These wretched people, my ancestors made in the image of God, weren’t at all concerned with denominational labels: that would come later as a negative in their religious history. They wanted only to worship their God, the God who had breathed into them the desire and the compulsion to worship Him. They needed their God to survive. After a day or a week of physical and mental stress, the slaves would gather in worship whenever and wherever they could. In an emotionally charged worship service they found sweet release for their straitened souls from the drudgery and stresses of their daily tasks.
Meanwhile, the mainline denominational churches were a thousand emotional miles removed from the blacks’ primitive places of worship. In their neat well built churches the members of the ruling class gathered to worship the same God the blacks worshiped, but in decidedly different atmospheres. And heaven forbid that they should actually consider their God to be one and the same as the God of the slaves toiling under their lash! Starched and prim in their devotions (and despite their refusal to acknowledge the two Gods’ co-identity), the ruling class worshipers knew of the same God their slaves worshiped, but they were on no more intimate terms with that God than they were with the drudges – His people – toiling on their plantations.
Each Sunday their ministers would deliver a dry homily that gave no life-changing impetus to a bored congregation eagerly awaiting the doxology. There was no passion to their worship, no intimacy of fellowship. The worship of the Caucasian Christian was a tradition and a duty; that of the African American was a need and a release and it arose from the inner person.
The slave, whose only crime was to be born black, was forced to get close to God in order to endure the rigors of bigotry and bondage. Inborn prejudice and tradition told the slave master that anyone who looked different than he had to be inferior. We (I say “we” as though I had experienced, by some mystical genetic assumption, my ancestors’ travail) had a fervor in worship that renewed our will to live while ofttimes we were held in the unrelenting grip of cruel conditions.
But today, where have the black worshiper’s vaunted devotion and fervor and intimacy with the Savior gone? These quality traits have vanished like a vapor in today’s sex-and-money surfeited atmosphere. Today we “talk the talk” and even dance the dance, but our sincerity is sometimes seriously suspect. At this point in our religious experience we are no better off than the majority of all so-called believers, most of whom don’t know God. God does not “see” the color of a person’s skin, and He is just as displeased with one race as He is with all races who refuse to serve Him in the way He has prescribed, whether they are black, white, yellow or red. Too many of us have either never known God or have strayed from His side. It doesn’t take a prophetic voice from the past to tell us we are living in an age of apostasy and rampant wickedness. Like it or not, we are in the middle of the evil of which the old line prophets spoke so accurately.
God Is Working in Both Races
But for many years there has been a stirring and rustling in the midst of our white brethren as they come to grips with the knowledge that they have not always pleased God with their former liturgy-oriented manner of worship. They have loosened up and given vent to the emotions and praise that are pushing out from within. They raise their voices in praise and do their gentle little up-and-down dances that give them emotional release and, I am sure, please God.
Meanwhile the black believer, who was brought up on sincerity and freedom of worship, has gone to the extreme (extremes are seldom good) and he now often bases his acceptability to God on how loud he can shout and how much dust he can raise in his worship. Some of our congregations don’t know what it is to have a sweet, anointed service in which they can quietly bask in the presence of God. I often wonder if the individual members experience those delightful moments of communion even at home in their “secret place of prayer.” It seems there must always be noise and physical demonstrations. We are afraid that God will not notice or hear us without the traditional buck and wing and high-decibel shout.
The objective observer can see where the integrating of the races in worship has benefited both sides, not just in the fact that it’s what God desires, but in the tempering of the modes of worship by both races. The white worshiper has loosened up and learned how to enjoy His God, and the black believer has tuned down some of his fierce emotionalism so that he has learned to express his feelings and to praise God without disturbing everyone around him. Some of them even do the little gentle up-and-down dance (I love it!) instead of wreaking havoc on church property and beating their fellow worshipers on the head, and then saying afterwards, “Man the preacher really tore up tonight!” It wasn’t the preacher, my friend, it was you.
A friend of mine made this interesting remark:
“First of all I want to thank God for my Pentecostal background. Not because Pentecostals were accurate in their theology (there was much to be desired in that area), but because of the fire they ignited in our hearts to have a meaningful relationship with the God of our salvation. Their emphasis upon Jesus made it so personal for us, that is, our relationship with God is so real. I think their major contribution…to us was an impartation of "sincerity" in walking with God. That quality is missing in today's brand of "Pentecostalism"… I have told my church that I am not Pentecostal, or Baptist or anything other than that I am a child of God and am in the body of Christ.” (Virgil Cox Jr., former pastor, The Good Shepherd's Assembly, Kansas City, MO)
As quoted above, the Pentecostal mode of worship did give us a meaningful relationship with our God. It made the worship of Jesus a personal thing and it gave us a fire in our hearts, but too often we thought the fire needed to be a white hot conflagration. We have thrown the gasoline of our volatile emotions on the fire instead of letting it gently warm us as we worship God.
There is an appropriate time for great rejoicing and exuberance, but that is not necessarily every time we gather to worship or to pray. Where are the intimate times of quiet meditation and communion? There is certainly a time for everything: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…” (Eccl 3:1) But, as in everything else, we need balance in our worship. When I go to a worship service, I don’t want to hear, every time I step inside the door, a cacophony of shrill voices and booming drums that beat mercilessly on my ears, dissipating the sweet reverie that I had before entering the sanctuary.
Let me feel the warm glow of His Presence. We all need that. We need to revel in the sunshine of His smile and feel Him so near that we speak audibly to Him. There will be times when we can almost reach out and touch Him. Sure, this thrilling intimacy may cause the worshiper to get beside himself and to be physically demonstrative. That’s all right, but remember this: there is a time for all things, a time for loud praise and a time for quiet worship. We don’t need to bring down the glory of God by constantly hollering for Him. He’s not off somewhere on a journey nor is He asleep and we have to wake Him up. God is right there beside us and in us, if we will just get attuned by focusing our thoughts on Him.
Then, after we have focused on God and become one with His will, we can do as Samuel told a humble, tractable Saul (before he was crowned king and became too self-willed to listen to God),
“After these things happen [when you become focused on and one with His will], do whatever you think is right! God will help you.” (1 Sam. 10.7 – Contemporary English Version)
So go ahead: Raise your voice in praise. Be physically involved in your worship. Or quietly meditate on God and His goodness. Weep for joy. Do as the occasion warrants as you focus on, and become integrated with, the sweet will of God. Just, please, don’t shut me out of my quiet moments of meditation. We all need that and we will not be spiritually well-adjusted until we learn to balance our worship.
I leave you with a portion of the lyrics of the Negro National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing. I love the song not just because I am a black worshiper; what stir my emotions greatly are the powerful, gripping words that were forged in the white-hot fires of oppression. Every believer of every tint or shade would do well to at least gain a cursory knowledge of the black man’s history. He or she will then understand why the the words of the song range widely throughout from a dirge of wretchedness and misery to a paean of liberty and sheer gratefulness to the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.
Lift Every Voice and Sing
Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.”
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast’ning rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?”
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way,
Thou who hast by thy might.
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
- James Weldon Johnson
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