Analyzing the Social Political Activism of the Black Church in Light of the Two-Kingdoms Motif

Let me begin by attempting to explain what I mean by "the black church" as it will be used in this article. Throughout, what I will be referring to is that entity, regardless of denomination or theological underpinning, that defines its purpose according to the ethos and pathos of the first black congregations in the late 1700s. These first separate black congregations were the result of ill treatment in white churches and society at large. As C. Eric Lincoln has observed, "Black religion takes its origins not from established religion in America but from the black experience in America….From its inception the Black church set out to do for its peculiar constituency of black slaves and freed men what no one else was willing to do for them, or have them do for themselves." (1) This social genesis of the black church gave it a purpose beyond corporate worship and the propagation of the Christian faith. "As the only stable and coherent institution ever to emerge from slavery, Black churches were not only dominant in their communities, but they also became the womb of black culture and a number of major social institutions." (2) This galvanizing function of the black church as community builder became even more prominent during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.

With such a background, it is no wonder the black church served as the headquarters for the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1950s and early 60s. In fact, it is my contention that by the time of the Civil Rights Movement, the unique functioning of the first black churches had set the standard for what was expected or assumed from other black churches to whatever degree. For the purpose of this article, then, I define "the black church" as those post-Civil Rights Movement churches that consciously define their purpose as a mediating and socializing vehicle for the black community. It is this perception of the church's role I would like to examine in light of the two-kingdoms motif. Rather than attempt to define this whole paradigm, I will focus only on the unique role and purpose of the church within this framework.

Two-Kingdoms Theology

The church as established by Christ is the covenant community consisting of individuals united to Christ by faith in the gospel. Its function is to preach the Word of God (law and gospel), make disciples, administer the sacraments, and worship the Triune God in spirit and in truth. As an institution, the church is distinct from any institution or organization of human origin; it is the embassy of the kingdom of heaven, and its agenda is a heavenly one. Defining the church's agenda in such a specific way has left some with the impression that we are not concerned about or committed to social issues in the culture at large. Two-kingdoms proponents acknowledge that "the common kingdom," which consists of governments and institutions of human origin, is also under the sovereign rule of God but with a different purpose and agenda than that of the church. It is precisely at the point of defining the institutional church's agenda (from a focused and heavenly perspective, or a broader cultural or social perspective) that the two-kingdoms paradigm is either embraced or rejected. I would say that many who hesitate to accept the two-kingdoms motif misunderstand the distinction in a few crucial ways, one of which is the tendency to associate two-kingdoms theology with noninvolvement in the common kingdom. Those who make this mistake will then often point to biblical passages that speak of justice (in a social sense), relieving oppression, feeding the hungry, and caring for the poor, and claim that these passages suggest a broader agenda for the church. The error in view here is assigning to the church what is actually assigned to every human being, including members of the church who are, after all, citizens of both kingdoms.

Part of the church's duty is to equip its members to live for the glory of God in both kingdoms. The faithful preaching and teaching of the Word of God (law and gospel) should produce Christians who are engaged in the common kingdom and participate in those institutions that are committed to social justice, relief of the poor, and environmental concerns’all of which should be done for the good of the common kingdom. It is through this grid that I will analyze the post-Civil Rights Movement black church that defines its purpose according to the model of the earliest black churches.

The Black Church After Civil Rights

This brand of the black church would expand the church's narrow God-ordained agenda to include political activism, social reform, community projects, economic empowerment, housing, job training, and a host of other endeavors. It was this expanded role and agenda of the institutional church that prompted a split in 1961 within the National Baptist Convention. Joseph H. Jackson, then president of the National Baptist Convention, was deemed by some to be too conservative in his political and social views "which emphasized the spiritual mission of the church more than civil rights activism." (3) Jackson once stated, "We realize that as a religious body we must at all times maintain a position that is in harmony with and that can be supported by our faith, our doctrine of life and our social ethic." (4) Those who disagreed with Jackson's position (which included Martin Luther King, Jr.) formed the Progressive National Baptist Convention. I do not know Jackson's theological conviction (whether Calvinist or Arminian), nor do I know whether he consciously adhered to the two-kingdoms model, but it does seem that he understood the function of the church from the perspective of a gospel-focused spiritual agenda.

Fredrick Harris, in his book Something Within, describes two polar opposite positions on the role of the black church. The first he labels the "opiate theory," which "insists that afro-Christianity promotes other worldliness, functioning as an instrument of political pacification and fatalism." (5) The second theory, which is clearly Harris's preference, just as it was for the founders of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, is "the inspiration theory [that] makes exactly the opposite claim, arguing that afro-Christianity has played [and by implication should continue to play] a central role in Black politics, catalyzing, for example, the collective involvement of African Americans in the modern civil rights movement." (6)

But Harris's description of the first position is telling. First of all, the label itself, "opiate theory," is taken from Karl Marx "who saw religion as an instrument of economic and political domination," (7) thus Marx's famous dictum, "religion is the opiate of the people." Accordingly, Harris assumes that the otherworldliness of a heavenly agenda creates "political pacifism and fatalism." This has been a longstanding criticism of those who have opposed the African-American embrace of traditional Christianity, which critics see as being introduced to African slaves to keep them docile in their predicament. In his 1973 essay "A New Religion for the Negro," Eugene Gordon claimed that "Christianity teaches blacks to be meek and humble and to turn the other cheek when [they] should retaliate in kind." Harris writes, "He further characterized Negro Christianity as a 'workable tool for others,' and blacks themselves as 'religiously enslaved, their minds neglecting the very real and very present now for the delirious pleasure of wandering in a vague, remote, and uncertain hereafter.'" (8) This perception of traditional Christianity has been held to various degrees by nonreligious black nationalists, non-Christian religious groups such as the Nation of Islam, proponents of liberation theology, and many advocates of a Social Gospel.

Those who remained in the National Baptist Convention under the leadership of Joseph Jackson were chided as being Uncle Toms, unsophisticated, unenlightened, irrelevant, and unresponsive to the real needs of the black community. A black church that only preached the gospel and concerned itself with spiritual matters was considered to be little more than a puppet of the white religious power structures, and therefore of no value in overturning the systemic and institutional racism of the day.

Stepping back, there is no denying that Christianity was used in a manipulative way during the period of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement. Tragically, some white Christians even used the spiritual mission of the church to justify both individual and institutional noninvolvement. But it would be absurd to invalidate sound doctrine because of the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of application by its adherents. The issue at hand therefore is not the intentions of those who stressed the spiritual mission of the church or even their inconsistent application of it. The issue is whether or not it is biblically valid. I think it is, and further, I do not think that the spiritual mission of the church should engender any apathy toward social injustice, poverty, and other social ills. With this history and these criticisms in mind, however, I would like to question the social activism of the black church on a number of points.

Challenging the Social Activism of the Black Church

First of all, the idea of a church seeing one community or ethnic group as its constituency is antithetical to the biblical concept of church. Whatever community a local church is located in does not change the fact that it is the embassy of heaven. Its constituency therefore is all who name the name of Christ. In Ephesians 2:14-22, Paul speaks of the covenant community in terms of a new humanity. The purpose of the church is to nurture this new humanity "till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:1-3). Any congregation that is dominated by any particular ethnic group has to be careful that its ethnic identity is not elevated above that of the new humanity that we are in Christ.

Second, I question the idea held by many black church leaders that the black church is a place for economic empowerment. This is part of the misconception that the church is at the service of the local community. If a church is located in an economically deprived community, it would be great if members of the church with business or finance expertise made themselves available to members of the community in workshops and projects that teach fiscal responsibility and entrepreneurial ideas. Such a commitment to the community should be the fruit of faithful preaching and teaching on vocation and loving our neighbors as ourselves. But from the perspective of the Great Commission and biblical teaching on the covenant community and its worship, this is not the function of the institutional church. The same must be said for job training. Individual members could and should be encouraged either to work with existing agencies or to start projects on their own. In fact, the Great Commandment obligates Christians and every human being to promote our neighbor's welfare as if it were our own. Our spiritual mission then should not blind us to the needs around us. But these good and worthy creational needs do not define our mission.

Third, there is the issue of politics. Politics are part of the common kingdom in which individual Christians are free to participate’voting, campaigning, or even running for political office. A black minister at a ministerial breakfast to endorse a candidate for the U.S. Senate once observed that "America is a political animal, a political society, a political country, and those who have seen political power must understand that in order to have great power we must be part of the political process." (9) But this quest to identify the black church as a political powerbase, and therefore a part of the political process, is a confusion of the two-kingdoms distinctions shared by the broader evangelical community. It has also proven susceptible to being co-opted by politics so that from the Moral Majority to the Religious Right, we have seen evangelicalism become increasingly defined more by political concerns than theological or doctrinal convictions. In contrast, the power of the church is not political according to Scripture, nor is it the duty of the church or its ordained ministers in the name of the church to endorse a particular political party, platform, or candidate. Regardless of what Christian voter guides imply, there is no Christian platform for a common kingdom that is passing away. Our political process is as transitory as the issues it addresses, and to define the church's power by its political influence is to overvalue the power of politics and to undervalue the church's real power.

There was a time when African Americans were not allowed to participate in the electoral process. This is a right that was won through the efforts of many courageous souls’and the right that was won was for African-American citizens to individually enter the voting booth and cast a ballot according to their own individual consciences and preferences. There is no more a black way to vote than there is a Christian way. Our faith is not defined by a political party, platform, or candidate.

Staying on Mission

I am originally from Los Angeles, and one of our beloved sports heroes is Magic Johnson. Magic is not only one of the greatest basketball players of all time, but after his retirement he opened a number of businesses. His specialty was bringing different franchises into parts of the city where one did not usually see that franchise. When I would drive by one of Magic's businesses, I was always struck by his obvious commitment to community. Just as often, however, I would drive through parts of town and see senior citizen homes owned and run by churches that had long since abandoned biblical faithfulness to the gospel. I am still struck by the contrast. Such homes are important, but could be and are just as often built by unbelievers, because community support and development is a responsibility that we all share, believer and unbeliever alike in our common kingdom. How sad it is to see a church that in its busyness has failed to do the one thing it has been called and commissioned by Jesus to do.

Black churches that define their purpose by a broader cultural agenda run the risk of making better disciples for their programs, platforms, and projects than for the kingdom of God. Their concerns for social justice and improvement of economic conditions are noble and God-glorifying, but the best thing the church can do for those situations is to raise the consciousness of its members to see the sanctity of serving our neighbors and contributing to the common good in the name of the common kingdom to the glory of our God.