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(Editor’s Note: This is part five of an article calling African American men to seek power not in religion, but relationship with the living God and Creator who reveals Himself to man.)
There is no escaping it. The lack of a biblical purpose, priorities and Christianity in a great number of black churches must be laid at the feet of their pastors. It cannot be that they are all ignorant as some contend, since the purpose and priorities of His Church and the precepts of the faith are clearly communicated by Jesus Christ and His apostles throughout the New Testament!
No, it is a willful break from the Bible that has caused this wicked state of affairs among black pastors as is reflected in a recent Barna Research Group survey. In this survey, while only a mind boggling 51% of all protestant pastors held a biblical worldview, just 35% of black pastors did!2 No wonder we traffic in religious power and are unable to really help other hurting black men. We are disconnected from the Word of life and need help ourselves!
This disconnection from God’s Word is again evident in the third reason Christianity as the major cultural religion of blacks has failed to provide an intentional ministry of healing and coping to hurting black males. From slavery until now, pastors and their churches by the droves have been yielding to the influence of the culturally driven feminist movement. In the process, they have marginalized the needs and biblically ordained leadership role of black men.
In fairness, there are other factors that have also contributed to the marginalization of the needs and vital leadership role of black men. First, a number of our West African slave forefathers came from tribes that were matriarchal (female led) rather than patriarchal (male led as the Bible teaches) in their family and societal structures. This made female leadership just as acceptable as that of males to many as our slave forefathers sought to piece together a society in a strange New World. Also, since they were seen as less of a threat by white males, black females were encouraged, allowed to flower and aspire to leadership more so than black males.
Another factor in the marginalization of black male needs and leadership, of course, was the purposeful act of many American slave owners to discourage family relations among their slaves since it made it very difficult to separate and sell them off when the time came. Some slave owners even fostered promiscuity among their male slaves as they used them to breed the next generation of slaves. Thus, the absence of black husbands and fathers today has major roots in slavery!
Even so, it has been the over 150 year old feminist movement out of the secular culture (which at first attached itself to the abolition of slavery and reached a loud crescendo at the same time as the black Civil Rights Movement in the middle of the last century), that has spurred the many black churches and their pastors to marginalize black male needs and leadership by influencing their willful break with biblical teaching on male/female roles. Faced with churches nearly devoid of men, it has been a easy, but fatal decision to make.
Many male pastors and men around them who have compromised God’s Word on male/female roles, were raised by strong-minded single parent mothers or grandmothers. The commendable faith and family leadership of these women in the absence of black men serve as validating evidence to their sons that Bible writers were mistaken and unfair about God’s will on male/female roles. Also, their experience allows these men to see the “righteousness” of the secular culture’s new and enlightened approach to the subject.
Since when do Christians decide the Word of God is wrong and the righteousness of God inferior to that of men? And when did our personal experiences become primary over God’s Word as the source of authority in the Christian’s life? Is it not brother pastor, when we, in order to be considered progressive minded, in step with the times and to gain the favor of our predominantly female congregations compromise; selling out the Lord for our benefit even as Esau sold his birthright for some food (Hebrews 12:12-17)?
Certainly every strong man of God in the image of Christ knows He does not anywhere in His Word endorse the unfair or mistreatment of women. We must support just wages and treatment, equal rights and opportunities (when gender is not a defining factor) for women. However, the feminist movement has gone far beyond this. Their goal is the creation of a society that is gender neutral and places women as a related but independent member of the human family. They now have the right to murder any unwanted, unborn child and seek the right to marry each other (as do rebel men). In this new world we are helping to create in sin, sir, the needs and leadership of hurting black males will stay marginalized.
To Be Concluded Next Issue
2 Only Half of Protestant Pastors Have Biblical Worldview, January 12, 2004, ©Barna Research Group Ltd.
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