Posted on 12/01/2004 6:53:32 AM PST by ZGuy
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Like other evangelical Christians, leaders of the Church of God in Christ want to limit abortion and bar same-sex marriage.
But that doesn’t mean the predominantly black Pentecostal denomination considers itself part of the “religious right” or supporters of the Republican Party.
“I’ve seen the tone of the religious right,” said G.E. Patterson, the church’s presiding bishop. “It seemingly was born out of the fact that African-Americans were making too many gains.”
Patterson’s church, often referred to simply as COGIC, reports having more than 6 million members across the United States and in 57 countries.
While COGIC agrees with white evangelicals that the Bible is the primary source of spiritual authority, its ideas on government social programs and protecting the rights of minorities differ, Patterson said.
“Every law that has anything to do with leveling the playing field for blacks, they are against it,” he said.
COGIC also disagreed with President Bush on the war in Iraq. The church’s top leaders wrote the president before the war started, urging him to resist sending in the military.
Bush won the support of 78 percent of white evangelicals, who were stirred in part by issues such as opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage.
One COGIC bishop, George McKinney of San Diego, even endorsed Bush for those reasons. But Patterson said those issues alone were not enough to bring COCIC into the Republican camp.
“There’s a lot more to morality than just those two points,” he said.
COGIC’s national headquarters is in Memphis, Tenn., where the church was founded in the early 1900s by Charles Harrison Mason, a son of slaves and a former Baptist preacher.
Today it’s America’s largest Pentecostal denomination, attracting new members with its foot-stomping, hand-clapping worship services.
“Many black churches that are experiencing numerical decline are often seen as either elitist or very rigid in their worship,” said Quinton Dixie, a professor of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
“Those that tend to be among the fastest-growing churches are those that lean to a more charismatic worship style.”
COGIC’s founder preached of a “spiritual baptism” in which believers were suddenly awash in a soul-shaking love for Jesus that left them praising him in a divinely inspired language, known as speaking in tongues.
COGIC also has a strong connection to the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, which gives it a different perspective from other born-again denominations.
“These are issues that touch them in ways that don’t touch other Pentecostal denominations,” said Edith Blumhofer, a Pentecostal historian at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill.
Martin Luther King Jr., who was killed in Memphis in 1968 while helping lead a sanitation workers’ strike, delivered his last sermon, his famous “Mountain Top” address, at Mason Temple, COGIC’s mother church, the night before he was assassinated.
Pentecostal leaders from COGIC and several large white churches in Memphis met in 1994 to bridge the racial divide. While encouraging at first, the new bonds were strained by the 1996 elections, Patterson said, and the unification movement soon fizzled.
“The demands of politics still remained stronger than the demands of brotherhood,” he said.
COGIC’s primary business is praising Jesus, but the parent church also encourages individual congregations to set up community programs for helping the poor and bringing them to Christ.
“They recognize that part of what it means to live as a Christian witness to the world is to place oneself as an advocate for ‘the least of these,’ ”Dixie said. “Not only do you save souls, but you feed the hungry and clothe the naked.
“There aren’t national programs established by the denominational hierarchy.
“They allow the local communities to determine what are the needs in their communities.”
Upward of 60,000 church members attended this year’s convocation, which ended Wednesday. Patterson was chosen for a second four-year-term as presiding bishop, the denomination’s top administrator and spiritual leader.
At the convocation, COGIC members, who call themselves “saints,” renew old friendships, brainstorm on community programs and select the top leaders of the denomination.
For sisters Carrie Austin, 62, and Dorothy Jones, 64, of Omaha, Neb., the annual gathering of saints is a spiritual homecoming.
“It’s just like at home in our own churches. We go there to be blessed, blessed of God, to be saved and sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost,” Jones said.
Austin said she had no doubt the church will continue to grow and draw more worshippers.
“They know this world is in such turmoil and they’re looking for some truth, so they’re coming over,” she said.
“They know this is a church that’s based on the Bible.”
News flash, Bishop...If you're opposed to homosexuality and abortion, you are the religious right! The leftist elites won't call you on it because you're an oppressed minority, but you are nonetheless. You have much more in common with the religious right than you do with the religious left.
Many of the emotional faith crowd are "suckers" who will jump on any bandwagon that can give them an ecstatic buzz (eg. getting on to a social gospel crusade, emptying their bank accounts for a charlatan, or laughing hysterically "in the Holy Ghost"). They have never been disciplined enough to submit themselves to in depth study of the Bible and seem to suffer from ADD.
I had one as supervisor once, she was definitely scary.
They have not forgotten that the white Southern churches were not on their side fifty years ago. They have not forgotten that none of the religious leadership of the white Bible belt ever saw any problem with lynching.
Fifty years ago when it was a time to cry out against injustice, when it was a time for courage, when it was a time to face the fire hoses and dogs, blacks remember that the white Southern church was either silent or on the other side.
Kind of like saying that you want to lose weight, but prefer to do it by eating more and exercising less. These guys have found a home on the Democratic "Plantation".
I think that probably explains a lot.
That is ancient history, and to a large extent applied to Democrats, not Republicans. None of that is true today as regards the religious right. It's message is values and protection from liberal values being forced down their throats by the government. There are no racial concerns, and principled objection to affirmative action in favor of a color-blind society is not racist in any reasonable, objective sense of the term. And if you want to look at ancient history, which party faught the civil war and freed the slaves? Which party passed the civil war constitutional amendments outlawing slavery and allowing for citizenship and voting rights? Which party was most resistant to civil rights acts in either 19th or 20th Century? Which party did most members of Southern white churches and lyncher mobs belong to? Which party has a former KKK member in the Senate? It was NOT the Republican Party.
I guess they forgot which party ended slavery.
It's still the same white Southern church that is Republican today but was Democrat 50 years ago. The same white Southern church that never particularly wanted to regard blacks as "brothers in Christ" and never had any problems with Jim Crow or lynching.
Blacks have not forgotten or forgiven this and therefore refuse to subordinate their churches to the political agenda of the white Southern church.
All good points, though I wouldn't call 50 years ago ancient history. For that reason I think opposition to affirmative action raises red flags in the minds of many black Christians who are otherwise social conservatives. Granted, those who most opposed integration in the South may have been Democrats, but the perception is that they were primarily conservative, fundamentalist "Christians", a group that today is associated with the religious right.
You attend a COG church, and IIRC several years ago you were critical of police shooting a minority suspect to death in your local community. Would you say this article reflects your own views?
I have lived in the South all of my life and know of no church which sanctioned "lynching". Your assertion that Southern churches approved of this is an outright lie.
Thank you for adding this perspective. Since I never lived in the South, I had not thought of this. You're probably right. It is a challenge for any group of people (or individuals, including me) to change their perspectives when the circumstances change.
Me too. One thing I've observed is that there's a strong connection between political liberalism and sexual libertinism. No matter how much a girl goes to church, thumps the Bible, speaks in tongues, prophesies, dances "in the Spirit", etc, if she votes liberal she's almost invariably sexually corrupt too. (Sometimes I learned this firsthand: several such "good Christian" women tried to seduce me after a few dates.)
So if you're ever tempted to wonder how such seemingly good Christians who've got everything else right, could possibly get the political thing so egregiously wrong, the first place to look is at their sex lives.
Memo to guys who are still single: Never date a liberal. Never. No matter what else she appears to have going for her.
My post 34 should have been adressed to Sam the Sham.
Lynching pre-1950 was universal throughout the South. Could it have been universal without being opennly condoned and indeed supported by every voice of white Southern moral authority ? Chief of which was the church ?
If a woman had a child and its father died, should this child be helped? The black ministers are saying yes because the child is fatherless and this is scriptural. Many republicans say no because this is a handout.I've seen numerous posts on why blacks will not vote for a republican or why blacks say republicans are racist. And they are all answered by people with a limited view of the problem.
Now whether you agree or not this post answered many of the questions about why blacks view republicans as racists, why blacks will not vote republican, why blacks can say they are christians but will not vote for a republican etc. They believe that even though republicans scream they are christians they are not doing one of the fundamental things that the bible says you should do, help the legitimately poor. We on the other hand accuse them of not being christians when they vote for a person that agrees with abortions, but why tackle abortions when you believe that you can't get people to help the ones that are already here?
clueless zombies spouting rhetoric, "the man keeps us down" is still being drilled into their brains..
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