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.”
Wow! All white have given up their racist attitudes. That's great news.
“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.”
What a MORON!!!!
“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.”
I agree that the second part of this idea probably doesn't have much merit, but there are some members of the right who do seem to spread the seeds of hate and sound somewhat like liberals.
The same reason Republicans will give a pass to immigrants that are on the welfare system but not blacks.
I'm not talking about actions against the gay crowd or anything like that.
We differ in they are paid for. Community based programs paid for by donations are very different from a coercively extracted welfare tax.
What Republicans are these? I've never met one or heard of one. Most conservatives I know, think that giving welfare to immigrants is just as offensive, if not more so, than giving it to native born (of any color).
In Africa.
First off, I never said that (as you are well aware). I have heard all my life that racism recedes with each generation but my experience is that it isn't. And the poorer the white folks are the more racist they usually are (having to compete with Blacks who get all the official sympathy doesn't seem to help). I said that the white churches, at least the respectable ones, have repudiated their previous racism.
But hey, what do I know? I'm sure that if Black fundies continue to get petted by their atheist friends this will all change. Say, maybe it's all caused by creationism, huh? I'm sure that if the liberals who loudly proclaim their love for Black fundies just make a little more fun of white fundies that will solve everything! And teach them evolution, of course. Obviously the redneck belief that we are all descended from one original human pair is causing all the trouble!
But what do Black fundie kids do while white fundie kids are being taught evolution? Do they go into another room and have a snake-handling service or something?
Or maybe the liberal atheists will round up white fundies and feed them to lions, huh? While Black fundies look on and cheer? I mean, what is commonality of belief compared with skin color!!! [/sarcasm]
I'd say that of the larger Black denominations more COGIC pastors do support Bush/the GOP.
I do not think that the child should receive help from the government. Why? It's the responsibility of the church, that's why.
This is the reason why our society is in so much trouble. The New Deal and Great Society have done more social harm than good. You have to minister to the physical body that is true but it's just as wrong to give food and clothing but deny the spiritual needs.
Christians should never look to Ceasar to do their job for them.
Hey Bishop Patterson, are you familiar with Gods views on bearing false witness?
What was that chapter/verse?
I don't think he should receive help from the government either, but he should receive help regardless of how he got in that situation.
But with the good christian people on this board that believe you should pick and chose whether to help the child based on whether the parent fornicated to have it, would reguire the government to be like a "real" christian and intervene or the child would starve.
And the minister said he wanted to feed them spiritually as well by using community based programs at his church.
It is not lost on these Black churches that those same Southern states that were blue 50 years ago are now red. Black churches see it as the same people, just in a different party now.
Which is why he should support Republicans who are in favor of Faith-Based Initiatives. Democrats are dead set against Christians being allowed to minister the Good News while ministering to bodily needs.
I have what I think is a healthy suspicion of Faith-Based Initiatives as well. I just support it because I think it pushes the point home that you can't discriminate against Christians when it comes to government grants.
Again I believe all charity is the church's responsibility and not Ceasar's.
Maybe the real problem with this article is the Bishop is too vague in what he thinks is wrong with the Christian Right.
The same people? It is a completely different generation. And where, pray tell are these hordes that are out lynching and demanding repeal of civil rights and voting rights laws? Move on with the times.
I am the furthest possible thing on this board from a "Bell curve" Malthusian social Darwinist. I have always regarded with horror the submersion of moral issues to economic ones and make no bones about the fact that I feel economic libertarians have trained religious people to parrot their lines and do their work for them for very little return. I have been dirt poor most of my life and know what it's like to be dependent on the government (as most poor Fundamentalist whites do) and deeply resent the "root hog or die" brigade every bit as much as I do the liberals. I call myself a Theocratic socialist (though "Theocrat" will do just as well) and am disgusted with Republican politicians who in the midst of Sodom and Gomorrah choose to run against "higher taxes." And yes, people who are anti-abortion who want the laws of economics to eliminate the unfit are freaking hypocrites.
However, I have never allied myself with atheist liberals because of these positions. I would like to see a more consistently Theocratic approach to the world by conservatives but believe not only that this does not excuse voting for liberals but also that it would be easier de-Darwinising the Right than civilizing the Left. The thing is, the Black church could help mightily in this regard by giving the war on poverty a socially conservative face and destroying the liberal bugbear about poor people. But instead it maintains its alliance with a liberalism that has moved from the New Deal and civil rights to a militantly anti-G-d attitude, and it receives special treatment from the same liberals who heep ridicule and calumny on white Fundamentalists with identical beliefs. I cannot but be disappointed in the Black church and I shall remain disappointed until they come to their senses or chr*stianity falls apart in a welter of ethnic loyalties and hostilities.
There is an alternative, you know, and an older one at that!
I don't think the democratic party is the answer and aligning themselve with it is not a good thing. But how can a person honestly believe that a child should not be helped because its parents are sinful and you are therefore awarding the sin if you help? If a person uses this logic most people have created their position by free will. True many blacks creat their own problems and should not be allowed to sit at home and receive a monthly check. That's not right either.
Many republicans are angry at the black churches because they voted for a person that believed in abortions. But many blacks hold the opposite veiw point that republicans are the hypocrites because they are anti abortion but they do not believe in helping these kids once they get here because of their parents life choices.
It appears to me that one option gives the spectator a way out.
My posting have really been about helping the needy-period, I don't care what color they are. Needy people will always be amoung us(black,white, brown.) As a republican I believe in small government and few hand out but I don't believe in accessing the situation, let God handle that.
I agree that this is hypocrisy.
But it would still be nice to hear a Black minister speak out against liberal attacks on his "co-religionists" for believing things he himself supposedly does (why is the Black church AWOL on evolution?).
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