PASTOR JOHN JACKSON SR. (standing in the pulpit above) acknowledges the charter members of Trinity UCC-Gary, who are lined up in front of the congregation. They celebrated the 19th anniversary on the church on Sunday, October 8, 2023.
I started this series after a few conversations I had with some people, some women in particular. The first conversation I had was with a Black woman in her mid- to late-50s. She shared with me that she was raised in the church Down South and felt that she had been lied to growing up about the faith.
She was raised to believe that if you were a good person and worked hard, developed yourself, and your career, then good things or blessings would come your way. Yet, after having been divorced from an abusive spouse, and being a single parent dealing with challenge after challenge, she felt that her Christian upbringing had given her a false message about the faith.
She also shared that the plight of Black people in this country was tiring and upsetting. To her, Black people were always expected to forgive white racists who brutalized and who set up structures to keep Black people from succeeding in this society. She felt that Black people are not winning in this racist society and that other races and ethnicities are stepping over Black people to get ahead, and the church, the Black church, is not addressing any of this.
The other Black woman that I spoke to is in her early 40s. I asked her, “why aren’t more people in your age group attending church?” She responded first with what I call the usual answer. She was also raised in the church and said at first that a lot of people were not brought up by their parents to attend church and, therefore, many in her age group do not see church as a priority.
Yet after talking for a while she got down to some deeper issues with the church. She shared with me that too many times the church experience did not address the issues that many in her age group are wrestling with in their lives. The issues of income disparity and how Black people work twice as hard to make less money is a problem that many churches don’t even talk about or preach about.
The issues of how to handle and invest money are not talked about or preached about enough. The issues of under-employment in the Black community, even for those who have advanced degrees and who are emotionally and intellectually competent, are not talked about or preached about in most churches, and that is a problem for her.
The last Black woman that I spoke with is in her mid- to late-30s. She shared with me that she sees herself as spiritual and not religious. She shared that she is not comfortable with organized religion for many of the same reasons that the other two women shared, and that the politics of too many churches is not about liberation and justice for Black people but about people to fill seats in the church.
I spotlighted Black women because as Professor and Theologian Cheryl Townsend Gilkes titled her classic book, “If it wasn’t for the women,” we would not have the Black church. Black women are like the canary in the mines, signaling a threat to the church in general and the Black church in particular.
I started this series because of my many conversations with these women and conversations that I have had with men. The church faces an existential challenge, and that challenge is of relevancy. Jesus pointed out in the gospels, that, “you cannot put new wine in old wineskins.”
Too many in the church want the church experience to be like it was 50, 60, 70 and 80 years ago, and that is just not possible or relevant. The central theme of Jesus’ ministry was service to the needs of the most vulnerable or what Dr. Obery Hendricks writes in his classic work “The Politics of Jesus,” to “Treat the people’s needs as holy.”
Jesus did all his most memorable and miraculous work outside the walls of the church building. Jesus chastised his disciples who wanted to exclude someone because they were not in their group by saying, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
That means that while my denomination is UCC and someone else is Baptist, or Methodist, or COGIC, or Lutheran or Catholic, we all serve the same Lord and Resurrected Savior; therefore, there is more we can accomplish together than we can by huddling exclusively in our own silos of exclusivity.
The needs of people who are struggling with great human issues of life are at stake, in particular Black people in this society, which are structured to exclude and eradicate us as a people.
I don’t know if these 7 installments would help address the issues that the women I spoke with shared with me, but what I do know is that understanding how we got here is essential in the religion of Jesus to moving closer to where Jesus’ ministry would have us and where the women I spoke with need the church to be.
The women I mentioned had problems with the church but not with Jesus. They still love Jesus dearly; they have problems with the church and its rituals without relevance.
The flag and the cross, beloved, do not belong together if you follow Jesus as Savior and Lord.
Profit over people is not a principle of the faith in Jesus Christ. Individualism and seeking one’s own personal salvation and personal blessings without being willing to work for the good of all people is not a Christ characteristic.
This is a Sankofa moment for the Black church and the church in general to “go back and fetch that which we left behind,” or in the words of Jesus in Revelation to the church that met in Ephesus, he said, “I have one thing against you, that you have forsaken your first Love…” We can go back to doing our first works over—of loving people and using things so that the lives of people, especially the poor and working poor, are a priority.
I pray you be well, be authentic and just be who God intended you to be when God birthed you into existence.
Rev. John E. Jackson
Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. in Gary. “We are not just another church but we are a culturally conscious, Christ-centered church, committed to the community; we are unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.”
