African-American preaching arises out of the cultural and religious experiences of the oppressed. It reaches people in their dislocation and relocates them in God and in the promise of a brighter future.
“Telling the Story”
The proclamation of the Word of God, the “telling of the story” is essential to authentic African-American worship. There is a saying among some African-American preachers that the brothers and sisters will forgive you for anything but not preaching. African-American folk expect the preacher to “tell the story.” What does it mean to “tell the story?”
Biblical Emphasis. African-American preaching, almost without exception, is biblical. It takes the biblical message and the biblical stories and weaves them in such a way that the stories come alive and relate to the lives, needs, feelings, and existential situations of those gathered in the congregation. Each story is told in a way consistent with the biblical story, yet having relevance and application for African-American people. This storied preaching is rich with sharp words and vivid imagery for disillusioned and disinherited people. African-American preaching is filled with stories that set hearts aflame and spirits right to have faith that God is more than a match for the evil structures of oppression. This preaching supremely illustrates Jesus’ power to overcome these structures through his death and resurrection.
Prophetic Rather than Pastoral. African-American preaching is characterized generally as prophetic rather than pastoral. The Old Testament and the prophetic literature are used as material for sermonizing rather than the more pastoral material of the Bible. In addition, the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are used as the testimonies of those who knew the prophet Jesus and his revolutionary activities in and around Galilee as he struggled with the powerful Roman government and the religious establishment of his day.
One illustration of African-American preaching’s prophetic edge is that on the Sunday morning on which the four African-American children were bombed to death at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, a survey of the sermons preached in that city on that Sunday morning revealed that, almost without exception, the African-American preachers preached from the Old Testament. The white preachers without exception preached from the New Testament. That was not a coincidence. African-American preaching tends to announce judgment on the nation, and to call into question the institutions in society in a prophetic fashion whereas white preaching tends to be of a pastoral nature. Part of the reason for this is that the Anglo-American church has a different relationship to the establishment than the African-American Church.
Anglo-American Christianity is so inextricably bound to the American way of life that it sees God, country, and the American flag as almost synonymous terms. The emphasis more often than not in Anglo-American preaching is personal behavior and the individual rather than the revolutionary ethic of Jesus and the prophetic judgment on the whole community. In addition, there is not the strict dichotomy in African-American preaching of the priestly and the prophetic, the sacred and the secular. The priestly and the prophetic coexist as part and parcel of the same reality. Even where there is a clear element of judgment and the prophetic message, the celebration of life is present.
Poetic in Style. Generally, African-American preaching is poetic rather than rigorously logical and stymied by rationality. As Hortense Spillers has pointed out in her analysis of the style of the African-American sermon in reference to Martin Luther King, there is considerable use of metaphors and a greater number of nouns, adjectives, and adjectival clauses rather than verbs and verb forms. These combine to create a picturesqueness and grandness of speech. The African-American preacher relies on imagery to carry the subject, much like the language of the Bible. In the following excerpt from a sermon preached in 1962 by J. H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, it is clear that the preacher is painting a picture on the canvas of the mind. Jackson addresses facing the future with God:
But I say to you my friends, fear not your tomorrow and shrink not from the task or the lot that is yet to come. The future belongs to God, and the last chapter in the story of human life will not be written by the blood-stained hands of godless men but by the God of history himself. The same hand that raised the curtain of creation and pushed back the floating worlds upon the broad sea of time and flashed forth the light of life that put an end to ancient chaos and darkness; the same hand that erected the highways of the skies and rolled the sun like a golden ball across the pavement of the dawn; the same God whose hand has guided the destinies of nations, fixed the time and seasons and superintended the whole order of time and eternity will at His appointed hour pull down the curtain of existence, and will Himself write the last paragraph in the last chapter of the last book of human life and cosmic destiny. (Warner R. Traynham, Christian Faith in Black and White [Wakefield, Mass.: Parameter Press, 1973])
Such poetry, vivid imagery, and word pictures can be heard again and again in African-American preaching. The African-American preacher is confident that preaching is primarily an effort at communication both to the mind and to the emotions.
Dialogue between Pastor and People. African-American preaching is dialogical; it is a cooperative effort between the pulpit and the pew. The dialogue does not take place after the sermon but during the sermon. Sometimes an unpoetic preacher can be brought to new life, brilliance, and lyrical power when there is cooperation in the pew, with the help, expectancy, encouragement, and enthusiasm of the congregation.
Part of the African-American preaching tradition has been the prayers of the laypeople for the preacher and/or the expectancy about the sermon. These prayers reflect the same vivid imagery and poetry and imagination mentioned earlier. The following prayer is an example:
And now, O Lord, this man of God,
Who breaks the bread of life this morning—
Shadow him in the hollow of Thy hand,
And keep him out of the gunshot of the devil.
Take him, Lord, this morning
Wash him with hyssop inside and out,
Hang him up and drain him dry of sin.
Pin his ears to the wisdom post,
And make his words sledgehammers of truth,
Beat on the iron heart of sin,
Put his eye to the telescope of eternity
And let him look upon the paper walls of time.
Lord, turpentine his imagination,
Put perpetual motion in his arms,
Fill him full of the dynamite of Thy power,
Anoint him all over with the oil of Thy salvation,
And set his tongue on fire.
The dialogical style of African-American preaching reaches back into the wombs of Africa engendering, a call-and-response style that elicits participation of all those gathered. This makes African-American preaching a uniquely creative and beautiful art.
Teaches and Inspires. African-American preaching is didactic as well as inspiring. It seeks to inform as well as inspire. It seeks to discern the action of God in history as it relates to the existential dilemma of the African-American person, lends healing to people’s hurts, and proclaims a liberating word while not denying the reality of pain.
Some have accused African-American preaching and the African-American church of anti-intellectualism. What may be more accurate is that there is little tolerance for rarefied abstraction. The African-American preacher can discuss anything of philosophical and theological import as long as it is presented in such a way as to make sense of life and relate to the lives of the hearers. How an issue is presented is often more important than what the issue is. People such as Gardner C. Taylor, Howard Thurman, George Outen, Vernon John, and Martin Luther King, Jr. have proven that African-American preaching can contain intricate historical, political analyses while at the same time “feeding the flock.”
Declares Rather than Suggests. African-American preaching is characterized as declarative rather than suggestive. Someone once said when the Roman Catholic priests speak, they say, “The church says … ” When the Jewish rabbis speak, they say, “The Torah says … ” But when the African-American preachers speak they say, “My God told me … ”
There is little room in African-American preaching for equivocation and spurious sophistry. The moral issues of the nation are far too clear, the presence of evil too certain, to be tentative. A stand is taken on an issue. Even when a logical argument is used to present the case, the force of the preaching does not depend on argument and logical persuasion, but rather on the ability of the African-American preacher to probe the depths of the issue, to guide the hearers to reach the same conclusion. But always it is declarative rather than suggestive, a matter of fact rather than tentative. The African-American preacher is neither too timid nor hesitant to say, “Thus saith the Lord!”
Slow and Deliberate in Buildup. African-American preaching is characterized by a slow and deliberate buildup. The path the preacher takes may be winding with a few detours, but always he or she is expected to be heading someplace and to take time getting there. In fact, in many congregations, the African-American preacher can hear some members of the congregation admonishing, “Take your time.” He or she is expected to allow time for both the mind and the emotions to react in a natural process. The African-American preacher is deliberate with the material, and nobody has the sense that he or she is in a hurry, for there is no place more important and nothing more significant than what the preacher is doing: rightly dividing the Word of truth. It is more important to say fewer things and be heard and felt than to present many ideas that are merely words and concepts introduced.
The Dramatic Pause. The dramatic pause by many preachers is used as an effort to force the congregation both to reflect upon what has been said and to anticipate what is to follow. This leads to an antiphonal response and sometimes into a rhythmic, harmonious singsong. One can describe this pattern as the Four Rs: rhetoric, repetition, rhythm, rest. This was heard often in the preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr., and thousands of other African-American preachers. Often it is the repetition of a single word or phrase in which the congregation picks up the cadence of the preacher and there is almost a refrain. Recall King’s speech at Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963 in which he repeats, “I have a dream … ” By repetition and amplification, the speech builds. There is rhetoric, repetition, rhythm, and rest. The congregation echoes and verifies the preacher’s own words in such a way as to make them emphatic.
King was familiar with this technique, for he had learned it from his elders and had seen it work time and time again. He was a master at euphony, carefully selecting and using a combination of vowels and consonants so as to make his sounds and words pleasing. These need to be heard to be understood, for the most effective observer of this style and technique is the human ear.
Life Situational. African-American preaching is expected to relate to life and the life situations of the audience. When it does not, no matter how well-conceived or how well-constructed or how theologically sound, that sermon is considered a failure. Illustrations are often used—drawn from history, everyday experiences, African-American history and culture, and literature. Illustrations from biblical literature are shaped in such a way as to relate the experience to the lives of as many persons as possible.
The Element of Hope. There is always an element of hope and optimism in African-American preaching. No matter how dark or gloomy a picture has been painted, there is always a “but” or a “nevertheless” or an element in the climax of the sermon that suggests holding on, marching forward, going through, or overcoming.
This is illustrated in a sermon preached by Otis Moss in which he described drug addiction and its terrible effects on the minds of African-American families and the African-American community.
The last time that I saw the man he was on his way home. His eyes were clear with sight and insight. The scars of dull and dirty needles had been washed from his body. He was no longer the vehicle of dope but the instrument of hope. The last time that I saw him he was on his way home. His children saw him walking and smiled to themselves and said, “That looks like my daddy.” His wife looked out and saw him and said, “That’s my husband.” And I could hear the man describing what had happened to him. Can’t you hear him saying, “I met a man named Jesus and I had an exchange with him.”? I gave him my sorrows, he gave me his joy; I gave him my confusion, he gave me his peace; I gave him my despair, he gave me his hope; I gave him my hatred, he gave me his love; I gave him my torn life, he gave me his purpose. I met a man—a man named Jesus.”
African-American Preaching and African-American Theology
Authentic African-American preaching provides a gospel message to African-American people whose lives and very existence are threatened daily by the insidious tentacles of power and oppression. If preaching fails to speak to the condition of African-American people and offers no promise of life for the African-American person, then it is not gospel to them. It is simply lifeless rhetoric.
Preaching is at the heart of Christianity. Not rapping, not unintelligible gibberish, not “sound and fury signifying nothing,” not hip anecdotes from Playboy magazine or comic vignettes from “Peanuts,” not recovery groups (as helpful as those may be), but preaching in which the Word of God is declared with clarion sound and an impassioned heart that has been set on fire by inspiration and the experience of a God who calls the person to declare his Word. Such persons do not just preach sermons but preach that event in history and eternity by which God entered most fully and effectively into human life. Preachers must be persons who preach the judgment and the grace of God with passion and preparation, with fervor and faith, with prophetic vision and priestly hearts.
As important as ritual is to symbolize the acts of the faith and experience with God; as important as music is to convey the gospel of hope and the beauty of God’s holiness, in the Christian religion these can never be substitutes for the proclamation of the Word of God, the “foolishness of preaching,” the “inescapable claim” upon us. Jesus did not neglect the blind and the lame, the deaf and the lepers, the poor and the broken-hearted, the captive and the bruised—his gospel of liberation, love, and freedom was a declaration of the rule of God breaking in upon the forces that hold humans captive. He did not separate a gospel of changing conditions in society from changing the individual. His gospel is always personal and social. He knew nothing of a religion that spoke to the heart and not the conditions in which men and women live. But his words in Matthew 10 are clear: “As you go, preach!”
The Jesus that African-American preaching must proclaim has to be able to walk the dark ghetto streets of the North and the hot, dusty fields of a sharecropper’s farm in the South. The Jesus that African-American preaching proclaims is the Christ of faith who is relevant to the needs, feelings, and aspirations of African-American people. It is Jesus whose face and image one sees in the rat-bitten, mutilated faces of children, and his suffering one sees in the scars from dull and dirty needles in the body of a drug addict in a stinking, dirty alley. That is the Jesus who is not only the liberator and emancipator, but he is the bishop of the souls of African-American folk. It was this Jesus that African-Americans’ forefathers and foremothers knew and sang about: “O fix me, Jesus, fix me.”
It has been an understanding of, and an acquaintance with, this Jesus that has led African-American preachers to create new Christological categories and to declare him to be “A Stone rolling through Babylon,” “Water in dry places,” “Bread in a starving land,” “The Rose of Sharon,” and “The Bright and Morning Star.” When one hears preaching in a church where these Christological categories cannot be used, one can be certain he or she is not worshiping in an African-American church.