He is also an anthology that explores the sexual politics of black churches so without further ado please welcome josef sorret. [applause] good evening everyone. Thank you valerie for that introduction thread i want to thank our sponsors as well as their host for the opportunity to moderate this panel of insightful incisive commentators engaging leaders that i want to quickly stay themes of our panel and introduce a panelist and open it up for conversation. Of course this evening our event is entitled the New Jerusalem black life life the church in the struggle for democracy. Our hosts have given us the charge of taking on the theme of the fact that religious belief religious institutions and religious people came to be seen as essential to social freedom. This remains the central paradox in africanamerican life and political history. Our discussion will examine the overlapping challenges of creating a basis for collective activism building independent black institutions determining the place of men women politics and religion in leadership. Now to our panelists who all have long is such that they could take up the entire night so i will list the titles of their books and move into the conversation. First to my most immediate right and moving further along the panel. First is anthea butler, the author of women in the church of god in christ making a sanctified world as well as the forthcoming book, the gospel according to sarah palin the gospel according to sarah, how sarah palin and the tea partier got amazing the religious right out next year. Next to anthea is eddie glaude the author of acts exodus raise religion and nation and early 19th Century Black america and more recently in a shade of blue pragmatism and the politics of black america. Following eddie the reverend dr. Dr. James forbes the author of 2000 hymnbook whos gospel a concise guide to progressive protestantism and their final panelist will be this up in conversation in a moment, Obery Hendricks the author of the politics of jesus rediscovering the two true revolutionary of jesus teachings and the universe bends towards justice radical reflections on the bible of the church and body politics. Taking a launch off of professor hendricks most recent title with a that suggest what is the most iconic and popular image of black churches in africanamerican religion taken them not from none other than dr. Martin luther king. A whole host of assumptions from for me think about our title has the church squarely fit in american democracy and black life . Reimagined black churches on the front lines marching and we forget in fact dr. King represent a minority movement. I want to invite you professor hendricks and his we move to the panel to go in whatever direction he wants thinking about what is appropriate way for us to think and understand the relationship between religion and general for black churches in particular in the larger context of american democracy so religion like church and democracy, how do we, how could we imagine them in this particular moment . Thank you. I am glad to be here with this distinguished panel all of whom are my friends and colleagues and so i trust but its a very broad question with regard to religion. They are some tensions that are usually discussed. Religion is ultimately theocratic so its not democratic. Most churches are not democratic they are very hierarchical and patriarchal so that we have that there and in its most common terms of the most influential institution black community that filters down and so in a way its disempowering to the black masses in my opinion. You mentioned dr. King. Dr. King is trying to move to another level in his ministry, that being fighting economic justice. He was trying to mount the Poor Peoples Campaign and he called a meeting in virginia and 124 ministers were invited and guess how many came . None. I think this is sort of emblematic of a sort of, it speaks to the fiction of the church at large as being the forefront of our struggle. I will just say this. The other problem is though, its not that until recently in the last couple of generations i think my generation of scholars that we saw any significant Critical Mass of black biblical scholars, theological scholars who were able to cut through some of this domination must dialogue, discourse that has permeated christian and with the result that the black church too often is held in thrall to the same kinds of misreadings of jesus and the gospel that we see in white churches. Not just the patriarchs, not the unwillingness that the ambivalence about being political and seeing jesus as a political figure, a political activist that is concerned about political egalitarianism. So these are some of the opening things i would like to race but i want to remain clear that i do appreciate the deep centrality of the black church, the black life and the black church in many ways is the only thing that got us over for so long but its now time that we can move a thing to a much more informed level and not just talk about black church is so revolutionary and in the forefront but really start to look at it more in a decisive answer systematic and programmatic way. See dr. Forbes if we could extend this and dr. Hendricks says that this strong black churches led by charismatic that king is believed to represent. You yourself are product of churches that are often written out of the story of black liberal protestant establishments that king would represent baptist and methodist churches. How might you see pentecostal churches but also the liberal protestant tradition of riverside is complicating that story . Well, first of all, i think genesis helps us to look at our problem and that is that in genesis, there is this snake that comes up and begins to engage in conversation with e. E. Fu and the snake actually purchase a paid and calling into question what god said and the implications of what we should do, so that the major religious may be viewed as probably having distorted the nature of black being and suggested that god said one thing about who black folks are and that the black church is gods rebuttal saying this is what i said and not what the snake said. Now a snake is not in the farrakhan sense calling other people demonic in this regard but what this is is that the god who calls all of us gods children thereby suggesting the democratic ideal, that the black church gets caught between listening to what the snake said versus what god has clarified about who we are. And when the black church is really being the church that in a sense god uses to rebuke what was said by the other church, we are likely to be sensitive to the democratic ideal and engaged in activities that lead us to a more democratic society. When we listen to the other voice about who we are as black people we play the games of one upmanship, of gods having the outhouse in the inhouse or about postponing the gratification until the great buy and buy. So the real challenge today is whether the black church believes what god said about us all being gods children or whether we have lots of divine dna testing testing as to who wy an authentic offspring of god. James washington used to say our problem was the fact that there has been deposited by others what he calls pseudosibs pc nation. We are all part of the same species that some of us are less show than others special than others and when we act like that all of the complications of the assault against the egalitarian ideals begins operating. Now wheres the black church today . My sense is we have got some folks books that are really struggling hard to be what god said and other folks are trying to square their future wellbeing was acting like they believe with the other folks say and the issue for us today in this conversation are what did god say and how do we challenge the black church to believe with the lord said rather than what the devil said . [applause] the thats what happens when you are the great james forbes, you know what i mean . Thats what happens. [applause] sister valerie and everyone i am really delighted to be part of the conversation. This has been an extraordinary day, hasnt it . [applause] brilliance on display, elegance, sophistication and nuance in the face of weeks of tragedy, right . I want to approach the question from a different angle. There is always the problematic relationship between religion and democracy. And it has something to do with the history of democracy in the west, the relationship between democratic languages of rights, equal rights, rights discourse and the religious wars. How rights discourse emerges a way to kind of navigates sectarian differences, right . Or there is always a kind of deity and skepticism of the place in religious discourse. Actually thought of religion as a conversation stopper. These are my beliefs and these are what i hold. They are not up for debate. In the Africanamerican Community are so way in which religious discourses have always been a part of the way we engage in a political domain. I dont want to be too abstract but it does want to say there is a kind of complex relationship between giving voice to political demands and religious language. Its always haunted democracy. In our Community Religion has been a crucial religious language that has been crucial to how we have given voice to our political aims. Having a lot to do with the fact that we have been excluded from the body politic by virtue of the fact that we enter the modern world as somebody elses belongings. That we were not included in the democratic process because we were less than, right . So the church gave us this space for which we can exercise our political sense of things. It became the site for black life. So we can tell a story about how black churches were the side of black Civil Society out of which comes insurance companies, out of which come schools or my own beloved morehouse. I said morehouse. My own beloved morehouse founded in the basement of the church. We could go on and on and on so the institution is as a particular sort of role given our marginalization in the American Society but what is the role of the black church today . E. Franklin frazier kind of appeared into the future when he was writing and he said the closer we get to being included into mainstream life the institutions of the world of make believe will change, will transform and some will fade away. Part of what we have to do and im going to be deliberately provocative, i always am, right . Is to try to figure out what are the demographic shifts . Would have been significant changes in an institutional life of the church that may have decentered it from being the most important institutional space in black america today. Whether or not churches or neighborhood churches anymore. How many of these institutions have become atm gospel i didnt say that. Prosperity but. Prosperity folks. In a neoliberal moment. How many folks have turned their backs on a kind of prophetic approach . Part of what im trying to suggest is there has always been to provide problematic relationship. Our institutions and central because of the history of exclusion of black folk in the United States which is made religious discourse central to how we give them voice to our political demands but giving the shifts in change. The church or churches have been decentered and part of what we have to do is tell ourselves the story about what are the implications of that fact if its a fact you are willing to concede to. Then we can have a debate. I hope that made sense. Did that make sense . [applause] well i am noted for being the fire bomb in the room so im going to go on. The black church today is that a serious crossroads. Im going to take off from what you said in a may call it even better. Ive been running emails for the last year tracking church foreclosures for the last three years. Black churches are in a state of decline and we are talking about physical spaces. You can see the big megachurch in your community but the smaller 50 to 150 person church is dying. That is partially demographic. That is number one. Number two the problem we have as younger people to not identify with tell me to keep my skirts long and holiness. Because they dont understand that. Because they dont have anybody to talk to them in a way that they need to be spoken to right now so you are losing other people. There a lot of people walking outside of the schomberg who will tell you my mother told me i was raised raised in the church but i dont want to go to church anymore because they arent talking about nothing i want to hear about. All right baby ive been waiting to talk to for a long time. Hold up. The other thing is and this is the real serious point i want to make because we can talk about jerusalem but we arent in the New Jerusalem. We are fighting for jerusalem right now. I laughed at the title of this panel because this is like the crusades right now. We are fighting for a very democratic rights right now and part of that has to do with the church and if you dont believe that all i have to say is Trayvon Martin and you will understand and we will talk about that but one of the things that people in the black church need to understand is that the religious right playbook, they take your playbook from the Civil Rights Movement. This is why they have so much power right now, at least they think they have power. Temporal power and spiritual power are not the same thing. They are not the same thing. [applause] we do not wrestle with flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. Ive been wrestling with principalities and powers this week from the rightwing and i want to look at this mic in saudi right now that i serve the god of Abraham Isaac and jacob. And that is the god we serve as black people but we cant critique this american god. God is in the thrall of capitalism and craziness that has is not looking at our communities because we link to get the pastor of a whole bunch of money for the pastors anniversary. Let me go ahead and call this out. We havent talked about there a bunch of women sitting in church right now giving all their money to pastors that are messing them over. We have to talk about the bad things are happening but we also can talk about the good things that are happening in the black church. Souls to the polls, people getting people out to vote in the 20s of election, things are happening in our innercity communities where churches are working to stop nonviolence. So this cant be an abstract discussion today. Has to be a serious discussion about where we are going because people are walking away from these institutions. They dont care about institutions. Every institution in this nation is failing right now. Its not just the church. The government is failing. People dont work. We elect leaders that aint working. If you want to your job they did with the congress did, they dont work. So churches are doing the same thing. Churches are having issues right now. How do we build up the black church to be that institution that needs to be within our communities and to make those bridges across religious lines. Because its not just about christianity. Its about all the rest of these religious traditions we have in the africanamerican tradition and its a moment where we have to come together we will fail. This democratic process is trying to crush us right now or it least what is passing for democracy. Its really a rightwing theocracy and you need to begin to think about how the message of the gospel here unadulterated message of jesus christ was a radical message that said we are for the poor and for the brokenhearted and the folks that dont have money to go to the hospital. Its not this other god so we need to really be the people who are out there saying look at who god is supposed to be an stop making it about Something Else. [applause] see if we make that move to a more practical direction many different ways you have all sort of talked about this black church emerging on the one hand but also acclaim around the christian gospels sensitive black identity. Black churches could be going in any number of directions now. When we think about the last month whether its doma the Voting Rights act trayvon we are all making claims made in response to fraser some might say in the small and black churches are free. Other folks, what is reasonable to expect the black churches and where might we direct the relatively scarce resources that those institutions have in this moment . What issues might be the most important for black churches to be mobilized . This is an important implication of the point that was making. Once we descent rate the black church or black churches from a kind of narrative and we have been talking about storytelling the way in which you tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement that begins with rosa parks not getting up. King becomes the kind of iconic figure for all of the organizing gets buried. That story blocks from you a much more radical tradition of black struggle. What can we tell her story in this particular way we have narrowed what comes into view so when we tell the story of black institutional life at the center is always the church and the church has undergone institutional transformation and our expectation is that black people will rise when the church rises. The church itself functions differently. They may find yourself a moment where our imaginations have been captured and where we cant begin to think in a different sort of way. We are blocked in some ways so let me say this. When i say black churches are shifting im not saying that black churches are doing good work. There are some preachers and some congregations that are out there on the frontline doing amazing work. But i want to think about the shift. The best example i can use and im going to say this really quickly, would be the black press. There is a moment in our inclusion where this institutional space collapsed. Remember the pittsburgh courier . The chicago defender, the black associated press. In these venues black news circulated and jet and ebony emerges on the kind of margins of this extraordinary space where information, as black public space where deliberation took place. What happened . It collapsed. Look at what is happening today. Hbcu. At one point in black history every Major Intellectual was produced there. The brain trust of the country could be found at howard, morehouse, at a spelman or tuskegee. Now what has happened . Morris brown where is he . Howard, we just saw the oped. It could be closed within three years although they said thats not true. Institutional transforming. How many people attend churches in the neighborhood where the church happens to be located . The shift in the population. Folks actually dr