The Rural Black Church is dying

In the last few days, I have been in conversations with ministers on Rural Churches. At a meeting of white and black ministers, a young black minister said that the rural black church is dying and that it is irrelevant when it comes to our young people. Later that day at a meeting trying to inform all communities about the dangers of diabetes, an older black pastor said, not only is the rural black church dying, many are trying to kill it. In addition to serving as a pastor and owning my own pharmacies at one time, I also teach Christian Ethics for Master of Divinity students at the seminary level. Having only a Master of Divinity Degree myself, I enrolled in the Master of Theology degree program to improve myself. I had planned to focus on the Theology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. During a seminar on his theology, I read the book, The Divided Mind of the Black Church. Theology, Piety, and Public Witness by Raphael G. Warnock. That book caused me to take a hard look at my context, the Rural Black Church. While The Black Church in the African American Experience by C. Eric Lincoln has a section on the Rural Black Church, there were few if any other resources. I found the papers of Dr. John Malcus Ellison, the first African-American president of Virginia Union University in their Wilder Library. In the 1930's, Dr. Ellison studied Negro Rural Life and the Rural Negro Church for Virginia Polytechnic Institute. There is also Dark Glory, A Picture of the Church Among Negroes in the Rural South, written by Dr. Harry Richardson, the founder of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. That book was published in 1947. Ralph A. Felton of Drew Theological Seminary wrote along the same lines of Dr. Richardson, These My Brethren: A Study of 570 Negore Churches and 1542 Negore Homes in the Rural South in 1950. Amazingly, many of the problems outlined over 70 years ago, still exist. There has been little if any follow through on many of the recommendations made in both books. If the Rural Black Church is to survive, the discussion must begin. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and we cannot continue to exist in a past that is no longer a reality.

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