Is the Black church dead? No the Black male is.
Several articles have been released proclaiming the Black church as dead. In life there are facts and there are truths. If I pronounce to a 5 year old child right before she goes to bed that the sun will supernova and destroy all life in the solar system I have stated a fact and that 5 year old will not rest well that night. If I later explain to her that the sun will not supernova for a billion years I have now spoken the truth. Truth is always larger than facts, facts are the tools of propagandist, advertisers and those who need to slant their messages for personal gain. The truth is the Black man has died, the church’s life is subordinate to the life of healthy Black males.
The church is an institution, no institution is immune to the collective dark side of man. As John Stuart Mill’s prescient essay “On Liberty” forecast, “institutions take on the same organic properties as those humans who originated those institutions.” As overwhelming evidence lends, witness the past two years where we have seen America’s banking, real-estate, automobile, healthcare and educational institutions all collapse based on the greed, narcissism and material addiction of a few amoral men. The Black church’s impotency is simply a byproduct of the Black man’s descent. The Catholic church is in the same state of abyss (as their Popes cover up institutional child abuse by their own priest’s). Like the drug addict that can still afford it’s addiction the Catholic church still appears reasonably functional because it does not have the same cultural microscopes so critical put upon Black America and the Black church which can no longer support it’s addiction.
The failure of our greatest institutions therefore is the failure of conscious Black men being the norm. The archetypal Black male today is thuggish, uneducated, has a prison record and is celebrated by a community that has normalized the unthinkable. For those who challenge my assertion that the Black man is dead I would submit empirical evidence that cannot be disputed.
- During the days of slavery Black children were more likely to live with both parents than they are today
- Over 80 % of Black children born today will never live in the home of their biological father.
- Aids is the number 3 killer of Black women in America
- There are more college age Black men in prison than in college (the key to this fact is “college age men) but it is ridiculous that we even have to debate college aged or not, Black men are only 7% of this nations population.
- Over 43% of Black woman will never be married
- Several states in the US determine prison projection growth based on 2ncd and 3rd grade reading scores. Whose children do you think they are using?
Gentle reader, before you debate me on what I just shared with you please absorb these apocalyptic factors and digest them soberly as they are undeniable and whose sources are by a variety of ideological institutions.
Black ministers are forced in a collective state of psychological paralysis in the pulpit. Without men in their seats they are forced to deliver entertainment vs. enlightenment, celebrity vs. substance and denial over accountability. Their patrons, predominantly Black women cannot be told the truth because their 75% constituency determines the bottom line of the churches financial commitments. A hyper matriarchal society where the majority of Black men are raised exclusively by Black women further reduces the few males (not men) who are in the church to males whose templates correlate more with women than men. I am not addressing homosexuals, I am talking about males whose templates were modeled 18 years or 6,570 days solely by their mothers as their fathers were never there. As I wrote in the celebrated “What are the Consequences of a Matriarchal Society” in 2003, “While Black women fill the churches their sons fill the prisons with one of three of our males on parole, probation or incarceration.” Where is the relationship between our faith and works, nonexistence in the daily absence of conscious fathers and men.
As my narrative has maintained for years, this is not a criticism of the magnificent Black woman but an indictment of Black males high and low not practicing collective accountability consciousness. Black men have an obligation to strengthen each other through deed not word. Sexual irresponsibility, domestic abuse, financial apathy, child abandonment must be refuted and accounted for by a few conscious Black men. I refuse to criticize Black women as the state of the male forces moral acquiescence upon our women and defaults to our children. Women by nature and Gods design desire to be submissive to men but in order for women to submit to men, men must submit to God; this is the only way the man can have patriarchal authority and dominion over his household. A home not in homeostasis predetermines the epidemic failure of our children and communities. As we look at the epidemic absence of men in our homes our women and our children suffer the greatest deficit facing Black America today, the love deficit. As the family is analogous to the cell and the body cannot live without healthy cells the Black church and no other Black institution can be healthy without the family unit in harmony.
In summation, to resurrect the Black church, we must resurrect the Black male, no institution can live in a healthy state of homeostasis when there is not a critical mass of conscious men. Our church is only an amplification of our men. As we look at ministers who are reckless in their church falling for the carnal trappings of the world rather them blame them we need to ask where are the men in the church who would raise the bar of accountability and collectively strengthen the minister as the brothers in my circle expect a baseline moral standard from me and strengthen my moral fiber. Perhaps the timing of this article is serendipitous as Easter Sunday is days away and as Jesus was resurrected through his father we as men and fathers must submit and place ourselves in a position of moral authority so that we can be resurrected for ourselves our families and our communities.