Preface

• James 2:15–16 (ESV): ¹⁵ If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

Review

We are a predominately African American church but are in a community that is not predominately African American.

In addition to this, we have in recent years articulated an aggressive vision for multilingualism, an aggressive vision for local Latino community engagement and a bold vision for future outreach to the local Asian American community.

The Reality of Church Commuters

For over 35 years, our growth has relied on African Americans who are willing to commute.

They’ve been willing to commute for two reasons:

1. In Southern California, black communities are scarce, especially when compared to other regions of the country.
2. The second reason black people are willing to commute is because of the significance of church to black identity and culture.

The Impact of American Slavery: A Brief History

• “There is nothing notably peculiar about the institution of slavery. It has existed from before the dawn of human history right down to the twentieth century, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized. There is no region on earth that has not at some time harbored the institution. Probably there is no group of people whose ancestors were not at one time slaves or slaveholders.” — Orlando Patterson (Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study [Harvard University Press, 1982], vii.
  • What he’s saying is that slavery is a norm in human history.
  • Being a descent of slaves is not a unique category.
  • What’s peculiar is not slavery, but our modern concept of freedom.
  • What we think of today as American liberty is still young and experimental.
  • What black people experienced in this America was racialized slavery.
  • Before Europe and America were enslaving Africans on a mass scale, people became slaves largely for political and economic reasons.
  • Race was not much of concept before the global African slave trade.
  • In many ways, the African slave trade helped to create the concept of race.
  • Before then, one of the most common ways to become a slave was by being on the losing side of a war.
    • If you lost in a war, the enemy would capture you and treat you in one of two ways:
      • Kill you or
      • Enslave you
    • Enslavement was a kind of mercy, but it came at a steep cost.
    • Because in enslavement–while you didn’t die physically–you died socially.
    • This is where Patterson comes up with the term, “social death.”
    • When you are a slave, you are socially dead.

What Makes Slavery What It Is?

[Information in this section is derived and quoted from Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 10-11]

According to Orlando Patterson, social death is one of the three things that makes slavery what it is:

Social Death

• When you are socially dead, you are a “nonperson.”
• To quote Patterson, you have “no socially recognized existence outside of [the] master.”
• Your existence and identity have no status except through the master.

Natal Alienation

• Think of Natal – Birth
• And then Alien
• Natal alienation means that you become alien to your birth.
• Using Patterson’s language, You were severed from all ties to “parents. . .[family], ancestors and. . .descendants.”

Dishonor

• The third attribute of slavery is dishonor.
• Dishonor in this context refers to a general condition of shame.
• You are denied all “public worth.”
• You are considered to be perpetually available and rightly targeted for ridicule, shame, humiliation, and disrespect.

The power of slavery is in symbols.

The Symbolic Legacy of Slavery

• Quote from historian Winthrop D. Jordon as he also quotes the Oxford English dictionary: “Englishmen found in the idea of blackness a way of expressing some of their most ingrained values. No other color except white conveyed so much emotional impact. As described by the Oxford English Dictionary, the meaning of black before the sixteenth century included, ‘Deeply stained with dirt; soiled, dirty, foul. . .Having dark or deadly purposes, malignant; pertaining to or involving death, deadly; baneful, disastrous, sinister. . . .Indicating disgrace, censure, liability to punishment. . . .’–Winthrop D. Jordon (The White Man’s Burden, p. 6)
• “Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil”–W. E. B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk Oxford UP, 2008, p. 8)
• “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,–an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder”–W. E. B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk Oxford UP, 2008, p. 8)

Why Historical Role of the Church in the African American Experience

How do I respond to such a difficult request?

Is this from the Lord?

• James 1:5 (ESV): ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

The Lord is My Shepherd

• Psalm 23:1 (ESV): ¹ The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
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  • Shepherd is an ancient metaphor for leadership that precedes the bible
  • God reclaims to term in Scripture to communicate how He leads us.
  • Where God is leading you, He is caring for you.
  • God is caring for you holistically:
    • Spiritually
    • Emotionally
    • Socially
    • Culturally
  • Do you trust God to care for your cultural needs?
    • Some of us are willing to trust God for physical healing, for our material provision and even for our physical protection, but we don’t believe that He will protect us culturally, socially or politically.
      • Psalm 23:4 (ESV): ⁴ Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
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The God that takes you through the valley is also the God that takes you to the valley.

The Example of Abraham

• Genesis 22:1–2 (ESV): ¹After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” ² He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
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• Genesis 22:5 (ESV): ⁵ Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”
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• Hebrews 11:17–19 (ESV): ¹⁷ By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, ¹⁸ of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” ¹⁹ He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
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References 

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. Oxford UP, 2008. 

Equiano, Olaudah. Interesting Narrative and Other Writings. Penguin Books, 2003. 

Franklin, John Hope and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 9th Edition. Harvard UP, 2011. 

Jordan, Winthrop D. The White Man’s Burden. Oxford UP, 1974. 

Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death. Harvard UP, 1982.  

© Joshua D. Smith, Ph.D., 2025