Sentences with phrase «class black churches»

In so doing, however, they will be increasing the pool of middle - class blacks and decreasing the membership (at least relatively) of middle - class black churches; for it is common knowledge that the faster blacks become middle - class the faster they leave the church.

That dynamism is not the dominant pattern in middle - class black churches is a virtually undisputed fact, empirically verifiable by any unbiased investigator in most communities where middle - class blacks practice religion.

Not exact matches

The murderer on - the - run preacher in The Apostle who founds a church where class and status make no difference, a congregation of displaced misfits who are poor and poorer, dumb and dumber, black and white, male and female, and fatter and fatter still, is telling people who need to hear (because they can't read) what they most need to know to turn their lives around: They can be saved, despite it all, if they believe in Jesus and «Holy Ghost power.»

I grew up in Detroit, among urban, working - class blacks while my white mother sent me to a suburban, lily white, private Christian school and a large, white Baptist Church who denied me baptism in 1987 for being «half - black.»

Statistics indicate that major denominations — including traditional black churches — have increasingly exclusive memberships, defined along economic, class and ethnic lines.

Black upper - middle - class Christians generally attend the Episcopal, Methodist or Baptist church in their area that fits their socioeconomic circumstances.

Here was a black man obviously involved to some degree in the theft of church funds and the murder of a white man in a southern city, now on trial in «the Man's» court before an all - white middle - class jury.

This failure is perhaps due to the cultural distance between the English - dominated mainline churches and working - class blacks — many of whom also find the charismatics» conservative theology more appealing.

Nash then proceeds to write about craft organizations, working - class taverns, benevolent societies, free black churches, and reform associations.

At least you weren't asked to leave - unlike a black family that once came to my middle - class Presbyterian church near Detroit.

In the traditionally middle - class black neighborhood of Chatham, for example, the decline in high - paying industrial jobs has important ramifications for Carter Temple (Christian Methodist Episcopal) and the other thriving African - American churches.

The more intense religiosity of black and lower - class churches remained largely unavailable to the white middle - class members of the counterculture.

If the middle - class churches are to grow, they must recruit new members from among the mass of blacks, who, obviously, are lower - if not under - class.

Black middle - class churches, on the other hand, have generally turned a deaf ear to calls to faithfulness.

But notwithstanding their rhetoric, black Baptists or Methodists — who enjoy the largest following and are the most middle class of all black churches — have no incentive for uniting intradenominationally, let alone interdenominationally.

Thus, above all, the black middle - class church must foster love of learning — something altogether different from collecting certificates and degrees.

To this end each black church can do three things: (1) acquire the techniques and use its resources to build up in the homes of its members a sense of the value of knowledge; (2) develop learning opportunities in the church; (3) underwrite financially first - class departments of religion in black colleges (or at least in one such college).

The problem of growth in black middle - class churches will not be solved by their being emotional like the folk.

Some argue that the black middle - class churches» loss of vitality is proof of the failure of integration.

The erosion of middle - class church membership could be explained away as just another indication that blacks are no different from whites.

On this premise, to work for social and economic justice and for religious and cultural quality is to work for the end of black middle - class churches and, eventually, of all black churches.

The trouble with this diagnosis is that ever since Reconstruction black middle - class churches have neither intended nor pretended to be anything other than socialization centers, where charitable activities crowded out prophetic witness and community spirit (as the significant exceptions make perfectly clear).

Let me repeat: the love of learning will not in itself ensure the growth of a black middle - class church, but without it in the equation there will be no healthy black middle - class church.

The tension between black churchmen and the women's movement, then, seems to represent the defensive perspective of the black, middle - class, patriarchal church.

In the 1962 issue (then called the Bulletin), there was a small piece about how two graduates, Ruth Turner, M.A.T.» 62, and Jean Bennett, M.A.T.» 62, spent the summer holding classes in a converted church for black children in Prince Edward County, Va..

They began to use churches and refurbished old buildings to hold classes, often taught by other blacks people who could barely read themselves.