In 2010, Princeton religion scholar Eddie Glaude Jr. declared the Black Church dead. The Through Eyes of Color curriculum reads his case and concludes that he named something real but drew the wrong conclusion. Black churches no longer sit at the center of American life the way they once did. That is a claim about decline and position. Death is a much stronger claim, and it does not follow from decline alone.
This guide tests that judgment one step at a time. You will rebuild Glaude’s argument as the curriculum presents it, separate his four reasons from his conclusion, and ask what kind of evidence could settle each one. You can work through it alone in one or two sittings. A group can cover it in a single session of about ninety minutes. The exercises are built so that people who disagree can still work on the same page.
First, what exactly is being called dead?
Before you can weigh an obituary, you need to know who it is for. The phrase “the Black Church” can name at least three different things, and the argument changes depending on which one is meant.
- A social institution: the network of Black congregations and denominations that, for generations, organized much of Black public life, from schools to credit unions to political meetings.
- Local congregations: particular churches with members, pastors, budgets and neighborhoods.
- The people of God: Black believers as part of the body of Christ, filled with the Spirit and sent into the world.
The curriculum reports that Marvin McMickle, in his podcast interview with Jude 3 Project, understood Glaude to mean the first of these. On McMickle’s reading, Glaude was saying that the Black Church’s era as the central institution in Black communities was ending. That is a claim about social position. It is not a claim that the congregations have closed or that the Spirit has left.
Keep these three meanings in front of you as you go. Many arguments about this question fail because one person is talking about the institution while the other is talking about the people of God.
Four premises, one conclusion
The curriculum summarizes Glaude’s case in four reasons. In plain terms:
- Its conservatism has kept it from the front lines of current political issues.
- It assumes it still matters because of its past good works and reputation.
- It is no longer the center of Black life as a moral and social compass.
- It has lost its prophetic voice on the national stage.
Read them slowly. Each premise is a different kind of claim, and that matters for how you test it.
The third premise is closest to an empirical claim. You could, in principle, measure where people turn for moral guidance. The second is about an attitude, a presumption. You test it by asking whether churches actually rest on their history or keep building. The first and fourth are evaluative. They depend on what counts as “the forefront” and what counts as a prophetic voice. Two honest people can look at the same church and disagree about whether it is speaking prophetically, because they disagree about what prophetic speech should say.
Now look at the conclusion. Suppose all four premises are true. What follows? At most, it follows that the institution has lost influence, standing and a certain public role. It does not follow that it has stopped functioning, stopped forming people, or stopped serving its neighbors. A person can lose a job, a title and a reputation and still be very much alive. To get from “decentered” to “dead,” you need an extra premise: an institution that is no longer central is no longer living. That premise is never stated. It is the one to examine most closely.
Practice: map the argument
Take a sheet of paper and draw five boxes. Write one of Glaude’s four reasons in each of the first four, and the conclusion in the fifth. Then, for each reason, write short answers to three questions.
- Is this a claim about facts, attitudes, or values?
- What would you expect to see if it were true? What would you expect if it were false?
- Is it about the institution, the congregations, or the wider culture?
Last, write the hidden premise that connects the four boxes to the fifth. Underline it. In a group, give each pair one premise and have them report back. Ask whoever reports to state the strongest version of Glaude’s point before saying whether they think it holds. If someone cannot restate it in a form a supporter of Glaude would accept, they are not ready to rebut it yet.
Where the curriculum agrees, and where it pushes back
The curriculum does not treat Glaude as a villain. It concedes ground up front: “Dr. Glaude wasn’t lying when he suggested that black churches have a past that would be difficult to recreate.” It also says it would agree with him on some points. That is a fair way to handle a critic. You grant what is true before you dispute what is not.
Its rebuttal then moves on three lines, and they are worth keeping separate.
The first line is a causal correction. Following McMickle, the curriculum argues that the loss of centrality has less to do with the Black Church’s vitality and more to do with the secularization of America. It cites a 2009 Barna Group report that only 9 percent of Americans held a biblical worldview, and it draws the conclusion that people in general no longer look to the church as their moral or social compass. Check the logic here. If the whole culture is moving away from churches, then a church losing its central place may say more about the culture than about the church. Glaude’s third premise could be true while the explanation for it lies largely outside the institution. (The Barna figure is the curriculum’s cited statistic; a group that wants to lean on it should look at the original report and its definition of “biblical worldview.”)
The second line is counterevidence. The curriculum points to Bishop Vaughn McLaughlin’s church in Jacksonville, Florida, as he described it on the Jude 3 podcast: a K-12 school it reports at over 600 students, a federal credit union, and a mall where small businesses could use space rent free. It also names podcast guests doing current work, such as Heber Brown on food access for marginalized communities. These examples aim at Glaude’s second premise. A church building a school and a credit union is not living off its reputation.
The third line is theological. The curriculum argues that as long as God’s Spirit fills his church, she is alive and ready for the work God has given her, citing Acts 1:8. On this view, pronouncing her dead is a theological mistake, even if one is only talking about her political voice.
Notice that these three lines answer different questions. The first explains decline. The second disputes how widespread the decline is. The third denies that decline, however real, could amount to death for the people of God. The third is the strongest, but only because it is aimed at the third meaning of “the Black Church” from the list above. Whether it answers Glaude depends on which meaning Glaude intended.
Reading the texts the argument leans on
The curriculum ties its case to three passages. Read each one in context before deciding how much weight it can carry.
Acts 1:8. “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Jesus is speaking to his apostles before his ascension, and the promise concerns the Spirit’s power for witness. The verse grounds the church’s life in the Spirit, not in its social standing. That fits the curriculum’s point well. Notice, though, that it is a promise to the people of God. It says nothing about whether any particular institution will keep its place in a community. The verse can carry the theological argument. It cannot by itself settle the sociological one.
Acts 2:44-45. “And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” The curriculum notes that Richard Allen and the Free African Society took Acts 2:43-47 as their model for the church. Luke is describing what the first believers did, not issuing a command that every church must hold property in common. Allen’s group treated that description as a pattern worth following, and Christians can find it a compelling one. The distinction helps here. A church’s vitality is not measured by whether it copies Acts 2 exactly, but by whether the generosity Luke describes is present in some form.
Psalm 37:6. “And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.” In its setting, this psalm is wisdom poetry that urges the faithful not to fret over evildoers who seem to prosper, but to commit their way to the Lord and wait. The promise is that God will make plain the cause of the one who trusts him. The curriculum says belief in a God whose justice would shine like the noonday sun fueled the activism of earlier Black Christians. That is a reasonable application, provided we hold it as patient trust in God’s timing and not as a guarantee about how soon any earthly struggle will end.
The strongest objection to the rebuttal
The curriculum warns against letting online attention shape our picture of reality: “Just because something is viral, doesn’t mean it’s valid.” The point is sound. The churches that build schools and credit unions are rarely the ones that trend.
A careful supporter of Glaude could turn that same principle around. A list of thriving churches is also a selection. A handful of strong examples, however impressive, does not show what is happening across thousands of congregations. If the question is whether the institution as a whole has lost its central place, anecdotes cannot settle it in either direction. Counterexamples do one job well: they disprove a universal claim. If Glaude meant that no Black church still does this work, Potter’s House answers him. If he meant that the institution as a whole has drifted from its former role, a few counterexamples only show that the drift is uneven.
There is a second objection. The secularization explanation, even if correct, does not fully clear the church. A culture can drift and a church can still respond well or poorly to that drift. The first and fourth premises are about response, not just circumstance. Saying the culture changed answers why the church lost its place. It does not yet answer whether the church spoke faithfully as it did.
The curriculum seems to sense this. It ends by changing the question. Rather than asking whether the Black Church is dead, it asks whether God’s people will keep rising up to proclaim and live out the truths of God’s Word. That move shifts attention from a verdict about an institution to a responsibility that falls on believers. Notice what it does logically. It concedes that the institution’s future is not guaranteed by its past, while denying that the future is already decided.
Practice: what would change your mind?
Write down your current answer to the guide’s question in one sentence. Then write two lists.
- Evidence that would make you more confident Glaude was right.
- Evidence that would make you more confident he was wrong.
Be specific. “Churches doing good things” is too vague. A specific item might read: most congregations in my city run no community program beyond Sunday services. Another might be: young adults in my circle name a pastor or church when asked where they go for moral guidance. When you are done, look at both lists. If one is empty, you may be holding a conclusion rather than weighing a question. Groups can compare lists and ask where members agree about what would count as evidence, even if they disagree about what the evidence currently shows. That agreement is often more useful than the verdict.
Questions for discussion
- Which meaning of “the Black Church” did you have in mind when you first heard the question? Did it change as you worked through the guide?
- Of Glaude’s four reasons, which is the hardest to answer, and why? Try to state it in its strongest form before responding.
- The curriculum treats secularization as the main cause of lost centrality. What would it take to show that the church’s own choices also played a part?
- Is it possible for an institution to be decentered and still be healthy? What would health look like if centrality is no longer the measure?
- Acts 2 describes the early church; it does not command one economic arrangement. What does faithful generosity look like for a congregation today that cannot copy the first believers exactly?
- The curriculum says that before the leaders it profiles were activists, they were followers of Jesus Christ. How does that order change the way a church should judge its own vitality?
A note for whoever leads: keep the discussion on arguments, not on whose church is better. If people start defending or attacking particular congregations, bring them back to the map. Ask which premise the example bears on and whether it is a counterexample or a trend.
An evidence task for this week
Choose one congregation you know well, your own or one in your neighborhood. Gather what you can verify: the ministries it actually runs, the people they serve, and who in the community turns to it and for what. Avoid relying on its social media presence or its reputation alone. Then hold what you found against Glaude’s four reasons. Which ones does this church answer? Which ones does it confirm? What would it need to do for the answer to change?
You will not settle the national question with one church. You will learn what kind of evidence the question actually requires, and you will see the gap between a verdict about an institution and the ongoing work of the people of God in a particular place. That gap is where the curriculum’s final question lives, and it is a question each reader answers with more than an argument.