Charlie Dates

Who he is

Charlie Dates pastors two Chicago congregations at once, Progressive Baptist and Salem Baptist, and teaches preaching at Baylor's Truett Seminary. He has taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and at Wheaton, and he contributed to Letters to a Birmingham Jail.

Hold on to the Progressive Baptist part. Later in this dossier he lists the three Chicago churches that defied Mayor Richard J. Daley's edict and let Martin Luther King Jr. into their pulpits. The third one he names is the church he now pastors. He is not narrating that history from outside it.

What you are getting in this dossier

His account of why the Black church exists, which he insists is a theological claim and not a sociological one. The reversal on who the missionaries were. What he calls the slave Bible, in language you will not forget. The chapter of civil rights history where his own tradition comes off badly, told by a man with every reason to leave it out. And his verdict on Black liberation theology, which is a gift and a risk in the same sentence.

A theological distinction before a social one

He will not let the origin of the Black church be filed under sociology.

"The record is clear, black churches began because white Christians in America would not honor the Imago Dei in black people. I think it's a theological distinction before it's a social distinction. It is that people who were made in the image of God were not regarded as image-bearers on the basis of economics and social privilege."