Before reading further, finish this sentence in a notebook: When I hear “the Black church,” I picture… Then write where that picture came from: a congregation, a denomination, a film, a family story. Keep the sentence. Everything below tests it.
The facts worth standing on come in a set order. The phrase names a family of churches, not one institution. That family shares an origin story. Its members differ in real beliefs. Those beliefs shape how each church serves. Learn them in that order and a line from Dr. CJ Rhodes, pastor of Mount Helm Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, starts to make sense: “we’re not a monolith, but we are majestic.” The guide works alone or with a group, and it ends with an exercise you carry into your own church.
The phrase is shorthand
Start with the definition, because everything else rests on it. Rhodes puts it this way: “The Black church is sociological and theological shorthand for a very diverse community of black folks who believe in Jesus.”
Shorthand packs a lot into very little. Two words stand for many denominations and thousands of congregations. That is useful, the way any abbreviation is useful. The risk is forgetting what the abbreviation stands for. Rhodes names how that happens: “when we say the black church, we’re oftentimes narrowing our focus unwittingly on one particular tradition, IE our local church, our denomination where we grew up.”
Notice the word unwittingly. Nobody chooses to shrink the picture. It happens because each of us learned the phrase in one building. Lisa Fields points out the contradiction this creates. People say the Black church is not a monolith, and yet “oftentimes when we talk about it, we talk about it as if it is a monolith.” Look at your sentence. Which building did it come from?
What holds the family together
If the phrase covers so many churches, what makes it one phrase at all? Rhodes answers with history rather than a creed: “the black church has its roots in Africa and has a shared history regarding American slavery and segregation.” He also names what these churches did with that history. Drawing on another scholar’s words, he describes a witness that would “look to scripture to give a defense of our humanity in the face of Jim Crow in the face of white supremacy.”
So the thread has two strands: what happened to these communities, and how they answered it, by going to the Bible. Relatives do not share every opinion. They share a story, and they often reached for the same resources when that story was hardest.
One text shows what that defense could stand on. Preaching in Athens, Paul says God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). Paul is addressing pagan philosophers about the Creator, not answering a modern race theory. Still, his claim leaves no room for ranking peoples, which is why a community told it was less than human could find ground in a verse like this.
The thread also runs further back than slavery. Jude 3 Project holds that Christianity is not foreign to Africa and has ancient African roots. Acts 8 is one reason. It records an Ethiopian official, returning from worship in Jerusalem, who heard the gospel and was baptized. When Rhodes says the Black church has its roots in Africa, he is describing a heritage, not a later arrival.
Observation: Read Acts 8:26-39. Write down what the passage tells you about this man: where he was from, what he was reading, what he asked and what he did once he understood. Keep to the text before turning him into a symbol.
The differences are beliefs, not tastes
This is the fact people get wrong most often. They assume the differences among Black churches are matters of style: robes or a praise team, organ or drums. Some are. Many are not.
Rhodes lists disputes that go to the heart of what churches teach: how to interpret Scripture, women in ordained ministry, spiritual gifts and the order of salvation. They include whether a person is saved by confession of faith alone or by confession plus baptism, and whether baptism should be in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost or in Jesus’ name. He remembers students in college who nearly came to blows over the baptismal formula, because “they believed the doctrine that much.”
Lisa Fields describes the same thing from her childhood. She grew up hearing that Baptists were not saved, on the belief that they lacked the Holy Spirit. A large Baptist church in the same city would have believed something very different. Rhodes offers an image for the range: “it’s more like Baskin Robbins 31 flavors than this is just Neapolitan.” The image shows the variety is wider than a few fixed stripes. It falls short in one way. Flavors are matters of taste, and doctrine is a claim about what is true. Keep the variety and leave the taste behind.
Not every disagreement carries the same weight. Jude 3 teaches that on the essentials the church speaks with one voice: the authority of Scripture, the deity and humanity of Jesus, the Trinity, the bodily resurrection, salvation by grace through faith and the gospel itself. On secondary matters, such as the mode and timing of baptism or how spiritual gifts operate, faithful Christians have always disagreed.
Be honest about the hard part. Churches do not all draw that line in the same place. The Pentecostal teaching Fields heard as a child treated a question about the Spirit as a matter of salvation. A church that ties salvation to baptism in Jesus’ name will not call the formula a secondary issue. Even a shared confession that Scripture has authority leaves room for deep disagreement about how to interpret it. Learning the Black church well means learning where each church draws the line and why, and being ready to give your own reasons from Scripture for where you draw it.
Belief shows up as practice
Once you see the differences as beliefs, the next fact follows. What a church does in its neighborhood usually grows out of what it teaches. Rhodes argues that the doctrinal tensions give rise to how Black churches do charity, do justice and develop their communities. Some churches have put most of their weight on charity, others on justice work, others on spiritual formation or evangelism.
That is why Rhodes refuses to treat doctrine as a side issue. As he puts it, “doctrine just means teaching.” If you want to know why a church runs a food pantry, marches, or holds a revival every spring, ask what it teaches.
Two errors the facts prevent
Skip these facts and one of two errors follows. Lisa Fields names both: “if you don’t understand the doctrinal difference, you will romanticize or demonize” the Black church. The romantic version imagines a single faithful church in some golden era. The demonizing version imagines a single failing church today. Both treat a family as one person.
Rhodes reaches for medicine to show what the alternative looks like: “The medical doctor doesn’t give the prescription before knowing the diagnosis.” Here a diagnosis means naming which church, in which tradition, teaching what, and why a particular person stayed or left. Fields asks those questions when she hears that people are leaving: “Well, which black churches are they leaving? Why are they leaving those particular black churches?” Someone who left over silenced abuse and someone who left over shallow teaching need different answers. A prescription written for the Black church as a whole will be wrong for most of the patients.
Go back to your opening sentence. Is it a romantic picture, a critical one, or neither? Revise it so it stays true to what you know and admits what it leaves out.
Reading Paul with your own church in view
Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 slowly. Paul writes, “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12).
Read it first for what Paul meant. He is writing to one congregation in Corinth that was ranking spiritual gifts and the people who had them. His point is that the members differ by design and none can dismiss another: “And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you” (1 Corinthians 12:21).
Applying this to a family of churches extends Paul’s argument beyond its first setting. It is a reasonable extension, but hold it with care. Paul is not saying every doctrinal difference is a gift. He is saying believers joined to Christ cannot write each other off for being different members. Which differences matter still has to be worked out from the rest of Scripture.
Then read Ephesians 4:11-16. Rhodes points to Paul’s hope that the body would grow up into maturity, and verse 15 describes how: “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ” (Ephesians 4:15). Truth and love travel together here. Honest argument about doctrine belongs to growing up, as long as it is spoken in love and measured against Christ.
Observation: In 1 Corinthians 12, mark each place Paul says a member is needed. In Ephesians 4, mark what the church is growing toward. Write one sentence on how each passage corrects your opening picture.
Talking it through
- Rhodes defines the Black church by a shared story and shared faith in Jesus rather than one confession. What does that definition explain well, and what does it leave unexplained?
- Which disagreement from Rhodes’s list have you treated as a matter of taste? What changes when you treat it as a claim about what is true?
- Where does your church draw the line between essential and secondary? Which verses would you point to, and where might a faithful Christian from another tradition push back?
- Where have you heard the Black church romanticized, and where demonized? What diagnosis would each speaker need before offering a prescription?
- Paul says no member can tell another, I have no need of thee. Is there a tradition you have quietly said that about?
- Pick one ministry your church runs. What belief stands behind it?
For whoever is leading
Take the facts in order and hold back the romanticize or demonize discussion until people have seen the differences as beliefs. When someone restates another tradition’s view, ask the group whether a member of that tradition would accept the restatement before anyone responds.
Expect some people to arrive with church hurt. Rhodes notes that some young people leave churches where pastors were unaccountable or abuse was silenced. Let those experiences be named without asking anyone to defend or explain them, and never require anyone to share. If someone is carrying harm heavier than a group can hold, point them toward a trusted pastor or a counselor.
Closing practice: sort one real difference
Set aside about an hour this week and finish here.
- Write down three things your own congregation actually teaches on concrete questions from Rhodes’s list: how a person is saved, how baptism is done, how spiritual gifts work, or who may preach. If you are unsure, ask your pastor or a longtime member.
- Choose one Black church tradition you know little about. Find its own statement of belief on one of those questions, written by that tradition, not by its critics.
- Restate its view in two or three sentences a member of that church would recognize as fair. Do not argue yet.
- Sort the difference. Does it touch one of the essentials, or is it a secondary matter? Write your reasons, and note where that tradition would draw the line differently.
- Give thanks for one specific thing that tradition has given the wider church: a practice, a hymn, a leader, a form of service.
The thanksgiving belongs in the exercise. Psalm 78:4 describes Israel’s duty to pass on its history: “We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done.” In that psalm, telling the story accurately is a form of praise. Jude 3 Project honors the Black church as a guardian of historic Christian faith and a witness for justice, and calls it, like every tradition, to continual faithfulness to Scripture. Your sorting and your thanks are small versions of both.
Rhodes ends his own reflection with a plain charge: “we ought to try our best to learn all we can.” When you finish, name one more tradition you will study next, and one younger person you will tell what you learned.