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From slavery through freedom, the “Black” church has played a prominent role as the life line of the African American community. In their seminal work, Lincoln and Mamiya (1990) proffered “The Black church has no challenger as the cultural womb of the black community.” While not a monolithic institution, and one characterized by diversity in religious ideologies, doctrines, and demographics and notwithstanding its resonate history as a powerful mobilizing spiritual and socio-political force, the Black church has nurtured and helped to define the collective identity and culture of the Black community. However, an objective and scholarly interrogation of the Black church will reveal evidence of a social institution whereby class, gender and race/ethnic inequalities are manifested, reproduced and defined.
The Black church has always been a centre for economic productivity and market activity. This is most evident by the surge of what are referred to as “mega churches” in contemporary American society, many of which that have memberships in excess of tens-of-thousand congregants and an average net income of $4.8 million (Kroll 2003).
Any conscientious observer of a Sunday morning worship service in most Black churches today will find that women make up the largest proportion of church attendees. The absence of Black males is conspicuously consistent across denominations represented in the Black Christian church community. While women ubiquitous or every-present in myriad of roles in the Black church including as evangelists, missionaries, stewardesses, deaconesses, lay readers, religious commentators and writers, teachers, musicians, ushers, choir members and directors, secretaries and clerks and in honorific positions including “mother of the church” and “First Lady” (the title of the pastor’s wife), their social status is not as fluid and evenly distributed. In other words, in many churches across denominations many women are relegated to lower status positions. Although rooted in the sacred ideology of God as the head and He (God) has no respective of persons, the Black church like its white counterpart was historically organized as a patriarchal hegemony—with men at the top of the church’s institutional hierarchy as leaders and women in lower positions as lay congregants in various relatively subservient positions as church volunteers, event organizers, etc. Both historical and contemporary evidence underscore the fact that black churches could scarcely have survived without the active support of black women, but in spite of their importance in the life of the church, the offices of preacher and pastor of Black churches remain a male-dominated position, and generally unattainable to women (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990). A plausible explanation points to a patriarchal heritage that legitimizes a gender order in which women are viewed as subservient to men and is held in place by a gender regime. Ideologies that explain why a particular ordering of advantage is natural or desirable often support the legitimacy of inequalities; inequalities that stem from hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy (see Acker 2006). These ideologies have endured through many sociocultural changes and continue to pervade many religions, especially Christianity.
As Women’s History Month comes to an end, our guests will examine through sociocultural historical and contemporary lenses the symbiotic and dynamic relationship between Black women and the “Black” church. Have Black women been unwitting pawns in a hegemonic and patriarchal scheme of exploitation within the Black church? Or have Black women used their power through the by males leaders to extract and maintain a steady pool of valuable resources e.g. volunteer service and financial support or has the church played a positive and vital role in the preserving and helping to promote the social, emotional and economic wellbeing of women and families. Have women's roles and statuses changed over time? This segment also addresses two questions Dr. Daphne Wiggins set out to examine in her ethnographical research whose findings were published in her book Righteous Content: Black Women’s Perspectives of Church and Faith. Why are women so faithful to the Black church? How is the Black church faring in the eyes of women?
The show features Elder Gloria Agougah, M.A.Div., Duke University and candidate for the Doctorate of Ministry from the Samuel Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union; author, play writer, producer; founder and Executive Director of The Vision of Generation 2000 Ministries; and one of few women elders in the Western North Carolina District of the United Holy Church.
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