WHEN TEA-PARTY SCHOLARSHIP MEETS THE BLACK CHURCH

Hyperbole has become the new American fact! From “death panels” to our “non-citizen” President, it seems that fiction easily moves into the realm of fact depending upon who and how strongly they make their case. Indeed, a recent New York Times/CBS News Poll of Tea Party supporters show that in the last several months our political conversation has been dominated by 18 percent of the electorate. The poll shows tea partiers’ to be very conservative, male, white, older than 45, republican and angry. Oh how I can hear their heart felt, yet ignorant cries during the recently concluded healthcare debate, “take your hands off my (government provided/run) healthcare Mr. President…you socialist!” Though no facts substantiate their claims,

"More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public. They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people."

Where are their facts coming from? One would think that the current charge by Black intellectuals like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West who are calling on the President to pursue a “Black agenda” are born out of a dream that has been nurtured in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Yet, the tea partiers’ ignorance has dominated national political coverage and has shaped the nature of our public policy debate. I guess ignorance does have its benefits.

This causes one to ask, does the debate have positive moral merit when the rhetoric used to usher it in is based upon a discursive practice of hyperbole and denigration? Is the signifier of our President dressed as Hitler invite productive positive conversation, or does it lead to a politics of defense and dismissal? Similarly, has the storyline, “The Black Church is Dead” become the signifier for a tea party in which the Black church has become the only invited guest? This has lead me to an understanding of what I call, Tea Party Scholarship.

Tea Party Scholarship

Tea Party scholarship is a scholastic practice that explores a subject from a distant and detached perch. It sanctions facts to be held in absentia while commentary flies with impunity. Its scholars tend to be 35-45, African-American, mostly male, Harvard/Yale/Princeton trained, not associated with local communities of worship, faculty at elite schools with a limited Black presence, biased against local communes of religion and downright brilliant. Methodologically, Tea Party Scholars utilize the tools of critical race, aesthetic, Black British cultural and various ethical theories while employing an elitist normative gaze that cast “Black churches” and its ministry as homophobic, egotistical, ignorant, prosperity pimps who are not committed to affecting local or national manifestations of liberation. The self-identified Black churches to which millions attended this past Sunday is “unsubstantiated” in their minds, even as these communes stand as critical social and economic stabilizers in communities on the brink of total devastation.

As “philosophers” of religion, they examine an institution that is fundamentally theological in nature as a purely sociological organization. As such the dominant guiding texts are ignored or dismissed as the tonic of the ignorant (Marxian critique). The dogma is examined in an anachronistic fashion rather than an evolving and vital part of the survival pattern of millions of Black people. Critical to their style of scholarship is an insider’s language. As one reads the various essays, one encounters a vernacular that requires a Roget’s Thesaurus to be readily available. Such writing leaves out the population that needs to be a vital part of the conversation.

For instance, one of the leading critiques of the Black church by Tea Party Scholars is that its prophetic role has been abandoned. Tea Party Scholars seem to espouse notions of the prophetic that are born of a sociological framework which are at best shortsighted and worst uniformed. The term prophetic if it is to have any integrity must be examined from its biblical sources. “Oh no…not the bible”, they say. “Especially to examine the church! We might lose our departmental swagger! What will the other social scientists think?”

Abraham J. Heschel, in his classic text, The Prophets, gives critical insights into why their critiques are narrow in scope. The prophet is concerned with the plight of humanity, not with the eternal ideas. Heschel posits, there are three critical players in the tradition (words) of the prophet: the prophet, the people and God. What have we heard of God in this debate? For that matter, what about the members of this dead church? Amidst the critical theory and intellectual posturing, how is the view of God being discerned? We are talking of the Church aren’t we? Heschel asserts,

"Prophecy, then, may be described as exegesis of existence from a divine perspective. Understanding prophecy is an understanding of an understanding rather than an understanding of knowledge; it is exegesis of exegesis. It involves sharing the perspective from which the original understanding is done. To interpret prophecy from any other perspective—such as sociology or psychology—is like interpreting poetry from the perspective of the economic interests of the poet."

With this insight, one must question the bias against the church by sociologist like E. Franklin Frazier (slightly self-loathing in his view of blackness) which is palpable. He lacked the intellectual set of tools needed to understand the Church qua Church. Yet, his name has been bantered about as a source for reasoned understanding of the Black church phenomena. What of scholars such as Howard Thurman and his insight,

"Despite the primary secular and political character of the movement (civil rights) it found sources of inspiration and courage from the spiritual insights that had provided a windbreak for our forefathers against the brutalities of slavery and the establishing of a ground of hope undimmed by the contradictions which held them in tight embrace. Often those who were most involved in the throes of the struggle were not aware of the dimension of this flow of courage from the past; nevertheless, it was a brooding presence in myriad rallies in a thousand churches which gave refuge and support to young and old in the heights and depths of the agonies of the 60’s."

If Thurman is understood to be credible, spiritual insights that lead to hope and courage play a vital role in survival as well as the propagation of social movements. Tea Party Scholars miss this critical insight because of their methodological shortcomings. If Scripture is correct, the bi-vocational (and understaffed/paid) pastor who leaves his/her home and children to attend court with a single-parent, goes to the prison with a disappointed grandmother, feeds hungry children twice a week or prays for the unemployed before a big interview is engaged in prophetic acts according to the scholar/prophet, Jesus: “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’” (Luke 4:18-19, NRSV)

Like their political counterparts, Tea Party Scholars seem to have little tolerance for those who do not brandish their particular purity. The Black church has never had a uniformed standard of prophetic activity. While some marched and picketed, others feed the hungry and started credit unions or burial societies. The Church must be clear about its identity, as not to be bullied to act and think in purely political terms. To love the other does not mean that they must act/think as you want, but to see life through their eyes and enter into genuine and compassionate dialogue.

Tea For Two, Or An Open Guest List?

Who is involved in this conversation? It seems that what is really being exposed in this opportunity is the gap between the academy and the Church. Instead of being in mutual service to each other one is a stepping-stone for the other. When considering and beginning my academic path I was given two pieces of advice from seasoned African-American scholars. The first was, “you cannot be in the Church and the academy at the same time”. This sentiment suggests that one cannot be legitimate in the academy if an intimate connection with the faith community is maintained. It leaves the scholar and the Church undernourished and irrelevant to the other. Yet, the second piece of advice is contradictory in nature, “son…while you are doing your Ph.D. get yourself a small church to feed your family”. Countless scholars of religion have survived the financial hardships of the academy by standing in pulpits and receiving the gifts of the poor who tithe to pay their salaries. How parasitic it is to belittle those who at times put food on their tables or offered prayers on the day of comprehensive exams?

Pass the Sugar Please

This gap can be breached by investing in a different methodological approach, phenomenology. “Insight is a breakthrough, requiring much intellectual dismantling and dislocation...It is in being involved with a phenomenon, being intimately engaged to it, courting it, as it were, that after much perplexity and embarrassment we come upon insight---upon a way of seeing the phenomenon from within.” Heschel like the Historian of Religion Dr. Charles Long, is challenging us to allow for the data to speak for itself before we impose our preconceived categories upon it. I applaud Drs. Mark Tyler and Eddie Glaude for holding a conversation on Good Friday at the church of Richard Allen, but that is not enough. If the Association of Theological School’s statistics are any indicator, half of all Black students who will serve inner city churches are not receiving their education from ivy tower institutions, but from eight historically Black seminaries. What have the students and faculty of these institutions to say? How often are elite Black scholars willing to take sabbaticals or leaves of absences to spend a semester with these students? What if these scholars actually spent time with the ministries whose eulogy they have preached as if they were performing a post-mortem examination?

What I am proposing is real communication. Not just isolated conversations amongst the talented tenth. Two themes have emerged from my (albeit limited) interaction with the Church community: “What can they tell me about me, if they never talk to me?” This group dismisses the conversation altogether. They do not perceive its content to be relevant to their everyday operations. If included they could be allies in reform and creative partners in the exchange.

The second group consists of scholars/pastors who remove themselves from sensationalist scholarship which is so phenomenologically flawed that they do not see an authentic attempt at dialogue. They have already pegged the scholarship as an academic manifestation of “Fox News meets Religion”. They have grown weary of their service being hidden by the broad strokes of the wide brush of death and condemnation. They seek a “fair and balanced” conversation where their concerns and desires for the growth of the Church can be heard. They agree, as do I, that the Black church (even if only it exists in my head) has flaws and needs growth. What Church does not?

This is a clarion call to all Tea Party Scholars to leave the comforts of the book-lined offices and well manicured slave-labor endowed campuses and go to the local church where the bi-vocational pastor is conducting a breast screening workshop for her underserved inner-city population. And yes, stay for the prayer/healing service for her Cancer-survivor members. Go see the prophet as she works!