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Black Christians take the side of the oppressed. But which side is that?
IN THE DAYS AND WEEKS following October 7, 2023, my email inboxes and social media feeds prominently featured statements, media appearances, essays, calls to action, and teach-ins aiming to educate, persuade, and mobilize African American Christians at amoment when the issue of Israel and Palestine had quickly become more fraught and polarizing globally than it has been in recent memory.
Michael Stevens, a North Carolina pastor in the Black Pentecostal Church of God in Christ denomination, lamented in a Charisma essay that Israel is at war, and the Black church finds itself silent again. He continued: Unfortunately, many Black pastors and leaders have a mixed level of apathy and resistance toward Israel as well as empathy [for] the Palestinian struggle. ...If any organization or group of people should be standing with unwavering support for Israel during these difficult days, it should be the Black church.
In contrast, Iva Carruthers, general secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference (a network of progressive African American clergy, activists, and faith leaders), offered this during a series of teach-in webinars: The truth is that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew, Bethlehem is in Palestine, and there are many Christian Palestinians. The biblical Israel is not today's political Israel.
These kinds of calls -coming from Black pastors, denominations, church networks, and parachurch organizations - variously appeal to African American Christians to stand with Israel in its moment of vulnerability or to recognize the plight of Palestinians. And they all invoke the religious, moral, and political mantle of Black churches. However, they offer competing claims about how African American Christians should respond to the issue of Palestine and Israel as a group with an ostensible shared history, identity, and culture.
Scholars of African American religion have often talked about this distinctive yet diversified social space as the Black church. But the notion that there is a singular thing that we can call the Black church is contested, even as many African American Christians assume and profess its existence. At the same time they offer competing normative accounts of what the Black church is, where it came from, and where it should focus its attention when it comes to...