If there is one story this week that stirred the most outrage, at least on twitter and facebook this week, it was not the NBA finals. It was the video of Creflo Dollar, comparing the Eddie Long situation to an accident, only thing is, Long “has insurance.” One writer, Tamura Lomax, for the Feminist Wire gave outsiders what I regard to be an accurate portrait of black church life.
“However, what many failed to realize is that contemporary Black Church culture, which serves as a significant site of history, community, spirituality, hope and transcendent possibilities for many including myself, creates a context for unchecked phallocentric lordship, which often sanctions rampant sexual violence, to include but not limited to physical, emotional, psychological, linguistic and representational. (Yes, sexual violence is more than the physical act of rape, and yes I am naming what happened between Long and the teenagers as violent. Sacred trust between an adult pastor (and others) and teenaged parishioners was broken.) Thus, there is plenty of blame to go around, for it was New Birth members who gave Long the kind of totalitarian authority that he had. Nevertheless, while sexual violence is communally ratified, the onus lies primarily with Long himself.”
I was raised in the black Baptist tradition, and all I have ever known is authoritarian church leadership in that tradition. Whether they call themselves “servant-leaders”(even dictators use that title), self-proclaimed bishops or apostles, whether whether they are white or black or brown or yellow, whatever skin color, because the church has adopted the Corporation model of leadership, Churches leave themselves more vulnerable to the oppressive truth-regimes we see functioning in the “World.” Discipleship, mentoring, and having elders in the church finds precedent in Scripture.
What I cannot seem to find is the celebrity culture and tyrannical models of pastoral leadership I see in churches today. It is little wonder then that if citizens go to church and tolerate monopolies of power and nepotism, in the political sphere, they accept it as a fact of life as well. Just because someone is male and is the son of a, say famous evangelist, does not mean he has the same exact calling as his father. In the Hebrew Bible, on many occasions, the priestly tradition was hereditary, but one never really sees that with the prophetic tradition. Just as the wind blows where it will, so does God choose whom God will.
As the Lomax article from the Feminist Wire continues,
“For many, Dollars’ diatribe seems absurd. However, for others who depend fully on the promises of new mercies and the potential for divine possibilities that the Black Church aims to provide in a world that marginalizes black, brown and gendered folk, it serves as not only a twisted truth, but a means for survival. Yet and still, there is another way. Forgiving and forgetting, particularly without just accountability, is death dealing however you cut it. It (re)opens the door for a multitude of unchecked abuses of power, and aids in further sanctioning varying forms of violence. That being said, it’s time those of us who care about justice start snitching. We’ve been silent far too long. Not only that, bad theology has run its course.”
I think that today is the day that severely bad theologies of ministry should end, especially in the black church. It is high time that the pastor should stop being seen as an object of veneration, as someone beyond accountability. I think part of the failure of the Academy to interact with churches at the grass-roots level is in part a moral one, to call to account the church’s infidelity to the Suffering Slave model of ministry we see in Christ. Yes, I did use the term slave, as an intentional choice; if Paul can do it, so can I.
If there is one part of the Reformation we should always keep, it is the Reformers struggle to be as pastoral as possible. It was Martin Luther who said,
“A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none, a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.”
From his The Freedom of A Christian
In order to End the Rev, we must bring back Christian Slavery (duty) to complement Christian freedom.
