(An occasional series of articles written before www, now scanned. This one from 14 November 1990.)
THE Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem celebrated its 182nd anniversary last Sunday. It was formed in 1808 after the First Baptist Church refused entrance to black Americans.
Harlem, as you probably know, is the poor black area in the northern part of Manhattan Island, at the opposite end (geographically) from Wall Street and the World Trade Centre.
To celebrate the anniversary, the church had invited a guest preacher, the Reverend Dr Fred Lofton, from Memphis.
He, like a television evangelist, was wearing a splendid red academic gown. And his voice, like that of a television evangelist, had a sonorous ubiquity. And that’s where the like¬ness ended.
He did not exhort the congrega¬tion to pledge their money. His temple was not a den of thieves. He did not threaten his congregation with the choice between hell-fire or salvation in the next life.
His was a different message for a difference audience. He preached of Jesus the healer on earth, relating the story of how a woman sick with a disease of the blood for 12 years had touched Jesus’s garment and was cured because she had faith. He quoted Luke telling how the woman had spent all her earnings on doctors to no avail.
It was masterful preaching to a congregation surrounded by fear of AIDS.
Threatening the affluent with hell-fire unless they open their pocketbooks might work in California. In Harlem it is not convincing.
Who is going to be threatened by hell-fire in the hereafter when you can walk a short way from the church and see hell-fire now: homelessness, poverty, sickness, crack, heroin, stabbings, shootings, muggings and murders?
Amid this they come to church — not to be harangued with hell-fire, not to be greenmailed by salvation, not to be made to feel guilty for their original sin, but to be healed.
As the name and origin of the church suggest, it is an African-American congregation. The packed church held about 500 — 300 on the ground floor and a further 200 in the mezzanine.
Yes; that’s right, a mezzanine in the church. In Australia, few churches could either boast or need such a thing. It was standing room only — an audience of 80 per cent black women, nearly 20 per cent black men and one or two whites.
It had a stage, rather than an altar. It was an apron stage, with the audience spread around the sides and the choir in grey-and-crimson robes at the back. It was like a Shakespearean stage and designed for a play about life.
The play was in several acts. The voice of a female gospel soul singer, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, stretched octaves of emotion and the applause for a soloist in the choir, Joan Faye Donovan, rose gently with her voice and ended with a standing ovation. The tempo of audience and performers were joined.
Dr Lofton’s voice, as strong as the organ that preceded it, demanded attention.
“We stand on the threshold of a new thrust of racism,” he preached. “We thought we had crossed the Jordan River, but now we have to fight the battles again.”
The audience nodded, “Yes, yes.” Others agreed with “Amen, Amen”.
Dr Lofton continued, “The Pre¬sident refuses to sign the Civil Rights Bill. David Duke [the former Ku Klux Klan extremist] gets 55 per cent of the vote in Louisiana.
“We see ugliness. We need to be crying out like the woman in Luke Chapter 8. This woman was suffer¬ing rejection, isolation and helplessness and in this dramatic gesture she turns to Jesus. African-Americans are like this woman. When all else fails we must turn to Jesus. We must turn to Jesus.”
The congregation cried, “Yes, yes” and clapped and cheered “Amen, Amen”.
Dr Lofton’s Christianity was not one of retribution and anger. It did not demand supplication, abasement nor repentance. It was not even Jesus forgiving the sinner. In this context, the African-American has not sinned, but is sinned against.
Dr Lofton’s message was Jesus helping the innocent. There was no need for dogma. There was no need for justification nor good works. Faith alone will heal the suffering of the innocent. St Paul and Calvin had no place in this church in Harlem.
Dr Lofton hadn’t finished. The appeal to his audience had to be more than theoretically sympathetic; it had to be of practical help.
He told of his personal life. How he went from his impoverished North Carolina home to college and how his mother said she would pray for him. And the president of the college looked after him as his son.
“God blessed this black boy from Winsome, North Carolina,” he said. “And Jesus can help you.”
The message was the only tenable one out of the Bible for the women of Harlem. They stood up, they clapped, they nodded and they drew out their handkerchiefs and cried.
It was not a message of self-help, or individual conscience between man and God, but an easy message for black Americans: Jesus will heal the suffering caused by a wrong imposed on an innocent community.
Then the local preacher, the Reverend Dr C. O. Butts, told of further African-American woe.
“We pray, O Lord, for the soul of Mary Mitchell, shot down recklessly by a police officer in the Bronx.
“We will not rant and rave,” he said. “We have seen the police com¬missioner and we are convinced a firm and honest investigation is under way. And we understand this officer has other charges against him. So we pray justice will be served.”
He named six others shot by police recently.
“You will see us cry out for justice,” he said.
Then he turned to the Freedom National Bank which had closed its doors that Friday. The bank was the hope for African-Americans in New York. It would lend them money.
“This bank, like all banks, met hard times,” he said. “There was no question of incompetence or dishonesty.”
Innocence again.
Dr Butts said the people would be repaid up to $100,000. He appealed to them not to run their own bank down nor harass the tellers or the staff.
The contrast with the other end of Manhattan was plain. There, in Wall Street, where greed is good, beautiful people enjoy the good things in life. Among this congregation good people hope for the beautiful things in life.
To get to the church, I took the subway to Harlem. (No; I wasn’t mugged. Fewer people are murdered in New York’s subways than on ACT roads.) But the murders of innocent people in New York commit¬ted by young black males with guns are vastly disproportionate.
And this is the stereotype, not the people in the congregation of the Abyssinian Baptist Church who were given a stereotype of their own by Dr Lofton.
The service over, I took the bus back downtown.
When I got on I was the only white face. By the time I got to 5th Avenue and 45th Street there was only two black faces left, and one was the driver’s. People getting on and people getting off illustrated the true range between the stereotypes.
No-one is innocent.
CRISPIN HULL
This article was first published in the The Canberra Times on 14 November 1990.