Bestselling Author of Black Church Blues Tackles the Sticky White Church/Black Church Race Issue

Jan. 5, 2012 - PRLog -- During the 2008 campaign, after Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s inflammatory rhetoric received national attention, Presidential candidate Obama was forced to address a controversial issue simmering beneath the cracks of America’s multicultural fabric: the vast differences between the black church and the white church, both, supposedly worshiping the same God.

The delicate chord he stuck to deflate the negative impact upon his campaign reminds us of the enormous role religion and religious practices play in the lives of most Americans. The United States proclaims to be a Christian nation. In many ways the church is an untouchable institution with unique privileges, unparalleled tax status and an unspoken exemption to official scrutiny and investigations that attempt to penetrate its structure and expose the hidden apparatuses that keep it afloat.

I say hidden because God is supposed to be the foundation of the church. But he is invisible. He is like the wind, in that, you can’t see God, only the results of his presence. “On this rock I build my church....” But the rock is hidden to the naked eye. So the spiritual apparatuses that sustain the church are entrusted to humans that you can see; imperfect humans, who have the opportunity to obey, disregard, transpose, de-emphasize, embellish and distort the Word of God and the supernatural instructions from the Third Person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit. This is where the system breaks down.

I wrote Black Church Blues because I had seen too much hypocrisy, too much restating of the truth to fit a distorted public image of Christians walking around in a state of bliss with hands stretched toward heaven. I felt the image was counter-productive to saving souls because when people came into the church and actually saw members with their masks removed, they felt deceived, even resentful that throughout the ”holy” sanctuary, imperfection prevailed. I wanted to debunk the myth before unsuspecting recruits came through the doors, and explain to them why imperfection will be with us until Jesus comes back.

Now here is where it gets sticky. The same demons of imperfection that haunt the black church are just as pervasive in the white church. However, in the black church, the consequences, or shall we say “fallout” from the presence of these demons is much easier to see. We could start with Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s toxic, hate-driven exposes, but it certainly does not stop there.

Bishop Thomas Weeks III beat and choked his ex- wife, Prophetess Juanita Bynum, in a public parking lot. When he got out of jail and returned to his church on Sunday, his parishioners gave him a standing ovation. Rev Henry Lyons went to prison for stealing millions of dollars from National Baptist Convention. Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia settled four sexually related lawsuits out of court with former male members of the church.   Long's wife has filed for divorce. Members of Pure Light Baptist Church, a predominantly African-American congregation in Houston’s Fifth Ward, have filed a lawsuit against their former pastor, Rory Murphy, for allegedly secretly selling the church building from under them for $125,000 and then running off with the money. The list goes on.

This is big-time news, quite volatile and ready-made for boosting media ratings. Meanwhile, across town the white churches are engaged in similar scandals, but with a more hush-hush, low key containment apparatuses in place.

Evangelist Marjoe Gortner’s fake spiritual healing tour was captured on film and won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. But it was not shown widely in the Bible Belt for fear it would discredit the entire Christian movement. In the 1980’s Prophet Peter Popoff’s ministry went bankrupt in when magicians exposed his so-called supernatural knowledge about audience members as an inner-ear receiver. Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker were caught in sexual scandals. Lonnie Latham, senior pastor of South Tulsa Baptist Church and a member of the powerful Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, was arrested in 2006 for "offering to engage in an act of lewdness" with a male undercover police officer. Stephen Green, a former Chairman of the Conservative Family Campaign, allegedly beat his wife with a weapon until she bled. He was also accused of allegedly beating his son who required hospital treatment.  Finally, (of course, I don’t really mean finally) Bill Crotts, a Southern Baptist minister's son, used the Baptist Foundation of Arizona (BFA) to set up an elaborate Ponzi scheme to bike 11,000 elderly church members out of an estimated $585 million. The list goes on.
And yet, the institution of the church, as God intended it, offers out greatest hope for saving souls.

What’s the point? The point is, though both churches practice a separate and distinct brand of worship, both are haunted by the demons of imperfection. And although they engage in similar indiscretions, the white church is more adept at the cover-up or “fallout containment”. Thus, the modern black church comes off as being more entrenched in misconduct ... which is absolutely not the case.

Black Church Blues goes behind the scenes to expose the true, uncut, unfiltered black church. But by no means is the book intended to let other churches off the hook. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory. But some cover it up better than others.

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Leander Jackie Grogan, Author of new bestseller, Black Church Blues
http://www.groganbooks.com/blackchurchblues.html