| abstract |
The Prayer of Humble Access by Thomas Cramer is well-loved by the church. This prayer is included in the Holy Communion Liturgy of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, entitled The Prayer of Humiliation. The prayer calls for humility gathering at the Lord's Table to partake of the sacraments. But one sentence of this prayer rattles my consciousness as a Black clergy-woman serving in the Black Protestant Church: "We are not so much worthy to gather the crumbs from beneath your table."
The purpose of this paper is to critique if the Black Protestant Church is using a language centered around Holy Communion that can bring healing and reconciliation between the Black community and the Black church, which might hold an embedded white supremacist theology, that does not empower the community it serves. This is not to suggest that the Prayer of Humble Access is racist in language, but to discern that the Black Protestant Church is conscious of words that can be disempowering and oppressive to marginalized communities experiencing trauma through racism and other forms of oppression. This paper serves to invite the Black community back to the Lord's Table.
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