| abstract |
Soul Salvation, Social Liberation provides a critical intervention in the current historiography on evangelical Christianity by recovering the voices of
Christians who defined themselves as "pro-black" and "pro-evangelical" during the black power era. The current scholarship overemphasizes the contributions of
white evangelicals who organized themselves into a major support base for the Republican Party in the seventies. Further, the current scholarship misrepresents
black evangelical Christians. Using D.W. Bebbington's definition of "evangelical religion," I identify seven black men who actually defined their Christian faith
as "evangelical." Further, I examine the unique offerings that these men gave to evangelical Christian ministries between 1968 and 1979. I argue that they were
the principal actors who challenged the movement to become anti-racist.
As a whole, black evangelicals created evangelical associations, wrote theological books, co-pastored interracial churches, and started businesses with two
intentions. One, they intended to communicate the relevancy of evangelical Christianity to the social and political concerns of black people throughout the U.S.
Two, they sought to build relationships with white Christians that were models of authentic racial reconciliation. Specifically, black evangelicals believed that
their Christian faith afforded them to stand on equal footing with whites as fellow Christians and as U.S. citizens. Therefore, they spoke out against white
supremacy and white privilege in evangelical ministries and in U.S. society. However, their approaches to speaking out have defined how their stories have
been documented in the scholarship.
Militant black evangelicals or those who vehemently denounced racism and privilege in evangelical associations were expelled from participation. As a result,
they have been ignored in historical studies of those organizations. However, accommodationist black evangelicals who took a moderate approach to the problem of
racism remained in prominent positions in evangelical organizations, and their contributions to the evangelical movement have been well-documented. By recovering
the experiences of militant black evangelicals, this study offers insight into why racism has continued to plague the evangelical Christian movement since 1979.
|
