Abandoned by my church: I love God, but the black church has failed me

Sunday morning arrived, like so many before, with a mix ofsunlight and chirping birds outside my bedroom window and a warmgreeting from my tiny son, lying beside my wife and me. My wife rosequickly, announcing her plan to jump in the shower and get ready forSunday school at the Baptist church, not far from our house insuburban Chicago, that she and our two children attend.

As for me, in what has become my ritual nowadays, I turned overand pulled the covers up around my head. Soon I overheard my 9-year-old daughter's familiar question: "Mommy, is Daddy going to churchwith us?"

"No-o-o-o," my wife replied. After months of my failure toaccompany them, she has abandoned the excuse that "Daddy has a lotof work to do."

Sunday mornings used to mean something special to me. But now Iface them with dread, with a bittersweet sorrow that tugs at myheart and a headache-inducing tension that makes me reach for theAdvil. I am torn between my desire to play hooky from church and myPentecostal indoctrination that Sunday is the Lord's day, a day ofworship when real men are supposed to lead their families into thehouse of God.

Once, that's what I did. I am the grandson of a pastor and am alicensed minister. I love God, and I love the church. I know church-speak and feel as comfortable shouting hallelujahs and amens andlifting my hands in the sanctuary as I do putting on my socks. Ihave danced in the spirit, spoken in tongues and proclaimed JesusChrist as my Lord and savior. I once arrived faithfully at the doorof every prayer meeting and went to nearly every Bible study andmonthlong revival. I attended umpteen services, even the midnightmusicals and my church's annual national meetings, like the one heldtwo weeks ago in Kansas City.

Yet I now feel disconnected. I am disconnected. Not necessarilyfrom God, but from the church.

What happened? Probably the same thing that has happened tothousands, if not tens of thousands, of African-American men who nowfile into coffee shops or bowling alleys or baseball stadiums onSundays instead of heading to church, or who lose themselves in thehaze of mowing the lawn or waxing their cars. Somewhere along theway, for us, for me, the church -- the collective of black churchesof the Christian faith, regardless of denomination -- lost itsmeaning, its relevance. It seems to have no discernible message forwhat ails the 21st-century black male soul.

While there are still many black men who do go to church, anypastor will admit that there are far more who don't. JawanzaKunjufu, a Chicago educator and author of Adam! Where are You?: WhyMost Black Men Don't Go to Church, contends that 75 percent of theblack church is female. The church's finger seems farthest from thepulse of those black men who seem to be most lost and drifting in adestructive sea of fatalism and pathology, with no immediate sign ofthe shore or of search and rescue crews. Without the church, most ofthose men are doomed. But it seems clear to me that the church doesnot -- will not -- seek out black men, or perhaps even mourn ourdisappearance from the pews.

Instead, it seems to have turned inward. It seems to exist forthe perpetuation of itself -- for the erecting of grandiose templesof brick and mortar and for the care of pastors and the salariedadministrative staff. Not long ago, a preacher friend confided: "Theblack church is in a struggle for its collective soul -- to finditself in an age when it is consumed by the God of materialism."

This preoccupation with the material world is pervasive, and hasbred a culture that has left a trail of blood and tears in blackneighborhoods across the country with little collective outcry fromthe church. Still, it's one thing for the world to be ensnared bythe trappings of materialism -- but the church?

I am incensed by Mercedes-buying preachers who live in suburbanmeadows far from the inner-city ghettos they pastor, where they bidparishioners to sacrifice in the name of God. I am angered by thepreacher I know, and his wife and co-pastor, who exacted a per diemand drove luxury vehicles, their modest salaries boosted by tithesand offerings from poor folks in a struggling congregation offamilies, a number of them headed by single women. This at a timewhen the church didn't own a single chair and was renting a buildingto hold worship services.

I wonder why, despite billions of dollars taken from collectionplates -- much of it from the poor -- in my own denomination, I seefew homes for the elderly, few recreation centers, little to nochurch-financed housing development and few viable church-operatedbusinesses that might employ members or generate some tangiblemeasure of return on years of investment. I scratch my head at themultimillion-dollar edifice a local church recently erected andwonder if that is the most responsible stewardship for a church in acommunity filled with poor families.

I have come to see the countless annual meetings and churchassemblies, camouflaged as worship services, as little more thanfund-raisers and quasi-fashion shows with a dose of spirituality. Iam disheartened by the territorialism of churches, vying for controland membership, as a deacon at a Baptist church said to me recently,in much the same way as gangs, rather than seeing themselves ascommunal partners in a vineyard with one Lord and a single purpose.

But even in an age of preacher as celebrity, it is not theevolution of a bling- bling Gospel that most disheartens me. It isthe loss of the church's heart and soul: the mission to seek and tosave lost souls through the power of the Gospel and a risen savior.As the homicide toll in black neighborhoods has swelled, I'vewondered why churches or pastors have seldom taken a stand orventured beyond the doors of their sanctuaries to bring healing andhope to the community -- whether to stem the tide of violence anddrugs, or to help cure poverty and homelessness or any number ofissues that envelop ailing black communities.

Once, after a service at my grandfather's church in a smallwestern suburb of Chicago, I mentioned to a visiting pastor thatthere was a drug and gang war going on in his community. "I don'tknow nothing 'bout that," he responded. I wondered why not. Howcould he not know about something that affected a community in whichhe was a "shepherd"?

When I returned to Chicago nearly five years ago, after living inNorthern Virginia, where I worked as a reporter at the Post, I waseager to assist in the ministry at my grandfather's church. Within afew months, however, it became apparent to me that there was littleserious interest among the leadership in connecting to the localcommunity -- aside from the idea that they might potentially fillthe empty pews. And I decided to leave, though not without firsthaving many conversations with my grandfather about the implosion ofchurch ministry.

And further contributing to my disappearing act is that, afterbeing put down and put upon in a society that relegates black menlargely to second-class status, the last place I want to feel thatway is at church. And yet, in the church, where I have at times inmy life felt the most uplifted, I have at other times felt greatlydiminished, most often by insecure leaders. If such leaders feelthreatened by your ability to speak or preach or teach better thanthey, or by the fact that you think differently from them, or by thefact that you possess some other social badge they do not -- like acollege education -- then they perceive you as stealing a little oftheir sheen in the public's eyes. And you become subject to the samekind of shunning and subtle disconnection that I have seen and knownin the professional world.

By the summer of 2002, there had been myriad hurts anddisappointments to accompany my disillusionment. When the then-pastor of my Chicago area mega-church responded to my inquiry aboutnot being able to reach him for weeks, I was already bending in thewind.

"Do you have a cell phone?" he asked during a follow-up telephoneconversation to a letter I had sent to him.

"Yes," I answered.

"Then let me ask you something, John," he continued. "If you hada problem with your cell phone and you called SBC, would you expectto reach the CEO?"

His words blew me away.

Given the state of black men in America, given the number inprison or jail or headed that way; given the thousands of us whofind our way to early graves and the black men on the other side ofthe guns who send us there; given the number of us who seek solacein a bottle of liquor or in illegal drugs; given the number whosilently cry ourselves to sleep at night, it seems that we wouldmake for a plentiful harvest for a church really seeking souls.

I suspect, however, that as long as our wives, our children andour money flow through the church's doors; as long as there arestill a few bodies to fill the seats; as long as the church canclaim a semblance of relevance to the community; as long as some ofus on the outside loom as potential critics of the direction, heartand stewardship of those black men charged with leading the church,very few are likely to ever come looking for us.

I could be wrong. My criticism might be too harsh. But it is noharsher than my pain.

And so I have taken some solace in the words of the Rev. MartinLuther King Jr., who, more than 40 years ago in his "Letter From aBirmingham Jail," wrote that the church was in danger of being"dismissed as an irrelevant social club." "In deep disappointment Ihave wept over the laxity of the church," he lamented. "But beassured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deepdisappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love thechurch."

So do I.

And come Sunday mornings, especially on Sunday mornings, I missthe rev of the organ. I miss the spiritual song drifting through thesanctuary. I miss the sight of the gray-haired church mothers intheir Sunday regalia and their warm embrace after service. I missthe sound of a spirit-filled choir whose song can be a salve to ahurting soul. I miss the beauty of worship, of lifting my hands inthe awesome wonder of fellowship with my sisters and brothers inChrist gathered in the house of God with my family.

"Imani, have you said bye to Daddy?" my wife called to ourdaughter.

"I already did," she answered.

Actually, we hadn't said goodbye. A few minutes earlier, I hadcalled her upstairs and given her a dollar for Sunday offering andhugged her tight, unable to address her question about why Daddydoesn't go to church anymore.

Perhaps I will explain one day. Or perhaps I won't have to.

John Fountain, a journalism professor at the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign, was a reporter at the Washington Postfrom 1995 to 2000. He is the author of True Vine: A Young BlackMan's Journey of Faith, Hope and Clarity (Public Affairs). E-mail:author@Johnwfountain.com