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07463 July 27, 2007
Bicentennial blowout
Spirited event commemorates 200 years of black Presbyterianism
by Evan Silverstein Presbyterian News Service
PHILADELPHIA - With praise and singing that shook the roof, more than 500 African-American Presbyterians recently came together for a spirited, worship-filled bicentennial celebration marking the birth of black Presbyterianism in the United States and sounding hope for the future.
The historic 200th anniversary gala, featuring rousing sermons and thunderous gospel music that brought participants of all ages to their feet with arms outstretched to the heavens, was the focus of the 39th National Black Presbyterian Caucus convention, which was held here July 11-15.
"It's awesome. That's what it is," said elder Alfreda Overton, a longtime NBPC stalwart and member of Bidwell Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. "It's been a wonderful and beautiful experience. I don't think you can go away from here the same way you came. You have to be changed in some ways."
The five-day event, whose theme was "Celebrate Our Heritage and Embrace Our Hope," was a homecoming too - deliberately convened in the city that on May 24, 1807, became home to the nation's first African-American Presbyterian congregation: First African Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia.
A special Sunday worship service at First African church was held on the convention's final day to commemorate the congregation's 200th anniversary.
Despite many struggles, black Presbyterianism began to grow with that church's establishment and half-a-dozen other churches in the North a quarter-century after American independence.
NBPC revelers - some clad in traditional African robes and crowns -recounted the turbulent history and plight for racial equality. They celebrated their common faith in Christ and lifted up the unique contributions of African-American ministry over the last two centuries in the mostly white Presbyterian Church, which even today is about 90 percent Caucasian.
The throng of clergy, elders, scholars, youth and laypersons was challenged to consider how churches could better address issues such as evangelism in their communities and brining young people into the pews long-term.
The convention also stressed the importance of African-American church growth, the NBPC's historic traditions of devotion to racial and social justice, and re-affirmed the group's mission connection to Africa.
The Rev. Clifton Davis, actor, singer, composer and minister, told the group that ministry amid today's rapidly changing society requires looking way beyond church walls. "I think the best way to embrace your hope is to think outside the box," Davis told a jubilant crowd at the convention's Elder G. Hawkins Banquet. "There are denominations that try to think outside the box and others seem to have difficulties with it.
"Some of us are pretty tired of tradition. Tradition is good. But if you're going to do the work that this age calls for, that these people around the world need, you're going to have to rethink your methodology."
Davis, who earned a Grammy nomination for writing the hit Jackson Five song "Never Can Say Good-bye," asked the audience if they were challenging themselves to find new ways of ministering.
"How are you reaching out to your youth?" he asked. "I have a feeling from what I saw earlier there might be room for an improvement in that area."
Davis said sometimes churches must take to the "highways and the byways and into the fields" to reach young people in need of Jesus.
"Bring them all into your churches, feed them the food, give them the water of life," Davis said. "And they're out there, and they're desperate and they're hungry."
Calling young people the future of the church, Davis said many are yearning to serve the church. "Yearning to be somebody in God's purse. Yearning to hold onto their faith. Yearning to embrace the hope. But we've got to set them free. Empowering the young people, that's our job."
The Rev. Jerry L. Cannon, who completed a four-year term as NBPC's president with the convention, said the question becomes how to continue being evangelists, to proclaim the gospel of Christ in and among racial-ethnic groups.
"We have a long way to go, not just because of African Americans receiving or being partners with a predominant (white) church, but a long way to go in just carrying out the gospel mandate of Christ," said Cannon, pastor of C.N. Jenkins Memorial Presbyterian Church, an African-American congregation in Charlotte, NC. About 350 adults were registered for the convention along with some 160 youth, according to Cannon, who said additional participants who showed up just for worship nudged attendance to more than 600 people.
Cannon said the multigenerational event helped the NBPC address its past and present while charting its future. The program also connected older and younger African-American Presbyterians, an important component of every convention, organizers stressed.
With that in mind, there was a passing of the torch from established leadership to younger members, who demanded an increased role in the decision-making processes of the NBPC, particularly youth-related matters.
"This is a prerogative and if our demands are not met there will be consequences," a young adult representative announced to the entire convention prior to the Elder G. Hawkins Banquet. "You will be held accountable. I want our demands met."
The litany of terms stirred adult onlookers, who clapped and cheered in approval as young convention-goers encircled the meeting venue at a downtown hotel.
Meanwhile, a range of other issues were explored at the convention through such vehicles as a discussion group-wrap up session.
Subjects included developing a more inclusive worship for church members of different ages and backgrounds to meet various musical preferences, spiritual characteristics needed to follow God into the future, leadership development and how the church can maintain its prophetic voice.
Issues of youth violence, HIV-AIDS, and declining schools were among other concerns tapped at the NBPC convention, the first such event since 2005 when the caucus moved the annual gathering to a biennial schedule.
The Rev. Reginald Tuggle, pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church in Roosevelt, NY, preached one night about maintaining faithfulness regardless of the circumstances.
"Above all else when it comes to living in the face of life's challenges, the ups and downs of life . . . the storms and the mountains you have to climb, the wicked faces and wicked practices, what God expects from us more than anything else is faithfulness," Tuggle said.
Without faithfulness one cannot praise God, he said. "Without faithfulness you're not graced with power. You cannot speak with conviction. Without faithfulness you cannot sing the songs of Zion with enthusiasm."
Dynamic speakers and energetic worship services are always a favorite of elder Dianne Briscoe, who never misses an NBPC convention.
Briscoe, an assistant city attorney in Denver, said the many opportunities for networking are always a bonus and added that she particularly enjoyed browsing through the heritage museum at this year's convention.
The room was chalk full of historical artifacts and memorabilia such as pictures and anniversary booklets submitted by African-American Presbyterian churches from across the nation, including Briscoe's congregation, Peoples Presbyterian Church, which turned 100 years old last year.
The Denver congregation is the only predominately African-American church in the Synod of the Rocky Mountains, according to Briscoe.
"I come to the convention so I can reconnect with other African-American Presbyterians and to learn," said Briscoe, whose racial-ethnic background also includes Native American, Brazilian, and most likely Caucasian, heritages.
Briscoe said she was especially moved by a speech delivered at the convention by the Rev. Katie Geneva Cannon, who in 1974 became the first African-American woman to be ordained as a Presbyterian minister.
Katie Cannon, whose brother is Jerry Cannon, gave a lively speech in sermon-like fashion at a luncheon named in honor of Lucy Craft Laney.
Laney was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, born 11 years before slavery ended, who in 1883 started the first school in Augusta, GA, for black boys and girls.
Katie Cannon, a professor at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education, urged participants to avoid getting caught up in trivial matters that often cause people to lose sight of what's truly important, such as establishing a relationship with God.
She called on the audience to take up Laney's legacy by knowing what it's like to "feel with our brains and speak with our hearts" by making time each day to spend with the Lord.
"While we're debating as to who's going to be the baddest choir," she said, "who's going to have the most dynamically lucrative anniversary, while we're arguing about who's going to sign this check . . . while we're trying to decide who's going to be the big fish in a little money pond that's about to dry up, God the creator of divine man simply wants a relationship with us."
Katie Cannon said if people could feel with their brains and speak with their hearts then maybe they could see themselves as God sees everyone.
"If we can see ourselves only as God sees us then we can accept God's forgiveness," she said. "We can let go of all those petty secret spots of ugliness that we hide deep down in the core of our being."
Katie Cannon was presented with a Lucy Craft Laney Award during the luncheon along with Dorothy E. Franklin Washington, an elder at Rendell Memorial Presbyterian Church in Harlem, who's been a church school educator and superintendent.
Linda Valentine, executive director of the PC(USA)'s General Assembly Council, commended Katie Cannon and other black Presbyterian leaders for advancing the African-American cause in the church.
She also commended the work of African-American national staff members with the PC(USA), new and old, for their strong leadership to the denomination.
"African-American Presbyterians have been a vital and important voice for justice, compassion and inclusion," Valentine said. "An important witness as Christ calls us to model all those things. You are children of God through faith. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
The Rev. Warren Dennis, a Presbyterian minister and seminary professor from New Brunswick, NJ, said he thought this year's NBPC convention was one of the best in 30-plus years of attending the conferences.
Dennis said he believed the convention in Philadelphia was well planned, featured excellent speakers and was pleased with the range of issues examined. He said he found encouragement in seeing the mantel passed from elders to the younger generation, particularly in terms of leadership.
The convention comes at a crucial time, he said, claiming that many black Presbyterian lay members are now at a crossroads in determining their future in the PC(USA). Many, he said, are at a place where they may be willing to follow African-American leadership out of the denomination.
"This caucus in now challenging itself and the denomination about its willingness to be partners and that's a real good conversation to have," Dennis said. "Whether or not the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is serious about partnership with the African-American community."
The Rev. Gayraud S. Wilmore, a founding NBPC member, retired professor, author and civil rights leader, said he believes black Presbyterians should stay in the PC(USA), at least for now.
Wilmore said in a video played at a caucus business meeting, in which he was in attendance, that some young black Presbyterians feel "that we perhaps would be a better black church if we were not connected" to the predominately white Presbyterian Church.
"And that may be," Wilmore said. "But I say it's too early to come to that conclusion. I don't think we have demonstrated yet the freedom we have. The contributions we can make within this church if we take ourselves more seriously."
Wilmore celebrated what he acknowledged in the video as positive developments within the caucus, but challenged the group to go even further.
He told young people not to be ashamed of being Presbyterian even when friends are affiliated with faith groups boasting larger African-American memberships.
"Be proud of the fact that you have held your ground and that your ancestors held their ground in terms of the mandate from the gospel for truth, liberation and equality in this world," Wilmore said in the video. "All that is still available to you. All that is out there. And it's yours to siege and to use to the glory of God."
The Rev. Joan S. Gray, moderator of the PC(USA)'s 217th General Assembly, acknowledged during the Elder G. Hawkins Banquet the need for reconciliation between African-American Presbyterians and their white brothers and sisters.
"In the midst of words of celebration and gratitude there is another word that is appropriate," said Gray, an Atlanta pastor. "And I, at this time, would like to say that word. It is a word of regret and even apology for all the ways that the Presbyterian Church down through the centuries has made it hard to be both black and Presbyterian."
Gray, who thanked many in attendance for touching her life, said she was painfully aware that in the past white Presbyterians once stood at the doors of churches barring entry to African-American worshipers.
"I'm very sad that white privilege still flows into the doors, in your faces, and the faces of others in this church and in our nation," Gray said. "And I see the word sorrow for that. But I'm also very aware that sorrow is not enough. We are called to repentance."
She asked those attending to give the PC(USA) "the gift of speaking the truth in love so that those of us who need to hear the truth can hear it and can be brought into a saving, healing, grace-filled relationship with our sisters and brothers in Jesus Christ."
During the banquet, four African-American Presbyterians were named recipients of the Elder G. Hawkins Awards, which bear the name of the first African-American moderator of a Presbyterian General Assembly.
The honorees were Betty J. Durrah, an elder at Radcliffe Presbyterian Church in Atlanta who has served her congregation in various leadership capacities as well as national governing bodies. The Rev. St. Paul Epps, a retired Presbyterian minister who continues advocating for the poor and less fortunate while serving as an interim supply pastor at more than a half-a-dozen churches in Virginia and North Carolina.
Audrey M. Thomas, a member of St. Peter Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth, TX, who has served as a ruling elder and held leadership roles with Presbyterian Women and Church Women United; and the late Rev. Bryant George, who served on the Board of National Missions for the Presbyterian Church during the 1960s and was known as a champion for civil rights. He died May 8 of complications from congestive heart failure at age 79.
In other convention news, the NBPC elected new officers. The Rev. Gregory Bentley, pastor of Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa, AL, is the new president. The Rev. Karen Brown, executive director of the Family Life Center at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, MD, is the new vice president. Joan Alston, a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Sacramento, CA, is the new secretary. Incumbent Warren McNeill of Philadelphia remains treasurer.
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