It was daunting when the Rev. Brandon Thomas Crowley, at age 22, replaced a beloved pastor who had ministered to one of suburban Boston’s most famed Black churches for 24 years.
No woman had ever preached the keynote sermon at the Joint National Baptist Convention, a gathering of four historically Black Baptist denominations representing millions of people.
More than 60 years ago, a historic Black church was forced to give up its sanctuary, compensated for what it says was a fraction of its value, to an urban renewal project that wiped out the heart of an African American neighborhood known as the Hill District. Now, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is poised to recoup some of that loss and reclaim a spot near its former home. It has reached an agreement with the Pittsburgh Penguins – the NHL franchise that now holds development rights to the site near its current arena – for the church to use
The brick foundation of one of the nation’s oldest Black churches has been unearthed at Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum in Virginia that continues to reckon with its past storytelling about the country’s origins and the role of Black Americans.
For more than three decades, Bishop J. Drew Sheard has served as senior pastor of Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ (COGIC), located on Detroit’s west side. Bishop Sheard has been lauded for his leadership in facilitating a “ministry of excellence.” The church is now recognized as one of the largest and most progressive COGIC congregations in Michigan.
To tell the story of American religion is to tell a political story. A point made throughout THE BLACK CHURCH: THIS IS OUR STORY, THIS IS OUR SONG— an excellent series which surprised me because it told the truth and was not afraid to do so. It also helped the viewer understand that there is something deeper inside this religious community that lives and thrives inside a hidden code.
On this day, July 29, 1794, Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church, the oldest African American owned church in the U.S., was dedicated. Brought to you by the Black365 Calendar. Find out more at www.Black365.US.
Whatever others may say in clearly deserved praise and homage to Aretha Franklin, it is vitally important that we, as persons and a people, speak our own special cultural truth about her and make our own unique assessment of her music, life, service and meaning to us. Here I mean not letting others’ descriptions of her and her music serve as an orientation and framework for our own praise and proper due, but rather reaching inside ourselves and understanding and speaking of her in a multiplicity of meaningful and praise-worthy ways drawn and distilled from the depths of our own hearts and our own culture.