Critical Reasoning, Reading, and Church
The church in the Black community has historically played a key role in encouraging Blacks to read. There was one church in the Ohio/Illinois area (I will furnish the specifics of this church in a later update) that not only taught the people how to read, but also taught them how to debate what they read (in other words, they were trained to be critical thinkers). The church has also played a major role in the lives of many of our early Black American leaders because of its commitment to reading and critical reasoning.
The church in the black community has come quite a long way since those times. This institution has evolved from the days in which the people were just struggling to read to the Bible to the present where pastors, missionaries, evangelists, etc. are witting books on a regular basis. People like T.D. Jakes, Creflo Dollar, and others have written many books that are widely read throughout their congregations and beyond. It is not an uncommon thing to find Black churchgoers that have read several books within a 12 month period (well above the national reading average of the black community).
With all of this reading going on in many of the mainstream Black churches, one must still ask the question if this trend is contributing to the pool of critical thinkers in our communities.
If one were to scan many of the Christian books that are on the market today, you will find that most of these books obviously deal with Christian/spiritual themes. However, when it comes to discussing the everyday issues (the economy, government, law) that affect the common man (non-church goers), many of these books come up short. What you end up with is a group of people that are well versed in church culture, but find it very difficult to bridge that culture with the general culture around them (with the exception of issues such as abortion, gay marriage, school prayer and related issues). This is contrary to the earlier mission of the church as I discussed in the first paragraph of this posting. Even though there are churches that are actively taking part in the everyday health of their community (job creation, benevolence, etc.), this is not a common practice in today’s church. What the typical non-churchgoer wants to know is how does church practically help them in their everyday life. Another question may be “What does God have to say regarding the war in Iraq?” This is where the critical thinker can be helpful to the church. Simply telling someone that “God will take care of it” may not be a satisfying answer that this person is looking for.
Part of being a critical thinker is having the ability to debate various issues with someone who does not agree with your point of view. In much of church culture today, there are hardly any forums provided for people who may disagree with an issue that church leadership may have discussed. Parishioners go to church under the assumption that what the pastor is telling them is always correct. This is why it is easy to assume in the black community that if you are a pastor, or you have a Rev. in front of your name, you are community leader (or spoke person of the people). If the truth be told, many Black church-goers know that if they were in any way critical of their church leadership, their membership would be short-lived. This kind of environment is not conducive for a critical thinker.
As I stated earlier in this posting, the church has played a major role in molding many of our earlier Black leaders by not only teaching others how to read, but how to debate the issues their books discussed. Today’s church must return to this mission of raising up God-fearing critical thinkers if it is to still be considered truly effective in our community.
