Historically, before the civil rights movement, the Black Church was important in the liberation movement against slavery, the escape movements and abolitionist movement. At one point around Philadelphia after the revolution when the British were threatening an attack, Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal church had an armed personnel ready to fight when the whites did not.
However, that was a long time ago. At a certain point, maybe now the religious ideology of the Black Church becomes a fetter on the revolutionary potential of Black workers. Religion is still an opiate of the people. It dulls the intellect to a point that the bourgeoisie cannot be outwit. But the notion of an atheistic Black masses is difficult for me to see in the near future. But maybe there are contradictions I don't see that could change that.
BTW, it seems to me that White workers are turning to religion much more than Engels hoped the trend might be in general in the working class in I think it is Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
Charles Brown (Detroit)
>>> Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
>Never been comfortable with idiomatic expressions. But in terms of the
>relation of the Black Church to the civil rights movement, you got the
>tail wagging the dog, as shown incisively by Adolph Reed, Jr. in The Jesse
>Jackson Phenomenon. Yale University Press, 1986.
My assertion was based on studies of social movement recruitment showing that existing organizations (including churches) provided efficient venues for such recruitment. This, BTW, is the backbone of the resource mobilization theory of social movements.
...if Reed argues that civil rights movement was inititated by more radical faction, and churches only followed and joined in? I cannot think of any other way of "tail wagging the dog" in this context.
But if that is the argument, this is hardly a rebuttal of my initial assertion about the importance of organizational resources. A movement can be started by a small group with little or no organiztaional resources, but it can only sustain itself and grow if it finds suffcient already existing organizational resources. Those organizational resources do not have to be ideollogically aligned (at least initially) with the movement's programs, they might be unlikely to start the movement by themeselves, tey might be even reluctnat followers.....
That, BTW, is not an endorsement of organized religion, Black or otherwise.
Recognition of their considerable organizational resources - yes, (which their leaders may not even fully control), but that does not mean that their ideology is not reactionary. Similar situation was faced by the church in Latin America - they faced the choice of either joining the popular struggle agains the dictatorship or be pushed aside. So naturally they joined and even produced a 'liberation theology' -- the reactionary position of their leaders notwithstanding. There is an old saying "if the people lead, the leaders will follow.' That is particularly true of religious or NGO leaders who, unlike the political leaders, lack the legitimate means of violence and coercion, and thuse depend to a gerater degree on the consent of those whom they lead.