The Detrimental Influence of Black Church Politics on the Black Community
“Simplicity is taken to be a great American virtue, along with sincerity.” — James Baldwin
Acclaimed writer and social critic James Baldwin was known for delivering piercing critiques of America’s political immaturity. Baldwin argued that Americans frequently vote based on emotion and personality rather than policy and ideas. He stated, “I’ve got all the right ideas, but I don’t like you, and because I don’t like you, I’m going to mix personal with political.” Baldwin contended this tendency of choosing candidates for subjective reasons over objective qualifications has continued to haunt black politics in America ever since the civil rights era.
“…as long as you’re sincere in what you say, you haven’t got to know what you’re talking about.” — James Baldwin
At the very heart of this enduring issue, Baldwin asserted, lies the outsized influence of the black church, which has long formed the backbone of African American communal life. While black churches have unquestionably played positive roles in terms of providing services, community organizing, and spiritual nourishment, Baldwin took issue with the way they have engaged with the political sphere. Although unelected and unaccountable to the public, black pastors have accrued immense political capital through their positions of leadership. During election season, it is typically the pastor who brings the politician into the church to give a sermon and attempt to secure the congregation’s votes. This almost ritualistic process confers a de facto endorsement, allowing the politician to evade serious questioning or scrutiny about their policies and background.
According to critics like Dr. Umar Johnson, this highly emotive process of introducing a candidate through the choreography of the black pastor’s sermon sets the stage for voters to become more enthralled by the theatre and personality of the politician rather than the substance of their proposals. It fosters an engagement with politics on the level of imagination rather than critical thinking. By blessing office-seekers from the pulpit in this manner, pastors are able to steer the voting behavior of their congregations while remaining entirely unaccountable to the public or their interests. Hence, Baldwin argued, the enormous yet unchecked influence of the black minister has combined with the lack of accountability for black politicians to create enduring corruption in the black political arena.
Making matters worse, it has been documented that a significant proportion of prominent black pastors and ministers are simultaneously members of secret fraternal orders such as the Freemasons, Prince Hall Masons, and/or historically black Greek letter organizations. Former members of such groups have revealed through their own accounts and leaked ritual documents that initiates into these orders are required to swear sacred oaths of allegiance and engage in occult pagan rituals and practices that are deeply contradictory to Christian scriptures. This includes participating in ceremonies that involve invoking false idols and gods, kneeling at profane altars, and swearing vows that pledge service and loyalty to the group rather than to God.
Hence, at the foundation of African American civic life and political infrastructure lies a kind of Faustian bargain between black politicians and black pastors/ministers who have profoundly compromised the integrity of their Christian spirituality by binding themselves through oaths to these secretive fraternal societies. Tragically, the wider community is largely unaware that many of their most influential leaders and public figures actually owe their highest allegiance not to the Bible or the flock, but to the secret brotherhoods, their teachings, and initiation rituals. This has created an unhealthy ecosystem in which black politics operates on false pretense and hidden loyalties, sustaining the political immaturity Baldwin identified. As a collective, black people continue to vote on the basis of personality and superficial appeal rather than substantive policy analysis because their key civic and spiritual leaders are enmeshed in a web of occult secrets.
This dysfunctional dynamic goes a long way towards explaining the failure of so many well-intentioned efforts to economically empower the black community and close the racial wealth gap over the decades. As Dr. Johnson incisively breaks down, when it comes to fundamentally improving conditions in the African American communities they serve, the black pastor and politician are typically content to provide only encouragement to congregations to pray, pay their tithes, and vote — then hope for the best. There is no real concrete plan for achieving economic growth and resource control because that would undermine the existing social ecosystem dominated by these leaders.
Ultimately, real progress for the black community requires scrutinizing and dismantling this closed cycle of unaccountable spiritual-political power and pushing towards more grassroots control of resources. A good place to start would be examining the antiquated and unethical granting of influential platforms, credentials, and pillars of legitimacy to unelected pastors who then leverage their culturally inherited prestige to marshall voting blocs towards special interests rather than the public welfare. Their ability to effectively steer and speak for the black electorate must be mitigated by concerted efforts towards political education and a cultural shift favoring bottom-up community ethics over top-down hierarchies based on personality.
This is not to say the black church cannot still be a vital force for empowerment, uplift, and social change when it adheres to its spiritual foundations of scriptural morality, care for community, rejection of idolatry, and commitment to works-based redemption. But the current model in which many pastors have traded true spiritual grounding for petty access to money and political sway has wrought great damage upon both church and civic culture. It must evolve to meet the needs of the people in an accountable, transparent manner. Neither unqualified pastors nor anti-Christian secret oaths should have any controlling place in proper systems of governance moving forward.
Part of the solution lies in fostering the growth of emerging civil society groups and networks, both religious and secular, that can develop enough socio-political counterweight to finally counterbalance and reform the existing establishment. Instead of blind deference to legacy hierarchies, the focus must become prying open the gates long sealed around prominent figures, institutions, and special interest groups and requiring accountability and transparency regarding any allegiances or commitments they may have outside of the black community. Norms of unquestioned authority must give way to scrutiny. Likewise, emotion-based reasoning and decisions must give way to objective, issues-based assessment. Only once the improper mixture of black church and black politics is unraveled can a more mature, clear-eyed understanding of the public interest blossom within African American civic life. But it must begin with embracing hard truths.
In articulating these dynamics, Baldwin issued a warning over half a century ago that has sadly remained unheeded. The costs have been immense. But within the critique remains kernels of wisdom that can yet light the way forward, if the next generation takes it upon themselves to enact change. True communal progress will come not through fantastical promises, good feelings, or the same shadowy machinery of old. It will come through embracing truth, accountability, transparency, and moral imagination over opportunism.
