Through the years many Seventh-day Adventist churches across
North America have experienced noticeable population shifts. Often congregations
founded by and for Americans of European descent have become churches whose
members are people of color, usually of African or Hispanic descent.
A shift has also occurred in the Northeastern Conference,
where the entire population of the conference is shifting from African-American
to Afro-Caribbean.
�We are not baptizing African-Americans,� says Don McPhaull,
pastor of the Kingsboro Temple of Seventh-day Adventists in Brooklyn. �They
don�t even know we exist. We have not done a good job of relating to the communities
that exist around us.�
This was not always the case. Even before the founding of
the conference in 1945, Black Adventists in the New York area had made it a
point to connect with their non-Adventist brothers and sisters.
Before a split with the church over race matters in 1930,
James K. Humphrey pastored the First Harlem Seventh-day Adventist Church with
an eye toward meeting the needs of Black New Yorkers. In a move reflective of
the moment�Blacks in New York and around the nation were awash in the cultural
and political reverberations of the Harlem Renaissance and Marcus Garvey�s Pan-African
movement�Humphrey proceeded to establish an all-Black colony along the New Jersey
coast that he called the Utopia Benevolent Association. The utopia Humphrey
wanted to create was to have provided Blacks with health, educational, and recreational
facilities.
Officials of the Greater New York Conference viewed Humphrey�s
efforts with suspicion, and Humphrey�s utopia culminated in a permanent split
with the church.
Today the challenges that face Black New Yorkers range from
police brutality to rent control. For solutions, many Black citizens tend to
look for established, outspoken community activists such as Rev. Al Sharpton.
�Rarely, if ever, do they [African-American residents] reach
out to an Adventist pastor,� McPhaull says. �We were not on the front line when
the march was for civil rights in America. The net result was that most of the
community wrote us off.�
African-Americans expect their churches to be community-oriented.
Economic and social involvement in the community has been a hallmark for some
of New York�s most successful non-Adventist Black pastors.
Another reason for the shift, though, may be the self-sufficiency
that comes from prosperity. African-Americans, despite the dark legacies of
slavery and segregation, have seen their middle and upper classes grow. Despite
challenges with redlining, hiring, inequities in education, and other more subtle
forms of discrimination to which many of them point, Blacks in America have
never found the soil of success more fertile. With increased prosperity, New
York�s American-born Blacks have apparently found a decreased need for God.
Whatever the cause of the shift, it has caused its share
of tension between those American-born Blacks who remain in the church and their
Caribbean-born brothers and sisters.
One area of tension, McPhaull says, is worship. Many Afro-Caribbeans
are accustomed to Eurocentric worship styles that feature high liturgy. African-Americans,
on the other hand, have increasingly embraced more expressive and responsive
forms of worship that include hand-clapping with gospel music and the dynamic
exchange between the preacher, other platform participants, and the congregation
(known as call-and-response).
Clearly, the problems and challenges are real. But so are
the opportunities. �We need to open the doors to our church so that they�re
not open just on Sabbath,� McPhaull says.
He envisions a full-fledged community-oriented church program
that operates seven days a week. After all, the needs of Black New York, regardless
of nationalities and cultures, reflect those of the larger society. Children
need tutoring and mentoring; parents need advice about parenting; families want
help planning for their financial futures; entrepreneurs want guidance in growing
their businesses; the poor need medical care, food, and clothing; abused women
and children need a refuge.
�Perhaps we need to start scratching where they�re itching,�
says McPhaull.
_________________________
�David Person, journalist from Huntsville, Alabama.
