Take Your Inheritance

More than 10 million black people now face a crisis of catastrophic proportions. Life in American inner cities is poor, brutish, and short; and future prospects are even bleaker.

Unlike many of our ancestors, who came out of slavery and entered this century with strong backs, discipline, a thirst for literacy, deep religious faith, and hope born of that faith, we have produced a generation that does not "know the ways of the Lord" - a "new jack" generation ill-equipped to secure gainful employment even as productive slaves. This generation provides unique insight into current economic opportunities.

Consider this achievement: A generation of poor black men, women, and children may reach the end of this century in a position worse than their ancestors who entered the century in the shadow of slavery. Unable to see a more rational future through the eyes of faith, they lack the hope that sustained their forebears. Lacking hope, they experience what sociologist Orlando Patterson has called "social death." But unlike the social death of slavery, this new social death is fundamentally spiritual. Rooted in the destruction of faith and hope, it produces a world in which history and identity are themselves divested of meaning, a world of nihilism and despair.

What, in these unprecedented circumstances, are the responsibilities of the churches - and black churches in particular? One observation is especially pertinent.

The pathologies of the cities are essentially an advanced expression of a more general crisis of moral and cultural authority that currently overshadows the lives of all black Americans born between 1950 and 1970. The black churches are not exempt from this crisis. Our blind pursuit of the false gods of the American Dream has come at the expense of institutional and political autonomy.

Lacking such autonomy, we are entangled in a web of inherited ideological and political assumptions - for example, an incoherent conception of rights divorced from moral obligations. Living on borrowed assumptions, we face moral and cultural obsolescence. In a tragically proverbial sense, we are now a church bereft of a vision.

Yet in these circumstances, there are unprecedented opportunities. For the people of God, every crisis, no matter how grim, presents a unique opportunity that can only be seen with the eyes of faith. For example, in racially war-torn Boston, black, Roman Catholic, and Jewish clergy have come together by faith to develop concrete strategies for reducing the material basis for crime and violence among the black poor. Black clergy who are members of the Ten Point Coalition hit the streets by faith, going into crack houses and gang-infested areas at night to reclaim our children (see "10 Point Plan to Mobilize the Churches," page 13). By faith, academic institutions such as the Center for Values and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School and the Andover Group of Andover Newton Theological School are devising practical methods for integrating theology and social policy to produce outcomes-oriented programs at the grassroots level. At this unprecedented time in the history of black people, God is bringing forward new wineskins into which the new wine of vision, power, and hope is being poured.

As is always the case with God's people, all across the United States there have been the faithful in the black church. But if the black church is to be faithful as the church of Christ, larger numbers of clergy and laity need to join the ranks of those being filled with the new wine of God's power. To be the force of spiritual renewal and transformation that the black church has historically been, we must put Jesus first and heed his call:

Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,...I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. (Matthew 25:34-35).

Let us live exemplary lives devoted to Christ and to serving our brothers and sisters. On the streets are young people who are struggling to live upright lives in a corrupt age, as well as those whose rebellion against the victimization of our community led them into illicit activities. As clergy we can encourage the adult members of our communities of faith to join us in working with our youth.

Let us as clergy and laity together embrace the youth, disciplining our young people and confronting them with the gospel and the love of Jesus Christ, remembering that whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters, you do for Jesus (Matthew 25:40).

Eugene F. Rivers 3rd, of Azusa Christian Community in Boston, is a fellow at the Center for Values and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School and a member of the coordinating committee of the Ten Point Coalition.