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Blind Faith

WHY INTELLECT IS NOT VALUED

ELEVEN

“And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.” —Mark 12:28-31

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Can men of God be men of science?

That was the question posed on my personal weblog, and it was like lobbing a hand grenade over a fence. A huge debate broke out over the nature of faith and the definition and larger meaning of atheism—both well off topic from the question I'd asked:

Are scientifically inclined people offended by simply inquiring into the possibility of the existence of God? Is proceeding with scientific inquiry by first denying, ruling out, even the possibility of God faulty process in and of itself? I mean, how, scientifically, do you go about trying to prove this or that by first ruling out even the possibility of the other thing? It’s almost as if scientists feel threatened by the very notion of God, that God and science, by definition, must be two vastly separate concepts. Isn’t it possible that magic is only science we haven’t yet fully explained or understood? In that vein, can’t God simply be the realization of concepts that exist beyond the periphery of our comprehension?

I am certainly not a huge fan of science—it was my weakest subject and one I was least interested in. However, I find it interesting that, as a man of faith, I’m not the least threatened by rational inquiry into that faith. Science in no way disturbs me. But many men of science become openly (and irrationally) hostile to most any spiritual explanation for anything, when, in my view, simply the concept of spirituality is just a marker on the beach: beyond this business we can explain exists the vastness of that which we cannot. Some people may choose to call that God or define it in spiritual terms. This in no way negates science. It’s not the Salem witch trials.

The arguing went on and on, with very interesting and passionate expressions from all sides. But it got me thinking about how divorced the black church seems to be from most any intellectual debate of any kind. This science versus faith discussion is not one that I've ever had within the walls of a black church, nor has any kind of general intellectual thrust been promoted or valued in the churches I've attended. Sure, academics are stressed—we want all the kids to go to college— but, apparently, once they're out, we don't want them to actually exercise that intellect within the framework of our worship experience.

It's almost as if there is a church-and-state separation that extends itself to matters of philosophy, art, and intellectual debate. It is as if we believe, mistakenly, that there should be no discourse within the church that is not Adam and Eve or Noah and the arc. And even those matters should be discussed only on the most cursory Sunday School level. This debate—on science versus faith—got me thinking about the other business: how intellectualism is seemingly not valued within the black church. which, in turn, got me asking myself why that is apparently true.

What I've found to be true is people who materially participate in organized religion tend to skew, in the aggregate, towards the more insecure and less intellectual. It's almost as if we (all of us) are forced to choose between faith and intellect, as though they were mutually exclusive. I don't see a lot of Christians (well, black Christians, as Christianity tends to be fairly well segregated) who promote intellectual pursuits, science or literature. The black church, to my experience, has an anti-intellectual culture where discussions like this one are greeted with suspicion and hostility, where progressive thinking is discouraged and technology is outright mocked.

It is, literally, as though you have to park your brain at the door. Like you have to make a choice. That, to belong to our particular African American Baptist tribe you have to hide your intellect under a lamp. Or, for true intellectuals, you have to forego much of a spiritual aspect to your life because so much of who you are is not valued.

Most black church folk I know have absolutely no intellectual curiosity and absolutely no appreciation for art or literature. They are, in most cases, lemmings who do not read or study the Bible and so have only a basic Sunday School grasp of theology— good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell, which is not at all true.

They are people looking to fill their lives with meaning and looking for a balm for their emotional pain. They find both in our comforting Sunday tradition, but it is, in many ways, a panacea more than a relationship, as the church's failure to promote philosophical or intellectual pursuits suggests the system is designed to keep black congregants dependant on their weekly fix rather than finding and embracing deeper truths and becoming less co-dependent on the infrastructure of the organization. It's reasonable to conclude that, becoming “free indeed,” as Christ suggests, would include freedom from dependency on pastor and pulpit; that both would become an inspiration moreso than a narcotic.

Scientific analysis and philosophical examinations work against the kind of gilded bondage practiced within our tradition, a slave mentality that tells us we're helpless without the pastor, and demands our obligation to the physical organization (i.e. church membership) be the preemptive commitment in our lives.

The problem is certainly not limited to black churches, but black churches have historically been the fulcrum of black social life. A failure of leadership here impacts black society—an underserved segment of society—in a much more severe way than failure of leadership in white churches. The majority culture can sustain such failures easier than the minority culture.

Inevitably, what I am seeing, at least, are black intellectuals leaving the church, young black thinkers regarding the church as more of a historical or cultural icon than as a vital part of their lives.

Absent our acceptance of and adherence to this anti-intellectual standard, many of these churches would go out of business. It is therefore my conclusion that the black church is designed to suppress free and progressive thought, to keep Black America in ignorance and bondage, so we'll keep writing tithe checks every week. The prime objective of these organizations, in the great majority, is to keep us writing those checks so the pastor, in specific, can live in relative luxury with fairly little work time invested. Many pastors refer to this as “full time ministry,” when it is, in fact, a lot more like retirement: the pastor maintaining a fairly light schedule of this and that during the week, while living fairly well at the church's expense (this is, of course, not universally true and certainly not exclusive to the black church).

There is certainly lip service given to the value of education, but there is virtually no emphasis given to science, philosophy, art (beyond music), literature, other cultures and religions, and absolutely no value placed on intellectualism as a pursuit in and of itself.

In order to support the organization, the system is designed to keep us right where we are—lost somewhere in 1965, and the dumber the better. Intellectual pursuits or philosophical thinking— anything that challenges this system— is treated as a threat. By most any objective standard, this might be called “a racket.”

Somewhere along the way, the institution of the church has wandered off principle. In many ways, the institution bears precious little resemblance to the very simple message its Founder espoused. Churches of most other ethnicities are organized to support the communities they are located in. With rare exception, the black churches here in town have no definable objective within the communities they are located in. In fact, for many of these churches, their location happens to be one of opportunity and/or circumstance, with the membership traveling from various parts of town to meet at the church, and then dispersing in like manner, leaving the community, the actual neighborhood the church is located in, wondering what the church actually does and who actually goes there. Far from being a lighthouse in the community, or the friendly church on the corner, the black church is, in large measure, an invasive presence. Loud black people and loud black music invading the quiet and then vanishing, ignoring the lonely, the lost, the hungry, and the needy literally doors away from the church.

Rational inquiry into such matters undermines this system, which cannot stand up to close scrutiny and comparison to the personal example of Jesus Christ. Therefore, whether capriciously or subliminally, the institution of the black church tends to work against the exercising of intellect, even while paradoxically requiring academic achievement as a requirement for leadership. You need a degree of some kind to lead, just don't try and employ your intellect once you're in, as encouraging the body to actually think works against the process in place to sustain the church.

Christopher J. Priest
9 January 2006
editor@praisenet.org
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