“Back to School Back to Church”
My Day By Dr. J. Ester Davis
If our children are to understand America, they must first understand the black church. So, as we dress them up to go back to school, let’s not forget to dress up their minds for prayer,
Personally, my heart breaks when there are no children in church. And yes, we cite all the reasons why our churches are empty of children, mothers and father, too. The bare truth is that our “unchurched” attendance in churches across America started before the pandemic. Three (3,000) churches started before COVID 19 and 4,500 closed that same year. Thousand of churches close every year. Between 6,000 and 10,000 churches in the United States are dying.
For Black History Month, we talk about our leaders, their contributions to society, their education, their beatings, struggles, but all of those leaders had a solid religious background. For a people systematically brutalized and debased by an inhumane system, followed by a century of Jim Crow racism, graduating to the highest prison population in the world, let us look back to history and future of the black church as a portal of what is possible when we, the people assemble, pray and march in the name of a mighty higher power. To put it plainly, all our past eloquent black leaders were raised in church. They dressed, combed their hair and were carried to church, attended Sunday School…. .every Sunday, sometimes all day. We have a generation that speaks of those times. A generation!
I followed closely the tense days leading up to the special election in Georgia when the Rev. Raphael Warnock, United States Senator, the Pastor of Dr. King’s Church in Atlanta, was elected the first African American ever sent to the Senate from his State and the eleventh(11th)Black American to be elevated to the high honor. The first had been Hiram Revels of Mississippi in 1870, and like Warnock, Revels had been a minister. During Reconstruction, three(3)of the first 16 African American Members of Congress were ministers, and most of the black office holders at that level of government in that era were ministers. Somebody took them to church. All of this is a thunderous reminder to me of the vital role the Black Church has played marching toward ‘a more perfect union’.
In 2021 I wrote a prolific story on *The Colored Missionary Baptist Church, organized 1859, in Royse City, Texas. I was invited by the new pastor, a former member of my last choir. My research on that story traveled back in time to the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade up to the birth of the Black Lives Matter Movement. In 1859, ‘two-or-three’ slaves gathered in Jesus’ name for pray and organized this church. The nitty-gritty is Black Churches amounted to a world within a world. The Black Churches were the 1st institutions built by Black People, independently run and operated by Black People ….successfully. All of the historically black colleges and halls of higher education were ordained in the black church. And now, we are going to vicariously toss it loosely to the wind and deny our children and the universe, this victorious legacy.
“Back to School Back to Church” is one sentence. One thought. One key. How can we criticize those who wish to ban books about slavery, when we are placing a ban on the black church. If our children are to understand America, they MUST first…. understand the black church.
*The Colored Missionary Baptist Church after 47 years changed their name to New Hope Baptist Church, Royse City, Texas and built their first building in 1914. JOIN… South Dallas Community Choir 3rd Reunion and the State of Texas Historical Society in September, 2023.
TRAVELING.. the next twelve months? Listen to YouTube/Ester Davis Network Special Edition on Passports with the Honorable Felicia Pitre, Dallas County District Clerk. New rules. New information.
