My Assumptions About Black Churches

I have attended a predominantly white Christian church rather consistently since I was born. I consider myself to be a deeply devoted and heavily involved member of the white church community, and it is where I feel most comfortable. More specifically, I attend a Pentecostal church. The best way I could think to describe what a Pentecostal church service is like is by labeling it as a black church, but with mostly white people in it. My church isn’t made up of strictly white people, as multiple cultures and races are represented, but white people certainly make up the majority. At my church, we are very expressive with our praise and worship. It is not uncommon to see somebody running or dancing in the aisles, or to very audibly hear another person shout “Amen!” during a sermon. Our preacher is white, but he delivers his sermons with the loud, enthusiastic and charismatic manner that is stereotypically attributed to black preachers. All of these characteristics are ones you could expect to see at a black church. If you take away skin color, my church and black churches are nearly indistinguishable from one another. That is why I believe I’ve always been intrigued by the black church community. They are so similar religiously, yet at the same time entirely different socially to what I’m used to. To figure out what exactly those differences were, I visited Consolidated Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky for a Sunday service. What I assumed the experience would be like heavily contrasted from what actually happened.

Going into the community observation, I expected that I would be one of only a small handful of white people in the building. I expected to see the men wearing fancy, colorful suits and shoes and the women to wear long and brightly colored dresses and elaborate hats. I assumed the church wouldn’t have air conditioning and we would have to fan ourselves with paper in an attempt to keep cool. I believed that the choir would sing loudly and dance wildly along to a passionate church organ player. I anticipated people to fall out during the sermon and the preacher to frequently and enthusiastically yell during his message to emphasize what he was saying. Most of all though, I was anxious that everyone else would stare at me and wonder why in the world a white boy was sticking out like a sore thumb in their church. But as the Multimodal Communication Fundamentals textbook (Sellnow & Warren, 2012) explains, feeling uncomfortable or anxious about entering an unfamiliar culture or community is normal. I based all of these ideas from what I had seen on television, namely programs like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and any of Tyler Perry’s Madea movies.

My expectation of how the choir would be came from a scene in Forrest Gump, pictured to the left, where Tom Hanks joins the choir of a black church in his hometown. The choir is very enthusiastic, swaying left and right and clapping their hands, and I expected a similar style choir at Consolidated Baptist Church. In his song Can’t Nobody, Clint Brown, one of my favorite Christian musicians, describes his experience visiting a black church. He remarks, “But when you go to a black church, I found this out, songs will go for 45 minutes” (Brown, 2004).  Based on the scene from Forrest Gump and the excerpt from Clint Brown’s song, I anticipated that the choir would be lively, charismatic, and long-winded. I had an image in my brain of what I believed was universally true about black churches that originated from how they are portrayed by the media and society. After observing a service, I came to understand that my originally assumptions were merely a caricature version of how black churches truly are in reality.