Challenges of the Black Church in 21st Century America

Differential Thoughts and Perceptions

Creigs C. Beverly, , Olivia D. Beverly,

• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781638448112
• eBook ISBN: 9781638448129
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

This book represents not only the storms of life which the authors have experienced but also their unquenchable hope for a better tomorrow. For each, the Black church has been not only a source of personal valuation; but it has also been the foundation upon which each has been sustained, renewed, and revived.

The authors hope that the reader of this book will also find something of personal, communal, and spiritual value which will assist them in maintaining hope in a world gone mad.

Readers will find the various roles the Black church has provided over the years, along with some examples which can be replicated in twenty-first-century America.

The authors believe in the immortal words of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, former president of Morehouse College who said, "It must be borne in the mind that the tragedy in life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is a sin."

God bless.

Creigs C. Beverly, PhD

Olivia D. Beverly, PhD

Model for Prevention and Support: Transposition from Jail Cell to Church Pew

Dr. Creigs Beverly

Every human experience rests upon some previous experience, and every possibility for tomorrow is contingent to some other possibility which was realized yesterday. Human possibility is created at the intersection of time, place, and circumstance. Manipulate any one of these variables and the life chances of any given individual will be changed. If all the world is a stage, as Shakespeare alleged it to be, then history is the backdrop for the play, and the parts we play and the possibilities inherent in them are at least in part conditioned by other actors, who at other times have stood before the same footlights. Like us, they played their roles in terms of their possibilities.

—C. Eric Lincoln

This is a model for prevention and support in relation to interrupting the current freeway which leads to prison that far too many African American men and women are traveling upon. Within the social and behavioral sciences, there are two major or primary prevention models. They are person-centered prevention and systems-centered prevention.

In order to address effectively a model for prevention and support designed to remove African American men and women from this freeway, it is necessary to discuss and interface both models. The essential thesis of this paper is that person-centered prevention and systems-centered prevention are inseparable, bound together through organic reciprocity and mutual interdependence.

Person-centered prevention

Person-centered prevention is defined as activities designed to develop, maintain, and enhance knowledge, values, and skills that lower the vulnerability index of individuals. To state this differently, this model seeks to strengthen the internal capacity of individuals to navigate, negotiate, and orchestrate their social realities in ways and means consistent with maximization of human potential. These abilities or capabilities are important for all human beings to master, but they are especially important for African American males—given their current status in America.

Dr. Lawrence Gary, distinguished professor of social work at Virginia Commonwealth University and former director of the Institute for Urban Research at Howard University, has done some groundbreaking research on the attributes of successful Black men in America. Dr. Gary has identified ten such attributes which should form the core of any effort to strengthen the internal capacities of Black men to survive and thrive in this culture. These attributes are as follows:

• Early direction in life. Black men need to develop early life goal plans as a means to focus their energies and as a barometer against which they can make and measure decisions.
• Early discipline. Black men need someone to keep them in check, to pull their coattails when they are getting off track, to put some parameters on their behavior.
• Early focus on literacy. Black men need to be encouraged to master their worlds through education—reading, writing, computation, and general social, economic, and political literacy.
• Early focus on culture. Black men need to study, understand, and appreciate Black culture. The format here is triangular, what was, what is not and what is possible.
• Early religious orientation. Black men need to be grounded in the Black Church. They need to have their physical selves centered in a spiritual base.
• Early respect for Black women. Black men must be taught to respect all Black women and to understand that when God created Eve, God did not take the bone from Adam’s foot (so Black women were not created to be kicked around by Black men); nor did God take the bone from Adam’s hand (so Black women were not create...

Table of contents

• Social and Historical Roles of the Black Church in America October 1999 Congress of National Black Churches, Inc.
• Has Racial Diversity within Mainline Denominations in the United States Improved since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s?
• In the Belly of the Whale: Cultural Dimensions of African American Incarceration and Rehabilitation
• Model for Prevention and Support: Transposition from Jail Cell to Church Pew
• Hartford Memorial Baptist Church and the Kmart Retail CorporationA Partnership in Faith-Based African American Community and Social Development: A New Paradigm for the Twenty-First Century
• Hartford Memorial Baptist Church and the Kmart Retail CorporationA Partnership in Faith-Based African American Community and Social Development: A New Paradigm for the Twenty-First Century
• Hartford Memorial Baptist Church and the Kmart Retail Corporation A Partnership in Faith-Based African American Community and Social Development A New Paradigm for the Twenty-First CenturyAn Interactional Matrix of Community-Building Principles and Social Development Outcomes
• The Black Church and Community: A Model for Community Development
• Spirituality: Oft the Missing Link in African American Mental Health