The Lord who told me to take care of my people, meant me to do it just as long as I live, and so I did what he told me.Harriet Tubman1
crisis, n. a time of acute difficulty or danger, esp on a national or international scale.2
In 2013, a young African American pastor in Georgia committed suicide en route to church one Sunday morning. His suicide sent shock waves throughout the African American Christian community. While there were those who were aware of his struggle with depression, many seemed shocked that it could actually lead to suicide. The unspoken question that seemingly lurked for months following his death was, “How could a pastor commit suicide?” Shortly after that tragic event, while walking across campus one afternoon, I encountered a young African American man who appeared visibly distraught. Smiling as I approached him, I asked, “Are you alright?” He drew near to me whispering, “Can I ask you something?” I replied, “Sure.” He asked, “Do you believe in God?” I answered, “Yes, I do.” He pressed further, “Then, can you answer this one question? How does a pastor who professes to believe in God, commit suicide?” He retorted, “If the pastors are losing hope, what are we supposed to do?” He seemed to feel as if he had been deceived—as if his faith, his religious tradition, and his image of the African American pastor had somehow betrayed him.
In those moments, I recognized the great gulf that often exists between the internalized expectations that pastors place upon themselves, the external expectations that people place upon pastors, and how the humanity of pastors is often ignored by all.
The fields of pastoral theology, care, and counseling currently lack adequate resources to address depression3 among African American4 evangelical5 pastors because they fail to provide appropriate methods of evaluation, self-care, and accountability among black clergy leaders.
I have tremendous admiration and respect for the extraordinary institution known as the black church. My use of the term “black church” is intended to distinguish between worship in the broader Christian tradition and the particularities and socio-cultural nuances that comprise the African American evangelical worship experience (e.g., the call and response, the shout, the rhythmic scratching of the washboard, the sound of the kettledrums). There is no place I enjoy being on a Sunday morning than in the midst of a spirit-filled African American church at worship. Those who have experienced worship in this tradition would be hard-pressed to deny the exuberance, vitality, liberty, and (in some instances) pageantry encountered there on Sunday mornings.
This book is birthed out of my concern for the welfare of the black church and more specifically for the mental health of African American clergy leaders. Over the last decade, there has been a sharp increase in the rate of depression and suicide among African American pastors. Yet, despite the fact of this increase, many people continue to marvel at how depression can materialize among leaders who are tasked with being proponents of faith.
In the African American religious tradition, we have historically made haste to “hide the nakedness” of our clergy leaders. Oftentimes, these attempts at covering up human frailty have proven detrimental to the pastors themselves as well as the congregations they are called to serve. My hope is that this book will generate much needed dialogue around the crisis of depression in African American clergy and its impact on the black community.
It has been my experience that often the culture of an African American evangelical church correlates with the personality of its pastor. This is because African American clergy tend to hold great influence in their religious communities. The admiration and respect they receive can be attributed to a historical view of them as being the mouthpiece or representative of God.6 Unfortunately, this cultural sacramentalization of the black preacher sets pastors up for failure through isolation, internalized/external expectations, and a loss of self-awareness. It is from this framework that the etiology of depression can materialize in African American pastors.
Further, because African American evangelical clergy are most able to remain true to who they are when they are self-aware, the task of aiding pastors in overcoming the reality of depression involves equipping them with culturally specific resources that empower them to receive the help they need. Encouraging African American pastors to seek treatment for depression also means ensuring that they assume ethical responsibility within the pastoral function through clearly defined parameters of evaluation, self-care, and accountability.
The Crisis of Clergy Depression
The crisis of depression among clergy is not foreign to those within African American evangelical circles. Startling statistics continue to emerge regarding the state of clergy mental health in America. Trans-denominationally, pastors are suffering with a variety of mental health issues in silence and isolation. Within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) alone, statistics from the Board of Pensions showed the denomination was at risk of declining membership due to poor wellness disciplines among pastors such as poor eating habits, a lack of physical activity, smoking, and excessive alcohol consumption. In their 2006 health analysis report, the Board of Pension’s statistics showed that approximately 63% of ELCA pastors had risk factors indicating poor emotional health.7 Among Presbyterian clergy, the Committee on Preparation for Ministry in the Charlotte Presbytery reported the leading cause for stress among clergy to be feelings of loneliness or isolation.8 The Report on Clergy Recruitment and Retention to the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA identified specific issues that impacted how pastors experience their work (each of which, singularly or combined, can lead to depression):
- 1.Inadequate skills in managing what are perceived to be unrealistic expectations of the congregation
- 2.Unrealistic expectations of pastors entering a new call, especially their first call
- 3.Inability to spend adequate time with family or loved ones
- 4.Feeling drained by the demands made by parishioners
- 5.Inadequate ongoing support mechanisms for pastors
- 6.Receiving little satisfaction in the role/status of pastor
- 7.Inadequate compensation package
- 8.Conflict within the local church due to differences in leadership styles, worship practices, management issues, and so on, and
- 9.Conflict with denominational officials leading to a feeling of not being supported by those outside the local congregation, which exacerbates issues of loneliness and stress.9
The American Baptist Churches USA responded to clergy burnout within their organization by establishing a wellness program to ensure that cultural values about healthy pastoral functioning become more central to the pastorate. This wellness program followed a yearlong study10 by the Ministerial Leadership Commission and observed that a large number of the denomination’s 8900 ministers were experiencing burnout and other significant health-related issues.
As accounts of clergy mental illness in the USA continue to surface, a rise in the frequency of suicides, specifically among African American clergy, is also being reported. In The United Methodist Church in Ohio, black clergy suicides, which had formerly gone under the radar, are now being reported. A series of African American clergy suicides in the southern states over the last few years have startled those within the African American Christian community. Mental illness among smaller religious sects of evangelicals has also more recently come to light. Due to the explosive growth of information available through the Internet, the private lives of many African American clergy have become public,11 for example, divulging the arrests of several pastors within the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) on charges of child molestation, sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct against church members.
According to the Clergy Health Initiative12 at Duke Divinity School, programs designed to promote clergy health are only effective if the conditions that compromise clergy health are addressed, namely congregational and denominational governance. Since African Americans pastors are the least likely of all clergy to obtain mental health treatment from any source, the cultural stigma13 associated with depression in the black community heightens the need for more extensive education, training, therapeutic treatment, and preventative resources.
Recurrent incidents of black pastors experiencing mental health crises have come at great cost to the African American community. This crisis of mental health among those otherwise deemed to be pillars of the community has undoubtedly created a healthy cultural suspicion around the validity, integrity, and safety of the black church as a place of refuge for African Americans and around the black pastor as her heralded leader.
Moreover, mental illness among black clergy has left many in the African American religious community feeling vulnerable, promp...