Despite its relatively brief engagement with each narrative strand, however, it leaves no doubt in the aggregate that the Black church, as W.E.B. After all, it is Black evangelicalism - often in direct opposition to its white counterpart - that propelled the abolition of slavery and the civil rights revolution, as well as the development of gospel, blues, jazz, even disco.īeginning with the creation of a distinctly African American religion in the crucible of slavery and concluding with the place of faith in the Black Lives Matter movement - plus pit stops for the ring shout and the Asuza Street revival, race records and Black Jesus - to call the four-hour series kaleidoscopic would be to undersell its breadth.

To erase Black denominations from the popular understanding of evangelical Christianity is to render the institution “invisible” again, as it was in the antebellum South, despite its profound influence. In point of fact - as PBS’ excellent new docuseries “The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song” details - evangelicalism in America predates not only Reagan but also America itself, and from its origins in the itinerant revivalism of colonial Virginia, it has squared space for radical forms of Black-led religious expression, social life and political organization. In this reckoning, evangelical Christians were conservative, rural and white. If the name applied to the phenomenon changed - Moral Majority, culture warriors, values voters, the religious right - 40 years of media coverage nonetheless established it as a coherent and remarkably powerful force, one whose unifying feature was as much demographic as it was doctrinal.

And cable news networks hired movement figures as regular contributors: “A Guide to Christian Ambition” author Hugh Hewitt at MSNBC, former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at Fox News. News & World Report polled “America’s evangelicals.” HBO’s “Game Change” attracted criticism for focusing on the blind-item salaciousness of Sarah Palin’s disastrous vice presidential campaign rather than analysis of her appeal to evangelicals. At least since Orange County coffee klatches and erstwhile Southern strategists swept Ronald Reagan into the White House, consuming political news in this country has meant confronting the seemingly inexorable rise of one “interest group” in particular: evangelical Christians.Įven before the press corps descended on diner counters from Sandy Hook, Ky., to Racine, Wis., in their quest to understand the appeal of Donald Trump, reporters fanned out to Farmingville, N.Y., and Colorado Springs, Colo., in search of the rank-and-file behind such figures as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and President George W.

Henry louis gates the black church