Black Church Quotes

“Going to church will not get you the black man you seek and it never will. Page 98”
― Deborrah Cooper, The Black Church - Where Women Pray And Men Prey

“Battle scars aren't the only marks of a testimony. Sometimes, the testimony is just the fact that you are unscathed, that the relationship that didn't work out saved you a headache, that the business deal fell through before it even started, or that you're living a quiet, drama-free life. God is just as incredible in those moments as He is in the battle moments.”
― Andrena Sawyer

“...enslaved people "were conjuring out of nothing that manhood that has been stripped away from them for four hundred years, they used the spirituals as a catalyst.”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song

“Back then, Black churches were a small piece of peace. Church was a world where, even with its imperfections, the offer of equality and common humanity was the sustenance needed to make it through the rest of the week in a society that deemed them less than human.”
― Janelle Gray, Echoes of the Struggle

“For all of the alleged benevolence God was supposed to bestow upon us faithful servants, Black people seemed to have been skipped over for centuries. Yet don't nobody in this world love them some Jesus like Black people do. We love him so much, we created an entire genre of music and a style of dance just to augment our praise, because that's what King David did to win his favor. This belief is rooted in a religion that isn't really ours, was forced on us during slavery, reinforced White supremacy throughout the nineteeth and twentieth centuries, and, it must be said, helps to maintain White supremacy today.”
― Feminista Jones, Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets

“There were Black churches in America before we even became a country. Slaves organized churches in present-day South Carolina and Georgia before they were freed, and before we as colonies broke free from the tyranny of Great Britain.”
― Tom C.W. Lin, The Capitalist and the Activist: Corporate Social Activism and the New Business of Change

“Church is a wonderful place but it also at times it has represented the worst of who we are.”
― Nijiama Smalls, The Black Family's Guide to Healing Emotional Wounds

“You've always had those who have said the most important thing is saving folks' soul, but if they can't eat, they don't have a decent place to live, what good did it do you to save their souls?”
― Martha Simmons

“The Gospel describes loving your neighbor as yourself, whatever that means, if it means to educate, to feed, to clothe, to house, to advocate, to fight for justice. When the church stops doing that, the church has no reason for being.”
― Dwight Andrews

“I’ve never been one to over-romanticize the past. I find greater value in learning from history than I do reminiscing about events or moments I can never get back. (Reclaiming the Black Church: A Call to Restore Leadership, Unity, and Purpose – blog)”
― Carlos Wallace