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 Religion can be a dangerous thing. History demonstrates that authentic faith in God inspires people to resist evil, return it with good and in the process topple empires. For this reason, white Democratic slaveholders in the south feared a religiously educated slave population. When Christian missionaries covertly evangelized black slaves, they were persecuted and sometimes even violently assaulted. Black ministers were forbidden from training at seminaries, and religious literature besides the Bible was banned. Meanwhile, white slaveholders perverted the scriptures and used them to defend the notion of black inferiority. The so called curse of Ham, based on an erroneous interpretation of Genesis, gained the status of orthodoxy in the south.
Once African Americans were free to practice their religion, the Black Church became the central pillar of the community. Black preachers led from the pulpit and united their congregations for social action. Nearly all of the early black politicians were also members of the clergy. Dr. Martin Luther King epitomized the selfless service rendered to all black Americans by black preachers. He and his colleagues believed that if God and the church continued to be the center of African American communal life that eventually they would overcome. James Weldon Johnson, a renowned poet, wrote what became known as the Negro National Anthem. His poem, Lift Every Voice and Sing contains the following lyrics:
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears.
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way,
Thou who has by the might, Led us into the Light.
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met with thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.
Shadowed beneath thy hand, May we forever stand,
True to our God, True to our native land
 Undoubtedly, the black community relied heavily upon its spiritual foundation during the long struggle for civil rights. The Democrats in the south recognized the black source of strength and unleashed its terrorist arm, the Ku Klux Klan on black churches. The National Archives in Washington D.C. record one of the earlier examples of Democrat vandalism in 1871 when a black church was torched along with the adjacent school building. Church burning sent the message to black preachers that they were being watched and that any insurrections or uprisings coming out of the black community would be traced back to their pulpits. Nevertheless, the black church continued to lead the fight for freedom and equality.
Recently the Democratic Party has adopted a new strategy for weakening the power and influence of the black church. Rather than focusing on black churches in particular, Democrats and their new pit bull, the ACLU, have attacked Christian faith as a whole. The ironically named American Civil Liberties Union has succeeded in ripping public prayer out of schools, tearing the Ten Commandments (long considered the foundation of American Law) out of courthouses, barring religious groups from using public property, wiping crosses off of state and county seals, and challenging the references to God on our money and in the pledge of allegiance. As with so many Democrat policies weve examined this month, this attack on religion is suffered most acutely by the black community. The sad break down in marriages and the rise in crime, drug abuse and despair are all symptoms of the larger break down of African American religious life. A people formed and shaped by the Bible are in danger of losing their faith and with it their greatest hope for empowerment.
The Chicago Republican Party stands with the black church and want to honor all those who serve as ministers, elders, deacons, bishops, priests and lay leaders. We will continue the fight for freedom of religious expression and faith based initiatives that enable religious organizations to provide needed services to the community. It is our hope that the black church will continue to lead the struggle for liberty and justice for all.
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