Posted Date: July 2, 2008

Black Newspapers-Black Church Encouraged To Work Together

By Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Editor-in-Chief

   WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Fundamental Black institutions, including the Black Press, must consistently remain like the voice of Moses in the years to come; not only speaking “truth to power”, but to the people as well, a leading Black theologian has told Black newspaper publishers.
   “How vital you are to the survival of African-Americans as we journey into the 21st Century,” the Rev. Dr. Kevin Cosby, president of Simmons College, told members of the National Newspaper Publishers Association in Louisville last week. “Here in the Black community, we’ve got to decide as churches and pastors and newspaper publishers, ‘What are we going to be to our people’? Are we going to be Moses or are we going to be Aaron?”
    Using a biblical story of the two brothers from Exodus 32:21-26, Cosby, also the 30-year veteran pastor of the city’s St. Stephen Church, described Moses as the “the voice of progress” and Aaron as “the voice of decline.”
He said because many of the wounds of the Black community are self-inflected, including Black on Black violence, it is the responsibility of the Black Press, the Black church and other Black institutions to go beyond fighting the governmental powers that oppress Black people.
   “The role of the media and the prophetic Black pulpit is to speak truth to power. But the same Moses who spoke truth to power also spoke truth to the powerless. And it is just as important to speak truth to the powerless as it is to speak truth to the powerful,” Cosby said.
    Cosby quoted Dr. Wyatt T. Walker, one of the chief strategists for Dr. King, as saying that there are five primary institutions that sustained African-Americans during the horrors of racism, segregation and Jim Crow. These are five fundamental institutions that are vital to the survival of our people, he said: The Black family, The Black church, Black businesses, Black schools and the Black media.
   “Since integration, we have seen a disintegration of many of these institutions that service the African-American community. It is so important that we have these life-sustaining institutions, especially the Black Press because the Black Press tells our story from our perspective.”
    Cosby’s message was followed by a panel discussion between leading Black clergy and NNPA representatives with a goal of deciding how to establish a new relationship.
   “The Black Church has a responsibility to help the Black church stay alive. The Black church has a responsibility to encourage its members to read Black newspapers and also to subscribe,” says Mollie Belt, publisher of the Dallas Examiner.
    But, that should be an even exchange, she says, noting that Black newspapers should also report what’s going on in Black church events and activities.
    Dorothy Leavell, NNPA Foundation chairwoman, pointed out that Samuel Cornish, co-publisher of the nation’s first Black newspaper, was a Presbyterian minister. Therefore the institutions are rooted together.
“Because we are two of the oldest Black institutions in this country, we could take our resources and put them together in such a way that across this nation there would be celebration of the Black Press in every church in the United States.”
    That kind of coalition could impact social ills, including crime, she says.
“If we combined our efforts, I think we could fight off some of the problems of our community,” she said. “The main thing is that we must form the relationship and we must do it now.”
    Responding to the publishers, Dr. F. Bruce Williams, pastor of the Bates Memorial Baptist Church in Louisville, agreed that the Black church and Black Press must work together.
    Williams says the one-on-one relationship between the two institutions would also allow for mentorships so that people can learn how the press works and demystify it.
    Cosby, who had earlier preached the message about the Black Press being the voice of Moses, said Black institutions too often don’t appreciate each other’s power.
   “Something of great worth like Black media under our feet that could be catalyst for radical change in our communities and we don’t know what to do with it. We don’t realize what we’ve got,” Cosby said.
    He said the most powerful commonality between the Black Press and Black Church is that they are both communicators.
   “You must provide answers to questions that people are asking. You have to be relevant to the times in which we live. And if the churches survive, the Black institutions ought to survive,” he says. “There are new social and global realities that affect the Black community that the church and the press must be sensitive to.”

 

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