One of the functions of the Black church - despite its many many MANY problems - is that it’s one of the only places on this Earth where you can find (English speaking) Black seven year olds gaining public speaking experience reciting English verse in the style of King James I of England.
Children who know how to say ‘he that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty’ are learning how the rhythm of English sounds. Churchy Black children (especially Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals and Anglicans) can have a very declarative way of speaking that only comes of listening to old black people do that old style praying, where it goes sort of sing songy. Idk how to describe it.
(I am not a Muslim but I have noticed similar things with Muslim people. When I was in my masters program, the best students were the Senegalese men who had been memorising Quran since they could crawl.)
Anyway I think as many in our generations move away from church we need to find a way to replace these mechanisms of parallel teaching. Sunday school was like actual school in many ways. Kids who didn’t learn phonetics at school could learn it in church. You get low stakes public speaking and presentation experience. Event planning.
Also many amazing Black vocalists we had before the 2010s came up through the Black church(es). They aren’t doing that no more and that’s why the charts sound the way they do lol. Kids who have no instruments at home can learn drums, sax, trombone, piano etc at church. For free! Amazing live music for free! The shouting and rolling and tongues and carrying on every Sunday is what people now pay somatic therapists for and you got it for free at church.
But Many of us not going to church for good reason! I love praise and worship. I love to shout and bawl fi God. but the patriarchal bs, Zionism, outright thievery, rank hypocrisy, deception, political machinations, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and paedophilia I observed in the church means I don’t go any more. A lot of these pastors are crooks! Many are human traffickers!
and the church is filled and been filled with predators who are hunting for victims. And the church runs on women’s labour thats just expected because of patriarchal teachings. The benefits of church do not out weigh the harms and that’s why numbers are dwindling.
