SSBR -- History

Society for the Study of Black Religion

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History

From C. Shelby Rooks, REVOLUTION IN ZION

Creation of the Society for the Study of Black Religion

During the 1940s and 1950s, few African American scholars examined the religious experience of their own communities in depth. After the appearance of Joseph Washington's book in 1964 [Black Religion,] a new burst of energy developed. Numerous articles about Black Theology began to appear. James Cone's 1969 publication Black Theology and Black Power, accelerated the production of articles and books among those teaching in seminaries. In the early 1970s, several new books began to appear written by the new breed of authors such as J. Deotis Roberts, Cecil Cone, Major J. Jones, and William R. Jones. Yet there were few places these African American seminary professors could gather to discuss what they were thinking and writing about.

In the spring of 1969, I was asked to see what could be done to draw African American seminary professors together. The request came from the ATS Special Committee on the Black Religious Experience, which was planning the 1970 Conference on Theological Education and the Black Religious Experience at Howard University. The committee wanted to ensure ongoing activity as a result of the conference. I was asked to issue a call for a gathering at Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta during the summer of 1969 to discuss what African American seminary teachers might conceive and do together in theological education. Because ATS had no money for such a meeting, those invited were asked to bear their own expenses. My budget at the FTE provided for secretarial services, mailings, and similar administrative costs, but I had no other funds to use at that point.

The meeting in Atlanta was well attended. It was the first time in theological education that such a gathering had occurred, and there was great enthusiasm for an occasion just to be together. Participants were so impressed that we decided to create a formal organization and to continue meeting on an annual basis. We chose a name, which was debated with vigor and care, the Society for the Study of Black Religion (SSBR). The choice of name marked the beginning of a debate that continues to this day. On one side was Charles H. Long, a historian of religions. Long wants the Society always to be clear that it is concerned with all religious experience among African Americans and not just with Christian experience. On the other side was James H. Cone, who, as a systematic theologian, must be concerned primarily, but not exclusively, with Christian experience. The distinction involves much more complicated differences in the perspectives of two disciplines, history of religions and systematic theology. The name chosen for the Society is actually an umbrella for both viewpoints, but the debate about the essential purpose of the Society is a continuing one for academic and other intellectual reasons.

By the close of this first meeting, I was asked to be convener, and a Committee on Constitution and By-Laws was appointed and asked to report at the first annual meeting a year later. We agreed upon some rules for those early days. Meetings would be held in a sequence of cities principally in the East, where most of the existing African American faculty were employed. A person could become a member by invitation only and would already hold a Ph.D degree. The group made some exceptions in the original list of prospective members. It provided me with the names of persons to contact, which included more than just those who had already an earned doctorate. I was among them. I had only an honorary degree, but nobody else had a budget, a secretary, and the visibility I had because of my varied hats. Dues were to be kept small so that this would not be a deterrent to membership.

I sent letters to every African American seminary teacher or administrator whom participants in the Gammon Seminary meeting had identified. Each was invited to attend the first annual meeting of the Society the following year. We met in October, 1970. In addition to the papers that were read and critiqued, a constitution was adopted that gave as purposes for the Society:

To engage in scholarly research and discussion about the religious experience of Blacks;
To publish reports of its discussions and research; and
To encourage the teaching and discussion of the Black religious experience in the curricula of college or university departments of religion and theological seminaries.

The language of those purposes is important because the Society was always greeted by very different expectations about what it was and what it should accomplish. One expectation was that the Society would be a forum whose principal purpose would be to connect research about and study of African American religion with the freedom struggle. It was a dramatic vision of a hopeful new union between church and academy. Gayraud S. Wilmore, who had been one of the primary leaders in the formation of the National Committee of Black Churchmen, pushed hard for this idea of what the SSBR should be about.

Wilmore himself embodied the vision he espoused. As director of the Commission on Religion and Race of the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., he set a very important example for action and reflection followed by many of the African American caucuses that sprang up in every predominantly white denomination during the 1960s. In a series of significant articles and books, he thoughtfully articulated what was beating in the hearts of many African American clergy during those years. It was an extremely valuable role. Wilmore served from 1978 to 1980 as the fourth president of the SSBR. . . . In Black Theology: A Documentary History, 1966-1979, [edited] with James Cone, Wilmore calls the development of the SSBR the "second stage" in Black Theology.

One controversial expectation about the SSBR was that it should be a place for African Americans to think together by themselves about the issues that concerned them. Many white people were interested in what the Society was doing, however. For instance, in an effort to save the members money, the second annual meeting of the SSBR in 1971 was held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Because some members belonged to both bodies, and, because most schools provided expenses to attend only one meeting of a scholarly society per year, this seemed a good arrangement. It turned out badly. The SSBR meeting was listed on the schedule of special meetings at the Academy, as is the usual practice. For this reason some of those attending who were not SSBR members thought the SSBR meeting was open to everyone. It was somewhat embarrassing to exclude them from the sessions and left a bad taste in the mouths of many. After this experience, the Society decided not to meet coincident with the Academy again.

The Society served important functions in its early years. When the SSBR celebrated its tenth anniversary in 1980, Lawrence N. Jones, the second president, summed up the decade:

The SSBR ... contributed to a number of significant results:

It was in one sense a circling of the wagons - it chose not to join the AAR as a constituent part and existed upon its own integrity. It was a community of individuals who reinforced, encouraged, and criticized each other. It was an intellectual oasis in the midst of a hostile educational context in which entrenched whites felt they were being coerced to accept as colleagues individuals who were not committed to their [the whites'] subject matter, and who injected issues of justice into intellectual discourse.
Much learning took place. The papers read were often frontier type papers - embryonic offerings and initial efforts to define a scholarly turf. Black Theology and scholarship was legitimated within SSBR and it was also an important place in which the views and strategies of the opposition were aired.
It contributed to the internationalization of theological studies and reclaimed historic ties between Africa and those in the diaspora.
It was a community of scholars but always more than that. It not only addressed the white community as in the Summer, 1970, issue of Theological Education, but it had begun to address the critical question of the meaning of all of the scholarship for the community - for the Black church, for its mission and its message."

I believe Jones' assessment of the first decade in the Society's life is an accurate portrayal of the hopes of its members and the realities of its accomplishments.