“Don’t play with God!”: Black Church, Play, and Possibilities

Abstract

This article looks at black church through the framework of playful piety—its aesthetic forms and expressive culture. Specifically, I interrogate how Issa Rae’s Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl web series, entertainer Rickey Smiley, and the Preachers of LA reality television series mix black religiosity and humor. These pop cultural forms and forums serve as a venue for Black folks to not only see themselves enacted religiously but also to enjoy the foibles, fallacies, contributions, and even grace of black religious ways of being.

Keywords:

• black church
• gender
• humor
• media

Notes

Psalms 126:2, The Holy Bible, King James version.

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church 1880–1920 (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 5.

William B. McClain, “The Genius of Black Church,” Christianity and Crisis 2, no. 16 (1970): 251.

Ibid.

Kelly Brown Douglas, Black Bodies and the Black Church: A Blues Slant (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 64.

See for example Peter Berger and Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy (1969) and M. Conrad Hyers, Holy Laugher: Essays on Religion in the Comic Perspective (1969).

See for example, Mikhal Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994 [1981] and Samuel Joeckel, “Funny as Hell: Christianity and Humor Reconsidered,” Humor 21, no. 4 (2008): 415–33.

In fact, in a somewhat unrelated way but germane to this particular point, one of the most fascinating and painful aspects of the film 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013) is the usage of Christianity and the insanity of the slaver/raper/owner who also takes on the role of pastor.

Samuel Joeckel, “Funny as Hell: Christianity and Humor Reconsidered,” Humor: The International Journal of Humor Research 21, no. 4 (2008): 418.

Conrad Hyers, The Comic Vision and The Christian Faith: A Celebration of Life (New York: Pilgrims Press, 1981), 150.

Joeckel, “Funny as Hell,” 424.

Ibid., 425.

Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 318.

Anthea Butler talks about the black church and this shift in her article “The Black Church: From Prophecy to Prosperity,” Dissent 61, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 38–41.

See Wanda Sykes, “Stand Up,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK2iPGy1vYs (accessed August 10, 2016).

See my Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Selling Black Entertainment Television (Routledge 2007) for a discussion on the ways blackness and capital operate together in visual culture.

Whoopi Goldberg, “Rollin with Whoopi,” November 11, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huSEhrr-JFU (accessed August 9, 2016).

Listen to Moms Mabley’s “Comedy Ain’t Pretty,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUvgEPakVaM (accessed August 9, 2016).

According to Box Office Mojo, Friday earned over $28 million worldwide with a budget of 3.5 million. See http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=friday.htm (accessed October 22, 2014).

While writer Aaron McGruder’s series on Cartoon Network, Black Jesus (2014–), would seem to fit into this section, and I think it’s supposed to, he actually diminishes his critical sense of humor rather than taking any political, social (or unfortunately even comedic), address of Christianity and Black folks.

Emmanuel and Phillip Hudson, “Church Folks,” 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od6eN4joEk0 (accessed August 11, 2015). This is the initial version. In the revised version, instead of the two brothers sitting in front of their computer acting and rapping the text, the skit was made into a larger music video.

Listen to Lecrae’s mixtape Church Clothes, released May 10, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlWvx0wdySk (accessed August 9, 2016).

See Bambi L. Haggins, Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-soul America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 154–157.

The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl, Season 2, Episode 7 “The Group,” Issa Rae online, http://www.awkwardblackgirl.com/season-2/episode-7 (accessed August 12, 2015), 1:30–2:33.

This take on evangelism is connected to but different from actual learning and dissemination of religious information. Blacks have been significant in this latter effort despite history’s erasure of their presence. For more on this, see Cain Hope Felder’s Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class and Family (Orbis Books, 1989).

Joeckel, “Funny as Hell,” 423.

Donald Robinson, http://www.marineandmtmoriah.org/.

Anthropologist John L. Jackson writes about a distinction between authenticity and racial sincerity that has resonance here as well. See John L. Jackson Jr., Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

In radio, morning drive is the period from 6:00 to 10:00 am.

In 2016, Steve Harvey hosts a nationally syndicated morning drive radio program, the game show Family Feud, a daily television talk shown on NBC, an occasional program on TBN, and a number of award programs.

Rickey Smiley on TBN, April 4, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wtbYvB9h_U (accessed October 5, 2014).

Teresa L. Reed, The Holy Profane: Religion in Black Popular Music (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2003), 92.

Rickey Smiley performance, Shreveport, LA, December 9, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFyQmoCFxD0 (accessed October 5, 2014).

In an interesting twist, I have seen Rev. Al Green perform a gospel song and segue clean into “Love and Happiness,” one of his most popular secular hits. The character Boyce Ballentine (Cedric the Entertainer) in Soul Man is based on Al Green and Mase.

Jacquinita A. Rose, Shhh, Grown Folks Is Talking: The Stuff I Learned from the Kitchen Door (Port Hueneme, CA: Grown Folks’ Publishing, 2010), 93.

“Rickey Smiley Church Announcements,” YouTube, uploaded April 13, 2009 (accessed August 31, 2015).

Rickey Smiley and Kirk Franklin on TBN, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnfJ84tiu4M (accessed January 19, 2016).

There is actually one white pastor and his family on the series. But the tone, focus, and expectation of the narrative remains with black church. On a side note, the largest black churches in the world operate in Nigeria.

Shayne Lee, America’s New Preacher: T.D. Jakes (New York: New York University, 2005), 182.

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: Or What Happened to the American Dream (Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press, 1961).

Sarah Banet-Weiser coins this term in her book Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (New York University Press, 2012).

Rev. Michael J. T. Fisher of the Greater Zion Church Family of Compton, California, as found in Jonathan P. Hicks, “Black Pastors Denounce the Reality Show The Preachers of LA,” bet.com, October 18, 2013.

Christine Thomasos, “‘Preachers of L.A.’ Pastor Wayne Cheney Wants to Provide Alternative to ‘Love and Hip-Hop’ Relationships,” Christian Post October 2, 2014, http://www.christianpost.com/news/preachers-of-l-a-pastor-wayne-cheney-wants-to-provide-alternative-to-love-and-hip-hop-relationships-127397/ (accessed October 22, 2014).

Quote from Deitrick Haddon, pastor/gospel singer/executive producer of Preachers of LA during a promotional segue, October 1, 2014, Oxygen network.

See critiques by Bishop T. D. Jakes, gospel singer Kirk Franklin, minister Rev. James C. Perkins, and comedian D. L. Hughley in Jonathan P. Hicks, “Black Pastors Denounce the Reality Show Preachers of LA,” BET.com, October 18, 2013, http://www.bet.com/news/national/2013/10/17/black-pastors-denounce-the-reality-show-the-preachers-of-la.html and Nicola Menzie, “Kirk Franklin Expresses Disappointment in ‘Preachers of LA’ Amid Suggestion Reality Show Turned People Away from God,” Christian Post, May 21, 2014, http://www.christianpost.com/news/kirk-franklin-expresses-disappointment-in-preachers-of-la-amid-suggestion-reality-show-turned-people-away-from-god-120678/.

For example, see Walter M. Kimbrough, “Time for HBCUs and the Black Church to Talk about Sex,” NewsOne, 2010, http://newsone.com/1021165/time-for-hbcus-and-the-black-church-to-talk-about-sex/ (accessed August 10, 2016).

Jay-Z and Rick Ross, “The Devil Is a Lie,” 2013, director Ash Innovator, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpxBgrJFPOA (accessed August 7, 2016).

C. Eric Lincoln, Christianity & Crisis (November 2–16, 1970), 225.

K. Gates, “Black and Gold,” 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sITDYGdkMak (accessed August 12, 2015).

Dwight Conquergood, “Of Caravans and Carnivals: Performance Studies in Motion,” The Drama Review 39, no. 4 (1995): 137–38.

Stuart Hall, “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?,” Social Justice 20, nos. 1–2 (1993): 113.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Beretta E. Smith-Shomade

Beretta E. Smith-Shomade is an Associate Professor of Media Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at Emory University. Her research explores aesthetic, representational, production, and industrial aspects of Black television engagement. She has two books published within these frameworks: Shaded Lives: African-American Women and Television (2002) and Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Selling Black Entertainment Television (2007). Her most recent monograph is an edited anthology, Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences (Rutgers, 2013)—a 2013 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Beyond these works, she has published in journals and anthologies on Black filmic representations, cable television, and Black spirituality. Future research directions include examining the confluence of Black folks, religion, and media, African-American independent media distribution, and projects surrounding K–12 media literacy.