The lady returned, full of apologies for the mix-up, and promised to reschedule the meeting. Holley gathered up his carefully drawn proposal and put it back in his briefcase. He seemed more relieved than annoyed.
On the way out, we conducted a quick, nervous inspection tour of the building. Holley looked wistfully at the modern classrooms and the auditoriumlike chapel with its color-coordinated seats. As we reached the entrance, another school bell rang, and children spilled into the halls. They regarded us with total apathy. Holley’s driver spotted two small black kids among the throng. “Hey, Rev, they got some of us out here,” he said in wonder.
Once this would have been a cause for rejoicing, especially for a man who regards himself as a spiritual son of Martin Luther King. But Holley is no integrationist. “It’s just an admission that we don’t have the ability to care for ourselves,” he said. “When we bus our kids to white schools, it just says we’re not able to educate our own children. Education doesn’t come by osmosis, it’s hard work. Being around white people doesn’t do it.”
On the way back to the city, Holley looked out the window at the green parks and neat homes and reflected on the lure of the suburbs. “Upper-middle-class blacks have the responsibility to reach back and help other blacks,” he mused. “They’re gonna let the middle-class Negroes have Southfield, keep the poor Negroes in Detroit. I can move my body to Southfield but not my soul. Isiah Thomas, all these other sports stars—here I am, having to ask white people for help. Why can’t I ask Isiah? He’s making enough. Most of these Negroes don’t even belong to the NAACP. They have moved body, soul and mind from the streets where they learned to play ball in the first place. This pisses me off to the highest pissitivity. They don’t do anything, man, anything.”
“Why do you call them Negroes?” I asked.
“Negro is just another word for nigger, Reverend,” he said. “Now that I have a wider audience, I have to be more polite.”
I asked Holley what he would do with the money he wants to raise, and he spoke about establishing church-based institutions—health-care clinics, recreational centers and especially schools.
“Negroes know how to sing—that’s nothing,” he said. “We got to teach our children how to play the harp, the violin. I want them to be cultured, to speak properly, to be able to compete. We in the church have a responsibility to them, but so far we’re just not making a difference. We’ve got to give them the right skills, and the right values.
“If someone in a family tells a teenage girl that pregnancy is all right, then that person must be made responsible for the baby,” he continued. “I had a seventeen-year-old girl come to see me, with six children—two sets of twins. Teenage mothers have no right to their children. White folks can’t say that, but it’s true. They ought to be given to an extended family member or to the state. Those kids are nothing more than walking zombies.
“Two years ago, I took seventeen young men down to Alabama State University and I registered them personally,” he said. “Three are left. One got thrown out for rape. Two more got thrown out for jumping on the pizza boy. Some people we just can’t change. We have to stop spending so much time on the generation we’ve already lost and put emphasis on those kids who are infants, the ones that can still be saved.”
As we talked, the car sped from the suburbs back into the city. We hadn’t passed any checkpoints or border signs, but when we looked out the windows we saw another country of burned and blasted houses and knots of aimless-looking young men on street corners. Holley shook his head with sorrow.
“This is a strong city, although it appears weak,” he said. “The strength is in the spirit of the people. In the last few years, there has been a hairline fracture of the spirit, but not a break. The problem is, we lack community. No white man in America is smart enough to do to us what we’re doing to ourselves—killing, selling drugs, raping, not teaching our children, not helping one another economically—every process, social, political and economic. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can change things; the church can change things.” He was silent for a long moment, as he gazed at the city-scape, and then turned back to me. “Reverend,” he said, “if Dr. King could see this, he would weep, weep, weep.”
To many whites, all black churches seem pretty much alike, congregations full of ferver and rhythm. Within the black community, however, the differences—social, theological and ritual—are substantial. Jim Holley, with his burning social commitment, represents the activist wing; but at the Universal Liberty and Christ Temple, a small congregation on Detroit’s east side, a more personal gospel of salvation is dispensed. Its proponent, the Reverend Ralph J. Boyd, doesn’t mind rendering unto Caesar what is his, providing the rest is rendered unto the man known to his followers as “the Living Christ.”
Boyd is an elegant man in his late sixties who, despite recent heart surgery and the implanting of a pacemaker, fully expects to live forever. He came to Detroit from Alabama in the 1940s with his mentor, the estimable Prophet Jones, and he continues to preach Jones’s doctrine of eternal life on earth and prosperity for the faithful of the Kingdom, as his congregation calls itself.
Prophet Jones confounded his own beliefs by dying in 1973. But at his height, during the 1950s, he held his services at a converted downtown theater and claimed several hundred thousand adherents across the country. The Prophet boasted that he could heal the sick, predict the future and talk directly to God. It was he who established the essential theology of the spiritual church in Detroit, which includes not only the doctrine of eternal life and prosperity but the dictum that “God don’t like women.” Jones claimed that sexual intercourse with a female was a life-threatening sin; his detractors said that he simply wanted to keep the young men of his congregation for himself.
Eventually Boyd split with Jones and established his own church. Soon after, Jones ran afoul of the city’s morality laws and ended up in exile in Chicago. But his flamboyant style lives on in places such as the Universal Liberty and Christ Temple, and in other storefront sanctuaries throughout the city.
Boyd’s church is more elaborate than most, but it is still a modest edifice for a man who claims to be in direct, personal touch with God: blond wood pews, a small altar and walls decorated with neon signs—DIVINE GOD and 7 (God’s perfect number)—that look like beer advertisements. Adjacent to it is the House of Holiness, a combination sacristy, meditation facility and boutique where Boyd meets with congregants.
When I went to see him on a Saturday afternoon, there was a long line of people ahead of me. As I waited I browsed through the merchandise in his store, which runs to the exotic. Holy hyssop bath oil ($5.00), hyssop floor wash, Voodoo dolls ($3.25), Jinx Remover, Triple Strength Cast-Off Evil Incense, Holy Vision Bath Oil ($5.25), High John the Conquerer Soap (“It conquers all evil forces”), and cards inscribed with the Reverend Boyd’s revelations (sample: “I am, I am in perfect harmony with the law of prosperity”) for $2.50.
The label on the hyssop bath oil advises, “Read Psalm 51.” The psalm says, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” It was, I assumed, a figurative wish; Boyd’s followers are all black.
Off the boutique there were prayer rooms equipped with meditation couches and brass stands, where people leave written requests. I opened one and read: “Help me get a high-paying job. Give me health. And help me control my son.”
An attractive woman who used to be a high-fashion model in Europe and now serves as the Prophet’s secretary, informed me that he was ready to meet with me. She ushered me into a spare room where Boyd sat behind a desk, wearing an expensive-looking camel hair sport jacket and a blinding amount of jewelry. When I complimented him on his diamonds, he beamed. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” he intoned. “And we are each the Lord in our own world. The things that God put on earth, he put here for our use.”
Judging from the note I found in the meditation room Boyd’s
followers—who include prosperous professionals as well as domestic workers and welfare women—want pretty much the same things as the Reverend Holley’s. But unlike the city’s more mainline pastors, Boyd doesn’t believe they can be obtained through works. At one point he considered opening his own school, but funds were not forthcoming. “I just brought my mind in instead,” he said. Communication with the holy spirits, prayer and the proper use of roots and herbs are his prescription for the social ills of Detroit.
Reverend Boyd, like his mentor, Prophet Jones, claims to be psychic. According to him, he can see, feel and sometimes hear the voice of God. “In Detroit people know of prophecies I have made,” he told me. “Sometimes it’s frightening. I fell out during a trance one time. My spirit went to Russia, to a very beautiful place where men were in conference discussing the world. A man at the head of the table said, ‘We’ll release an object that will give us up-to-date data.’ I came back into my body, and that night I prophesied that the Russians were going to put an object in space. The church was packed with people that night, dear. And the next week it was up there—Sputnik.”
The prophet didn’t have much time for me that Saturday, but before I left he offered to tell my future. He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated. “You are a wonderful and beautiful person, dear,” he said. “You’re going to have great success. Amen.”
This sort of perceptive genius has won Boyd a large following in Detroit. Two hundred or so of the faithful, mostly well-dressed women and a smattering of men, were in church on a Sunday night in October. When I arrived, about eight o’clock, they were singing gospel songs and dancing in the aisles as they waited for the arrival of their leader.
After about half an hour Boyd entered from a rear door, wearing a vicuña topcoat over a splendid white silk robe. The singing and clapping rose to a crescendo as he was assisted out of his wrap by Angel Bishop Dorothy, a teacher in his College of Higher Wisdom, and assumed his seat, a thronelike chair that seemed entirely appropriate to his regal manner.
A few minutes later, the singing was interrupted for a reminder that the Kingdom’s Christmas would be celebrated on November 14, Reverend Boyd’s birthday (participation fee, one hundred dollars). Boyd smiled at the assembly with benign modesty. Then the church band, which included electric guitars, tambourines, drums and an electric organ, struck up “I’m a Royal Child, Adopted into a Royal Family,” and the dancing and singing re-commenced.
Finally, Reverend Boyd took the rostrum to announce a collection—the first of four during the service. Many of the people there made offerings all four times, and some had done the same that morning. Eternal life does not come cheap on the east side of Detroit.
After the collection, Reverend Boyd introduced Prophet Dawson, his ‘spiritual son,’ who was to deliver the evening’s main message. Dawson acknowledged the honor gratefully, telling the worshipers that “spiritual bread is baked by God, but delivered by the King,” and then launched into his sermon. A small, dynamic man with the stage presence and intensity of Wilson Pickett, he half sang, half preached his gospel of salvation through Reverend Boyd. There were no want ads, no admonitions about community solidarity, no calls for a new board of education from the pulpit—just straight, old-time religion, interrupted by an occasional commercial.
Dawson’s text centered on immortality: “The King teaches that it was not the plan of God for man to die. The Bible says, ‘The wages of sin is death, but the gift of me is eternal life.’ If you think you can live and you qualify, then there ain’t nothin’ you can do but live.” People cheered, shouted amen and beat on tambourines.
The primary qualification for immortality is the ability to call on spirits. Sometimes this is done by Boyd himself, sometimes on a do-it-yourself basis by the congregation. That night Prophet Dawson hollered and danced, cajoled and thundered in an effort to summon them, and as the service progressed, more and more people joined in.
After a time, Dawson paused to ask for a second offering to buy Reverend Boyd a new Mercedes Benz. “He’s a king,” he said, “and a king needs a chariot.” White-robed ushers passed buckets through the crowd, and women with callused hands snapped open their change purses to contribute to the royal transportation fund.
Following the second offering, Dawson stepped up the intensity another notch, and people began to fall out. A fat woman in a white pleated skirt and middy blouse danced up the aisles in total ecstasy, eyes closed and feet thudding on the threadbare carpet. She was quickly surrounded by other women who held their arms out to keep her from crashing into a pew. A young girl no more than seventeen, dressed demurely in a suit and small pearl earrings, stood rigidly at her seat and howled. Nearby a tall man in a black pin-striped suit began to chant “Thank you, Jesus; thank you, Jesus,” a mint Lifesaver bobbing on his tongue throughout the incantation. Ralph J. Boyd surveyed the scene with great equanimity, but a woman in a white hospital uniform and nurse’s cap peered closely at the congregation. From time to time she descended from the pulpit to lead one of the more emotional worshipers to a seat.
In the midst of all this frenzy, I was forgotten, although earlier I had been the subject of considerable curiosity. White visitors to the Kingdom are rare, and when I first came in, the congregants—perhaps mindful of Prophet Jones’s problems with the law—regarded me with a circumspect interest. Blacks are expert at looking at whites without seeming to, and I had felt, rather than seen, their scrutiny.
Now, however, transported by the music and the dancing, they were no longer concerned about outsiders, or about the outside world. They were applying medicine to wounded spirits, stoking their emotional fires for another long, hard week. One song led into another, the tambourines and drums providing a steady beat. People sat passively and then were suddenly ignited, like the houses I had seen go up in flame on Devil’s Night.
Prophet Dawson allowed the frenzy to continue for almost half an hour before he calmed things down again. He produced a white garment and a pair of scissors, and told the congregation that he had decided to cut up his robe (“blessed by Reverend Boyd”) and sell the pieces for five dollars each. Once again purses clicked open, and a number of people came forward to buy a patch of the garment.
No one seemed uncomfortable with this blatant fund-raising. At one point a visiting soloist told the congregation that Reverend Boyd was the first man she had ever seen wearing a full-length mink coat. The congregation shouted ‘Amen’ and Boyd himself smiled, taking the remark, correctly, as a tribute. “You have inspired me both spiritually and materially,” the singer told him.
It was nearing midnight, and although Dawson had issued mock warnings (“The spirit is in here and we just might stay all night”) things began to wind down. People were spent, and they sat quietly while Reverend Boyd addressed them in a surprisingly low-key manner. He talked about the need for prayer all through the week, not just on Sunday; reminded them again about Christmas, and prayed for the ill and shut-in.
When the prayer was concluded, the band struck up a tune that sounded very much like “Mamma’s Little Baby Loves Shortnin’ Bread” and the congregation began to sing—“Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, a whole lot of money is coming my way.” They sang it over and over, while about thirty people lined up at the side of the church, each with twenty dollars in hand. One by one they approached the altar, handed the bills to the white-robed church ladies, and paused in front of Reverend Boyd, who cupped his hands over their right ears and whispered a brief, personal message to each one. It was a simple, practical benediction from the Living Christ on Earth—the lottery number for the week.
Later I discussed what I had seen at Reverend Boyd’s church with a friend. She is a woman of great sophistication, intellect and social consciousness, and I expected her to be outraged by the blatant materialism and egocentricity of the Living Christ and his doctrines. But she herself was raised in a holiness tradition, and she was surprisingly sympathetic.
“The
re are all kind of people in the black community, just like in the white community,” she said. “Not everyone can relate to a Martin Luther King, or the intellectual approach of some of the ministers here in Detroit. They need something, too, and they get it from the Reverend Boyds. When they give him money, they’re really just supporting their church. It’s basically no different then paying dues or a tithe to any other church; they feel that they’re getting something for their money. And besides,” she added with a mischievous smile, “you never know. Somebody’s liable to hit that number.”
Over the years, the essential religiosity of the black community has made Detroit a fertile ground for sects and doctrines of all kinds. Some, like the spiritual church of Prophet Jones and Ralph Boyd, have been introverted and self-centered. Others take a broader, harsher social view. The Nation of Islam was founded in Detroit by W. D. Fard in the summer of 1930; Temple Number One, ministered by the brother of the late Elijah Muhammad, is still located there. And, in the late sixties, the Reverend Albert Cleage established a nationalist denomination, the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church, as a militant alternative to traditional, white-oriented Christianity.
Cleage was deeply influenced by Malcolm X, and his church reflects the black nationalism and racial separatism of the Muslims. Its chief theological tenet is that Jesus was a black political figure; its main social doctrine, that integration is a pipe dream and that blacks must gain economic and political power to liberate and defend themselves from white oppression. Following the riot of 1967, Cleage terrified whites with talk about burning down the rest of the city; but, in recent years, he has toned down his rhetoric, if not his basic message, and his adherents have become a part of Detroit’s establishment.
Cleage, who Africanized his name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, has a significant national following. The sect does not divulge membership figures, but it has major churches in Atlanta and Houston as well as Detroit, where the membership of the Shrine of the Black Madonna is estimated in the thousands.
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