Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr.

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Keep the Faith, Baby

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SOURCE: A review of Keep the Faith, Baby, in Negro History Bulletin, Vol. 30, No. 6, October, 1967, pp. 22-3.

[In the review below, Edwards faults Keep the Faith, Baby! as "rather colorless and ineffectual."]

A book of sermons by a key figure in the controversies and achievements of an era might well promise to provide an excellent sourcebook for church historians. Many may therefore look with expectancy to this collection.

Unfortunately, in spite of some attempts at relevancy, Keep the Faith, Baby, is a rather colorless, conservative, and ordinary sampling of sermons.

Most of the 42 sermons included were preached by Adam Clayton Powell from his pulpit in the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem, a church reputedly founded by a group who refused to sit in the slave gallery of the only Baptist Church in New York over 150 years ago. Of the ten sermons assigned a preaching date, the earliest was delivered in 1950 and the latest in 1962. Subjects range from Easter, Palm Sunday, Mother's Day, and Negro History Week, to Capital Punishment, the Verwoerd Regime in South Africa, the 1960 National Election, and a New York City School Boycott.

Even Powell's efforts to deal with contemporary issues seem rather colorless and ineffectual as they founder on his own attachment to the success of the church-establishment. His message finally becomes the plea:

      We must fill our churches to a point of overflowing
      We must give to our church coffers until it hurts.
      We must rally behind our ministers.

There is a strong element of churchly defensiveness as Powell apparently feels his leadership threatened by new movements within the Negro community. He insists:

The Negroes' church itself should be the political, educational, economic and social capital of the Negro race.

Powell refuses to recognize the role of other agencies or organizations in meeting the Negro's needs: "It can only be accomplished through the Negroes' church."

When one compares the generally colorless and conservative preaching of Powell with the powerful metaphors and evangelistic zeal that were exhibited by a Malcolm X, one can see the likelihood of truth in Malcolm X's claim concerning the very neighborhood of Powell's church:

(in Harlem) … we discovered the best "fishing" audience of all, by far the best-conditioned audience for Mr. Muhammad's teachings: the Christian churches (The Autobiography of Malcolm X).

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