The Challenge of Matriarchy: Family Discipleship and the African-American Experience -- By: Kevin L. Smith

Journal: Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry
Volume: JDFM 02:2 (Spring 2012)
Article: The Challenge of Matriarchy: Family Discipleship and the African-American Experience
Author: Kevin L. Smith


The Challenge of Matriarchy:
Family Discipleship and the African-American Experience

Kevin L. Smith

Kevin L. Smith (Ph.D. cand., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Assistant Professor of Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and pastor of Watson Memorial Baptist Church. Before being appointed to the faculty of Southern Seminary, Kevin served as the Martin Luther King Jr. Fellow at Southern Seminary. He has been a church planter in Tennessee and a pastor in Tennessee and Kentucky. He is a frequent conference speaker and has served in short-term missions in the Caribbean and Africa. Kevin is also a member of the Organization of American Historians and of the American Society of Church History. He is married to the former Patricia Moore; three children and two great-nephews complete their family of seven.

Did God give fathers a special and specific command to be responsible for the godly training of their children? That’s precisely what Paul declared in his letter to the Ephesian church: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (6:4). But where has the black church stood on this issue? And in what ways do the dynamics of the black church differ from the challenges faced by Christian brothers and sisters with different cultural backgrounds? These are the questions that form a vital background as we consider the interaction between churches and African-American fathers, mothers, and children in the Christian formation of present and future generations.

The black church has functioned as a central organizing institution in the African-American experience.1As such, the history of the black church coincides with the general flow of the lives of former Africans in North America: slavery, Reconstruction, segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, and the post-Civil Rights era.2 Each of these periods influenced the African-American family in ways that often undercut the influence of fathers and established de facto matriarchal structures. Necessary and well-intended family leadership from mothers, grandmothers, and aunts unintentionally created a legacy of “fatherlessness” in the African-American family and—by extension—in the black church.

The African-American Family From Slavery To Civil Rights

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has referred to slavery as America’s national “birth defect.”3 Her graphic description provides a beginning point for examining the long-term effects of the early Africans’ plight in North America and how their pligh...

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