“The Other Side of Dissatisfied Affiliation: Race, Religion, and the Vision of Carlton Pearson”

Joseph L. Tucker Edmonds, PhD

Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at Indiana University (Indianapolis)

Associate Director, Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture

“I don’t know why I keep going.”  These were the haunting words of a participant in my study researching Black men’s responses to state-sponsored violence and racial trauma. While many may assume that this participant was referring to the required and often court-ordered therapy or small group reflection sessions, this 28-year-old Black man is referring to his voluntary association with and attendance at a small local church. “I don’t feel welcome or heard there, but I keep finding myself in that pew or listening online.” This working-class young man who has endured several violent interactions with police and the judicial system voluntarily acknowledged his complex and somewhat dissatisfied relationship with the local Christian church.  He never used the word dissatisfied, but he and others like him talked about the local church as broken, irrelevant, and at times dismissive of their needs. Yet, this affiliation remains an important tool for their survival and provides vocabulary/language for they ways that these men talk about transformation and upward mobility.  They quoted pastors, highlighted the importance of reading and memorizing scripture, and chided each other for not being more active in these religious spaces and communities. 

 I am intrigued and troubled by these Black men’s experiences and what I have begun to call “dissatisfied affiliation.”  These men are not the classic nones or disaffiliated who claim to have no religious belief or are no longer affiliated with a local or virtual religious community. This is the group of religious attendees who register high levels of dissatisfaction with religious practices, leaders or communities yet persist with attendance, financial contributions, or some level of communal engagement. Some of the men in my original study suggested that maybe their affiliation was in response to some sense of duty or communal expectation.  “It is the right thing to do, right?” One of the participants asked aloud seeming to query himself and the group simultaneously.  However, many in the group suggested that there was something deeper than the “nagging” of their grandmas or lovers. Even amid Christianity’s and the local church’s persistent shortcomings, they could not and did not want to move on.  So, they didn’t. 

While I initially assumed that there was something unique about this particular cohort of Black men and their precarious relationship to the state and economic well-being, I was shocked that my research amongst upwardly mobile, middle class Black evangelicals men produced similar levels of dissatisfaction and uneasiness. They too talked about not being able to leave even as they experienced a significant decrease in their needs and interests being met. They could not and did not want to move on.  However, it was my conversation with and study of a well-known Black male evangelical leader and pastor, Bishop Carlton Pearson, on his many years of “dissatisfied affiliation” and his ultimate decision to leave the evangelical community that sits at the center of my analysis and facilitates the untangling of this complex and persistent phenomenon. Pearson, both marginal and upwardly mobile/extremely celebrated and ultimate discarded, provides a unique frame to tell this story of Black masculinity, Christianity, and what emerges on the other side of dissatisfied affiliation.