Religion
Sunday Best
With love, discipline, and old-time religion, Kirbyjon Caldwell has built one of Texas’ most vital churches.
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The young people, fairly evenly divided between middle- and high-schoolers, gave positive answers to Caldwell’s questions about their beliefs and their dedication to the church, including their willingness to tithe their allowances and income from part-time jobs. The pastor then asked them to identify themselves individually and, if they desired, to make a brief statement. Every confirmand elicited an affirming round of applause and amens. Then citing the African proverb “It takes a whole village to rear a child” and noting, “we are all in this together,” Caldwell invited the families, friends, and any others who desired to gather around the students and lay hands on them while he led a prayer on behalf of “these, the most valuable assets in our church family.” He asked God to let these children know “that you are pleased with their decision” and told Satan to “take your hands off of our youth. Loose ’em and let ’em go.” He declared them free from bondage of premarital sex, laziness, class-cutting, cheating on examinations, and lack of self-confidence. And he besought God: “Lord, if there’s a youth here today that doesn’t like the shape of his or her nose, that doesn’t like the complexion of his or her skin, or doesn’t like the texture of his or her hair, Lord, let them know you made them. You made them in your image, and you don’t make junk! Hallelujah!”
Adults are also expected to meet their obligations. In keeping with the church’s encouragement of political activism, Caldwell announced, “We want to be in prayer for all those persons who did not vote last Tuesday. If you didn’t vote, please don’t let me know. In the past, some folk were knocked down by water hoses, bitten by dogs, beaten up, killed so that we could have the right to vote. Anyone who does not exercise that right is an abomination to God and a miserable misrepresentation of our foreparents. Some of the same folk who have had or who will ask members of the pastoral staff to show up as character witnesses had the nerve to not vote last Tuesday in the very election related to the judges in whose courts their cases will appear.”
The success Caldwell has attained and the attitudes he fosters have not gone unnoticed. He sits on the boards of Texas Commerce Bank, Hermann Hospital, the Greater Houston Partnership, the United Way, and the American Cancer Society, and he plays a key role in more than a dozen other civic and denominational bodies. He represented Houston’s Protestant clergy by leading a prayer at the inauguration of Rice University president Malcolm Gillis in the fall of 1993 and is sure to appear on more lists of Houston’s religious, civic, or African American leaders.
The latest of the daunting projects Caldwell has taken on is the Power Center. Impressed by Windsor Village’s programs and pastor, Fiesta Mart chairman of the board Donald Bonham arranged to have the church receive 24 acres of land and two buildings containing more than 100,000 square feet of floor space, a gift valued at $4.4 million. When renovated, at an expected cost of $2.5 million, the properties—at the intersection of South Main and South Post Oak, not far from the church—will house the Imani School, an African American–managed branch of Texas Commerce Bank that will provide affordable mortgages and loans to individuals and small businesses, a medical clinic operated by Hermann Hospital, an art gallery, a recreational center, and a variety of federal social-service agencies. The spiritual centerpiece of the complex will be Holyfield Chapel, a two-story prayer center made possible by a million-dollar gift from the former heavyweight champion, a member of Windsor Village since 1988. With admirable accuracy, the Power Center’s scriptural watchword is Isaiah 61:4 : “They shall repair the ruined cities and restore what has long lain desolate.”
I’m not sure, and feel no strong need to probe, just where Kirbyjon Caldwell’s theology falls on the scale of orthodoxy. His education at Perkins would seem to rule out his being a biblical literalist. His position as pastor of a flock of thousands, many of whom come from backgrounds in which the literal truth of the Bible was never questioned, makes it necessary for him to leave his listeners considerable latitude in interpreting his sermons.
When it came time in the service to pray for those with special needs, he asked, “How many of us believe in miracles?” When nearly everyone answered in the affirmative, he said, “You don’t have to believe in them. I was just asking. But we need a few real believers to come and stand behind these people and lay hands on their shoulders. Let us pray.” As people linked together, Caldwell left little doubt that he believed God could and would act to improve the lot of those gathered before him, but he neither demanded anything of the Almighty nor claimed any supernatural powers for himself. “Lord,” he said, “we’re going to trust you no matter what. We’re going to continue to believe in you, no matter what. But our responsibility is to ask, seek, and knock. And here we are asking, seeking, and knocking.”
Education, organizational savvy, political acumen, and strong personal faith can all help a pastor build and maintain a large constituency, but the bottom line in a black preacher’s power is the strength of his preaching. I have heard Kirbyjon Caldwell speak or converse on several occasions and he is capable of subtle and sophisticated discourse. I was delighted, however to hear him announce on one particular morning that he intended to preach “an old-time, fundamental, down-home, slam-dunk sermon on how to whup Satan.” A whupping, he noted, is much worse than a mere whipping.
Beginning with his take on I Peter 5:8 (“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour”), Caldwell scoffed at the popular image of Satan as a cartoon character garbed in a red jumpsuit and brandishing a pitchfork. “If you’re looking for that manifestation of the devil, you’ll never see him, except on Halloween.” Then, without specifically repudiating the notion of a personal devil, he described Satan’s activity in ways that would easily satisfy those open to allegorical interpretation. When children are unable to communicate effectively with their parents, the devil has seized control of their communication channels. AIDS, stab wounds, drugs, gun violence, all these reflect evil efforts to wipe out the younger generation. Greed, fornication, adultery, backbiting and gossiping are the work of personal demons. Racism, sexism, and classism are signs of social demons. He described a social demon he recently encountered in the person of a high school principal who had asserted in a faculty meeting that “the reason our TAAS scores are so low is because we have too many black and brown kids going to school here.” Clearly, Caldwell charged, this woman had mentally placed a glass ceiling above every African American and Hispanic child in the school. “And if that is her mind-set,” he observed, “you can imagine how she implements the program. You can imagine what the level of expectation is.”
The day when this kind of demonic behavior could be tolerated, Caldwell declared, is over. “We’ve got to learn to defeat both the personal demons and the social demons,” he said, growing ever insistent. “No more of this okey-dokey, watermelon, 1870’s, everything-gonna-be-all-right-after-a-while, pie-in-the-sky, slave-master plantation mentality. This is a new day!”
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