“Jazzing Religion”

This chapter discusses the Afro-Protestant mainline in the era when jazz emerged as a distinct profession. In the 1920s and 1930s, religious race professionals provided editorial commentary on African American entertainment and social gatherings through their denominational newspapers and the black press. Jazz competed with middle-class African American religious leaders for the minds, time, and even finances of African American youth. At the same time, these churches and clergy were already facing the criticisms of African American intellectuals who questioned the aims of their ministries as well as the moral and intellectual fitness of their ministers. As they faced various challenges to their authority as race representatives, religious race professionals articulated and constructed their Protestant ministries as credible professions for a modern era. Middle-class black Protestants operated as religious race professionals: cultural critics whose pursuit of modern religious identities resulted in their debates to determine the appropriateness of recreation, entertainment, and theatricality in both the daily lives and religious aesthetics of black Protestants. Though middle-class black ministers and intellectuals offered strong criticisms of jazz, the music ultimately emerged as an alternative arena for the practice of interracial community, beyond the interracial ecumenism and fellowships that middle-class black ministers were working to forge.