Asking the Clergy: How does your congregation honor Black History Month?

Black History Month means celebrations of local and national history for Long Island houses of worship. This week’s clergy discuss how they honor that rich heritage — and how they might do more to acknowledge the important contributions of African Americans.

The Rev. Stephen Michael Lewis

Senior pastor, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Freeport

In the African Methodist Episcopal Church, we are blessed to celebrate our founder, Richard Allen, an activist and social justice advocate, during Black History Month. Born on Feb. 14, 1760, in Philadelphia, Richard Allen became the first bishop of the AME church, the first independent black denomination in the United States.

Our congregation, one of the oldest AME churches on Long Island, was founded 118 years ago. Every Sunday during the year at Bethel, we feature a Black History Moment during our services. And in February we step it up to focus even more intently on the many figures who are part of black history in America.

Through video and guest speakers, we take time out every Sunday to talk about the significance of black history and the current black experience. Patricia Charthen, a former principal in the Roosevelt School District and one of the founding members of our church’s Harry J. White II Spiritual and Cultural Committee, writes a Note on Black History, about which I comment during the service.

This Sunday, Feb. 9, we will have a founder’s celebration that coincides with Black History Month. We spend about 15 minutes during the service to make a presentation and show a short video about Bishop Allen.

The Rev. Earl Y. Thorpe Jr.

Pastor, Church-in-the-Garden, Garden City

At the Church-in-the-Garden, a multiethnic and multicultural American Baptist Church, we celebrate Black History Month by reflecting on the history of black and brown people here in the Americas. The messy history of the United States is predicated on the story of black- and brown-skinned people brought to the country in captivity, enduring chattel slavery while becoming the economic backbone of this country through their blood, sweat and tears.

When we look at the unique, tragic and beautifully redemptive story of the struggle of black and brown people in the United States, America can come to acknowledge, address and reconcile her past sins and history. Then, we can do the work to create a better society and a more just nation.

As a church family, we honor and seek to open ourselves to the rich knowledge and complex experiences of black history in the Americas. We learn to see the struggle and plight of the ancestors and how that story connects and helps to inform a host of cultures and ethnicities’ collective and individual stories. Knowledge illuminates. Ignorance shields us from our shared connectedness as human beings.

We look to educate ourselves and see our struggles represented in our sacred texts and music. Those texts see beyond social constructs. They instill hope and a remembrance of our past and faith for our future.

Rabbi Elliot Skiddell

Central Synagogue-Beth Emeth, Rockville Centre

From all of the various surveys that have been done in the past decade or so, statistics seem to point to as much as 20 percent of the American Jewish community being in the category of what we call Jews of color. The category of Jews of color is defined in different ways, but for most definitions that includes African Americans, Latinos and Asians.

What I understand from people that I know personally in the community of Jews of color, many of them feel that they have not been as welcome in the broader Jewish community as they might be and should be. I would hope, first of all, that our congregations and communities would want to honor that diversity and have special programs during Black History Month — because the history of Jews of color is fascinating. For instance, the majority of the Ethiopian Jews were brought home to Israel and are part of the fabric of Israel today.

In addition, most people assume that someone who is of African-American ancestry may have converted to Judaism, but there are people in the African-American community who have been Jewish for generations going back to the American Civil War and earlier.

I think there’s been a kind of lack of recognition on the part of the majority Jewish community that there are indeed many Jews of color in our community, and I think we need to do a better job of reaching out, recognizing and acknowledging that.